2026-01-23

In the face of extreme daily brutality the folks of Minnesota have been giving the rest of the US a demonstration of how we resist rising fascism in the US. Anyone can begin taking action to build their personal and community capacity for resistance today. Depending on your location and context, only some of these will apply. Do what you can, do what makes sense in your current context. None of what follows is a blueprint but rather are suggestions to be adapted to your location.

I've broken these down into various categories. Some can start as personal actions but can then be grown into shared, community action. In fact, almost all personal resistance should likely be shared into your community which magnifies its power. Don't keep good resistance to yourself! Also, it's worth mentioning, that most of these overlap in a variety of ways.

Building/saving resources

• Start saving money! Put off unneccessary travel or purchases and start a resistance fund. A part of building resistance is preparing for a long-term work stoppage, a General Strike. People will loose jobs. You may loose your job or have your hours cut. Prepare for the worst.
• Start building extra storage of the physical necessities. The obvious ones: Food, medical supplies and household supplies. And remember, this is a community project. Everything we do in this effort is ultimately about increasing our capacity as a community of resistance. So have extra for others.
• Start thinking about extra housing/shelter capacity on your property. It's possible, maybe even likely that as we go forward we'll need to be prepared to help house other people from our community. What room do you have to offer others that might need temporary shelter? Extra rooms, basements, garage space, yard space. All of these things can be a space for neighbors or fellow workers in need of short-term or long-term shelter.

Build neighborhood democracy

• Start organizing with neighbors and fellow workers. All of us working together are the resistance and the way we do that is by getting together to discuss and plan.
• Organize potluck meetings to be hosted in homes and apartments. Share food and begin planning for community needs such as self-defense, food and first-aid.
• Consider your meetings as practice for organizing community democracy because that is exactly what they are. As much as we are building resistance we are building democracy.
• Set a schedule and create an organizational body or bodies. For example each block might form a committee. Experiment, discuss what makes sense for your location. Doing and creating community democracy is a process. Let it evolve, modify as needed. There is no set recipe or blueprint. But be sure to be inclusive, make sure all voices are heard.
• Connect your committee with others. Be in touch, face-to-face but also be sure to use available secure and private technology like Signal which is free to install and use.
• A block committee might meet weekly, then come together with others in a larger meeting monthly to coordinate with several other blocks

Building Community Capacity

• Neighbors planning for long-term struggle should be discussing a strategy and process for building up extra reserves of daily life essentials: food, health care and first aid. Much of this can be kept decentralized in homes throughout a community. Discuss and plan for a variety of options. A mixed method for storage will likely have benefits, provide easier and quicker distribution. If a community space can also be established as a collection/distribution "store" with volunteer staff that would likely also be beneficial.
• Create a process/method for increasing the reserves as well as keeping track of these reserves. Holders of reserves should report at regular meetings or via a clearly defined communication chain (email, Signal, etc). A block committee should have a spreadsheet that details where reserves are held for easy access as they are needed. Create a process for request of reserves and distribution.
• Food reserves to consider for lower cost, ease of storage: bulk rolled oats, bulk dry beans, bulk rice, bulk peanuts, pasta, salt and sugar. When building food reserves consider insect/mouse proof storage.
• In addition to the above mentioned supplies establish lists of available safe spaces for sheltering people. Locations of spaces and what is being offered should be detailed and inventoried. When the time comes that shelter is needed, community members need easy to access list of what is available and who to talk to to gain access to the space.
• We are self-managing our community which means we need to define roles and jobs to be done. We all have different skill sets. Just as supplies and spaces need to be accessible, so too do we need to be accessible in the roles we volunteer for. Organizing is a process that builds organization. A community needs to be self aware of what this organization is. Who is doing what needs to be clear to everyone.

Digital Communications, Privacy and Security

• By definition privacy starts with your personal practices. These days much of this is going to be about the digital space and data. Do an audit of the services and apps you currently use. What devices, services and apps are leaking data to state agencies like ICE. How are your daily activities being reported to those agencies? As we go forward we need to make adjustments to our assumptions about our safety and security as the larger context of state threats has shifted.
• Most US-based computing devices and services are collecting, selling and reporting user data daily. Your audit should result in actionable items and changes to what you use with the intent of reducing the surveillance data and the ease of access to that data by ICE and other agencies.
• While these actions can be taken individually, remember that privacy and security are ultimately a community process and practice. Your lack of precautions can harm others as your digital devices may be leaking their private information along with your own.
• Consider working with others in your community to form a working group or committee dedicated to improving the privacy and security practices of community members.

Starting points that will provide immediate benefits in terms of increasing privacy by limiting data:

• Neighborhood electronic communications, especially texting, should be based on Signal which offers encrypted texting, audio and video calls. This is a free app and service (you are encouraged to donate as it is costly to run). At a minimum community members should set the app up on their phones. Not only can community members text one-to-one but group chats can be created. And any group chat can also serve as a group audio or video calls. Signal is one the easiest ways to quickly enable fully private and secure digital communications between neighbors.
• Adopt Proton Email for all of your work-place or neighorhood organizing. Do this as a group as full privacy with Proton Email is easiest when everyone is using Proton. The company offers a free account with options for paid accounts. Start with free account for quick assurance that you and your fellow activists are as private as possible. Like Signal, Proton Email is fully encrypted when sending/recieving email from other Proton users.
• Adopt Proton for shared files as well. The free email account includes some limited storage and use of Proton Drive. This can serve for collaborating on shared spreadsheets and documents for your organizing efforts.
• Once you've gotten a start with Proton for your local organizing consider switching to that service for all of your email. Many people these days are using Google's Gmail which is likely one of the worst possible choices in terms of privacy. Google's buisness model is based on the sale of user data in exchange for free services. Make it a priority to move all of your data away from Google services as soon as possible.
• Related to the above, delete Google Maps and Google's Chrome browser if you have them installed on your devices. On desktop computers or laptops, switch to LibreWolf. On mobile devices switch to Brave browser.
• Stop using Google search as all of your searches are logged and directly associated with your IP address. Switch to duckduckgo.com, StartPage.com or maapl.net
• Both Microsoft and Apple also cooperate with Federal agencies and will turn over access to your private data when requested. The same solutions above (Signal and Proton) are recommended to replace both Apple and Microsoft's email and cloud services.

Location Tracking

It's increasingly clear that ICE is using location tracking based on mobile phones which, when turned on with an active carrier provided line, will result in a map of your daily locations. ICE and other federal agencies can and do access this location data along with call logs when they are tracking targeted individuals.

It's difficult to impossible to make your phone fully private while maintaining an active internet connection. However, it is possible to make it more difficult for government agencies to gain access.

If your phone supports eSIMs purchase a data-only eSIM from a service like KeepGo. There are many such companies that offer eSIMs. Prices range, but KeepGo offers 1 GB of data for around $3. That data does not expire (check, some does expire, some does not). Once purchased and activated you can turn off your carrier provided line that makes location/call tracking easy. When at home on wifi keep your phone in airplane mode. When away from your home wifi turn wifi off and turn on the third party eSIM data line and use that for Signal calls and texts. While this eSIM still connects you to the internet it's less trackable because it isn't the first place a government agency will look. They'll look at your carrier line/call log which should be turned off and not reporting anything.

If you need to make calls to actual phone numbers rather than Signal users you can download the MySudo app and pay for a VOIP number. Currently this has to be done through a subscription via your device app store but in the future it will be offered via the MySudo website. A MySudo VOIP number is more private and less trackable. Used in conjunction with your third party eSIM it offers a much higher level of privacy. Cost is around $5/month for 3 VOIP numbers and 200 minutes of call time.

There are other considerations when using mobile devices, apps and data. The more apps you use the more data you'll use when using your mobile data. Also, apps leak/share data data brokers which will sell/share with law enforcement and government agencies. For the best privacy, use a website instead of an app. Delete apps that are not essentual. Turn off location services entirely or, at the least, for most apps on your device.

Practicing digital privacy and security does require some effort initially to set-up new services but once that is done there's nothing to it. Given the current sharp increase in surveillance it's worth your time and not only are you protecting yourself but you're protecting anyone you communicate with. Learn more at Privacy Guides.

2026-01-09

Well, we're one week into 2026 and the regime continues it the war against its own people and its war against the rest of the world. On January 3 the US abducted the elected president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro with a military strike that included bombings of infrastructure and killed at least 57.

In the days following the regime reasserted its intent to take Greenland, by force if necessary.

On Wednesday 1-7-2026 an ICE agent murdered Renee Nicole Good Minneapolis, Minnesota.

That's just the first 7 days of the year. So many thoughts and emotions. There's much I could say here about the events of these first days. I'll simply say that 2026 marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence in 1776. There is a brutal truth to Trump's America as a reflection of these first 250 years of this nation. I began the year finally committing to a full reading of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. I'm about 40% through it and what I see of the US in 2026 perfectly reflects the truth of the narrative presented in the book. The nation remains true to the contempt of democracy, freedom and equality on full display during those first 250 years.

The US has always been a nation of genocide, subjugation, violence and theft. It is a nation of grift that pretends fairness and democracy. It's all there in the history. The daily grift and violence of this regime is a continuation of the ruling class that has dominated here for the entirety. It is the brutal truth.

2025-12-28

Last week the folks that build the Elementary distribution of GNU/Linux announced the release of 8.1. I don’t usually jump to look at all the new releases of various distributions because I’ve been happy with Mint on my laptop and Trisquel on my Mini but I’ve been wanting to at least look at Elementary because I remembered hearing that it had a macOS inspired design. I looked and it does indeed have a macOS vibe going on. I was curious enough to download the ISO and flash it to a usb drive to test it.

Yes, it reminds me of macOS of a few years ago, none of the 26 Liquid Glass theme released by Apple a couple months ago. I’ve generally enjoyed the aesthetic design of Apple’s various operating systems for its Macs and iDevices. From the Platinum theme of the 1990s Systems 8 and 9 to OS X Aqua and then the numerous revisions of OS X into macOS, it was an interesting journey with many twists and turns. Read more about Apple’s Appearance Manager.

Platinum was subdued in comparison to the vibrant Aqua of OS X which was slowly flattened and subdued in the years following. The pin stripes and blue jelly-like pills were minimized as were the many drop shadows. Then Apple experimented for a few years with “brushed-metal” which was transformed into a dark gray gradient. The red, yellow and green “stop-light” buttons on every window went from glassy 3D bulbs to flat colored circles. As macOS evolved Apple was also experimenting for several years with skeuomorphic designs used heavily in iOS. These were removed completely with a flattened and simplified design revamp with iOS 7. Over the years there was great praise and great criticism of Apple’s choices. From too skeuomorphic to flat and plain, back and forth. Lot’s going on this year with the changes of Apple’s OS visual designs, more about that later. With the exception of third party utilities like Kaleidoscope theming in the 90s followed by Apple’s short experiment with native theming, the general rule is users accept what Apple dictates with each OS release. You don’t have to like it but you do have to use it.

GNU/Linux Mint with Cinnamon Desktop

Cinnamon theme settings

By comparison, GNU/Linux is far more open in regards to the configurability of the OS desktop environment. Different distributions offer different desktop environments to choose from. Once installed a desktop environment can be modified in all sorts of ways. I’m using Mint’s Cinnamon desktop environment which offers theming options for the mouse pointer, application windows, icons and the desktop. It comes with quite a few default theme options as well as user created themes that can be downloaded from within the settings app. As a late 90s Mac user it immediately reminded me of Kaleidoscope. KDE Plasma which is the desktop environment I’ve got on the Trisquel Mini also has a variety of theming options including community created themes.

Kate code and text editor

Thunderbird Calendar

LibreCalc

When I first installed Mint with the Cinnamon desktop I was happy to stick with the default theme though I forget which one that was. It might be the one I’m using at the moment though I’ve switched a few times. It reminded me of the 90s era Platinum theme of the Mac. Pleasant, subdued but not too plain. I used it for a week or so with the default panel positioned along the bottom then began tweaking a bit. I moved the panel to the top and added the Workspace switcher applet to provide a visual display/switcher of my workspaces. Then I arranged various Applets along the right side. I basically set it up in a way that worked with my Mac muscle memory. Then I added a second panel back to the bottom of the screen to display app shortcuts in the center of the panel. Again, reminicent of the macOS dock. After looking at Elementary the other day I went looking and sure enough, there’s an app called Plank that provides a macOS like center dock which I installed and am using for the moment.

I've also added a few images of frequently used apps. This is another area where GNU/Linux is often critiqued. Specifically, I've read many times that the available apps are either difficult to use, ugly, or both. This is just hogwash. The apps I'm using on a regular basis are as easy to use as any other desktop app in comparable categories on the Mac or Windows. Are they identical? Of course not. Different apps, different OS, so, they're likely different. But they are fully featured and work very well. And, to my eyes, they fit well within the OS in terms the applied window theme.

I’ve opted for very different theme on the KDE Plasma desktop environment on the Trisquel Mini. I’ve got a similar top panel and no panel at all along the bottom. And I’m using a dark theme, Psion, that has a fairly different feel. Though many of the themes for KDE Plasma are not what I would choose, the point is that there are many to choose from. A user can stick with the default that works fairly well or they can go exploring. I’m glad I found Psion and I’ve been using it for months.

One of the reasons I’ve enjoyed using GNU/Linux this first year is the quality of the visual design of the user interface as well as the fact that I have a choice to change that design. I had a bias and expectation coming in that I would be settling for something of less quality than what I had assumed was an Apple advantage. Which brings me to the historical and biased belief amongst Apple enthusiasts that Apple’s interface design is unmatched and that the resulting user experience is unrivaled. This is particularly interesting in light of recent years’ steady stream of complaints regarding the quality of Apple’s various operating systems. From bugs to visual design, it’s too long to list here. Anyone following the release of this fall’s release of the various Apple operating systems will have seen the tidal wave of complaints regarding the newly introduced Liquid Glass theme.

A lot of shade has been thrown at GNU/Linux over the years regarding ease of use and poor visual design and I’ve gathered that some of those criticisms were warranted in the past. I’m not sure at what point things began to shift, I can only say that my 10 months of use were the opposite of what I expected based on reputation. If you're someone interested in migrating away from Windows or macOS I'd encourage you to check it out. Downloading an ISO from the Linux Mint website costs nothing. Flash it to a thumb drive using their instructions and boot from that thumbdrive to take it for a test drive. Mint won't work on the latest M series Macs but older Macs should be no problem. If you're using an M series Mac check out Elementary which does support some of the newer Apple Silicon hardware. Whether you're using Windows or Mac, look-up the start-up shortcuts that will get you to a boot options menu for your particular OS or computer.

2025-12-26

Part 1: The GNU/Linux Experience

As I start this post in early November 2025 it’s been nine months since I first installed GNU/Linux on this 2012 MacMini. I had no idea at the beginning of the year that I would completely flip the table of my 30+ years of Apple-based computing. I had no idea that by the end of my first year of using GNU/Linux and Free Software that I would not only be using an entirely different computing ecosystem but that I would be so delighted with it.

Before installing the Mint distribution of GNU/Linux on this Mac I expected I would just be trying it out and feared that a real transition would be difficult to impossible. If not impossible, I assumed it would prove difficult and that the final experience would be one of settling on something I didn’t really enjoy.

But let me tell you, when I booted Mint from thumb drive the first time I actually giggled. My initial fear evaporated. After ten minutes of testing the OS from the thumb drive I’d begun the install and a mere 15 minutes later I was booting GNU/Linux from the Mac’s SSD and the deal was done. In the days and weeks that followed I moved my entire workflow over and transitioned all of my computing from iCloud services and storage to a mix of local files and a Norway-based company for email/contacts/calendaring. My enthusiasm led me to purchase a used 2018 ThinkPad from Ebay for my mobile computing in place of my beloved iPad which was reduced to use only for jobs that required delivery of Affinity files for one particular client.

Part 2: Apple: Capitalist doing Capitalism (and fascism)

In early June Apple held it’s annual WWDC and for the first time in many years I had no interest. In the days and weeks that followed the details of the new Apple OS features filtered into my Mastodon feed along with news of Tim Cook’s capitulations and demonstrations of loyalty to the Trump regime affirmed and reaffirmed my decision to migrate away from Apple’s ecosystem.

Jumping forward to the fall and my disdain and distrust of the company has deepened into disgust. As an antifascist I cannot imagine continued reliance on the company’s offerings. As an antifascist I’m dismayed in my observation of so many users who claim opposition to Trump’s growing fascism who still enthusiastically discuss Apple news. But that’s another post for another time. I’m really thankful I spent a few weeks disentangling myself from Apple Services.

Part 3: Apple devices without iCloud

I’m still using several Apple devices because I already “own” them and they still work with years of use ahead of them. But, where possible I’ve logged out of iCloud. I have a client that still relies on shared iCloud documents and so I had to log my iPad back into iCloud for that but I’ve got everything turned off except access to iCloud drive for those documents. None of my important personal data remains in iCloud. I’m doing the same with my old, original Google account. I can live with this. I’m not relying on either company and not paying for their services.

I expect that the M2 iPad Pro and iPhone 13 Pro will continue working for many years and I intend to fully use them for the things they remain useful for, but I’ll never again purchase a new Apple device nor subscribe to iCloud services. This feels like a practical approach that remains inline with an ethical approach.

Part 4: A new emphasis on privacy

Late in the year I took a deep dive into digital privacy. It had been on my mind as an after effect of thinking more about computing in the context of ever increasing surveillence capitalism in a country that is moving further into fascism. It was long overdue. The result was a further change in my computing and how I thought about privacy generally. I wrote about the goals and progress I made here.

Part 5: A different take on computing

The result of all this is that at the end of 2025 I have a very different take on computing from the one I held at the end of last year. Really, that’s an understatement. I flipped the table over and started over. The resulting progress comes with both deep satisfaction as well as a kind of relief. Satisfaction in terms of the work that I accomplished getting everything transitioned. It wasn’t all that difficult but it did take some time in that first month or so. After that it was all pretty easy and just a matter of settling into the new normal.

The relief comes in that I feel far more secure and private in terms of my data. When I see stories like the recent one in which a Mac user had his iCloud account turned off by Apple because he had purchased and attempted to use an iTunes gift card that had been tampered with, well, it reminds me that all the power rests with Apple. It’s not a partnership, not a relationship and at the end of the day the average customer, as an individual has no power over their data or account. I never have to worry about that. Nor do I have to worry about the privacy or security of my data because all of it, 100% now resides in the confines of my home. Secure on my local storage. Now my computing is local. I save money every month and still have easy access to my data.

Also, I now feel freed of the financial burden of expensive hardware which is another relief. I’ve always lived on a constrained budget because I’ve chosen to live in a way that attempts a lower carbon footprint. I don’t want to waste resources or use more than my share. Those of us in the Global North consume far more than our share and this is especially true of our consumption of computing hardware. From iPhones to iPads to laptops, many of us have replaced too often. I know I certainly have. Allowing myself to go along with Apple marketing for the latest, greatest iPad or iPhone was an expensive, selfish mistake and I’m happy to have walked away from that.

I’m smilling as I write these words, I relish the fact that I know all of my computing now happens on old hardware and that the resulting experience is actually on par or better than the experience I’d have if I were still buying Apple’s expensive stuff. That I’ll never again be tempted to spend $1,000 or more on a computing device. Over the last year I’ve learned that almost any old computer is all I need to make a living and that is a remarkable thing to have learned. Stepping off of the new tech treadmill is a fantastic relief. There’s a word for this kind of change-up to a commitment to long-term use of more open software running on older computing hardware with the notion of making do for as long as possible: Permacomputing. And I’m digging it.

2025-12-21

Amongst those that care about the quality and privacy of web browsers, Mozilla's Firefox has long served as the source for an ecosystem of other downstream browsers. But with each year it seems that the long-term reliability of this souce has grown less certain. From dependency on Google for funding to muddied messaging from Mozilla's management on user privacy and data collection to a perception of general poor management, there is growing concern amongst the user community. As 2025 closes out the new Mozilla CEO has recently announced that AI is central to the future of Firefox which will "grow into an AI browser." YIKES.

Many in the Firefox user have no interest in having AI integrated into the browser. And while it's true that there are downstream forks like LibreWolf (my current favorite) and Mullvad that do not leave the AI features intact, I'm concerned that this is a band-aid approach. The dependency on a source that is increasingly going in the wrong direction seems like a long-term fail. What's the solution? Is there a solution?

Currently all browsers are built on 3 sources:

• Google's Chromium/Blink engine dominates
• Apple's Safari/Webkit engine is secondary
• Mozilla's Firefox is the smallest but is the default on most GNU/Linux distributions
• Servo and Ladybird are two new rendering engines in development

The problem with Chromium is Google as a source. Currently the two most popular non-Google Chromium-based browsers are Brave and Vivaldi. Of these two, Brave is, by far, the most private. Vivaldi is one of the worst choices a user can make in terms of privacy. Learn more about these and all the other browsers at Privacy Tests.

In terms of privacy Brave is one of the best of all browsers but there are ethical issues in terms of the company and other products offered including AI and crypto integration. I'll leave it to the reader to explore those. Brave is available on all desktop and mobile platforms.

Next is Apple's Safari/WebKit. For users of Apple's devices, Safari is the default option and the previous version, 18.6 is currently shown at Privacy Tests and it's not great. It's roughly on par with Chrome and Vivaldi. Though the results listed there don't tell the whole story because Google actively collects all kinds of data from Chrome users while Apple collects very little. Also, the newest versions of Safari for all Apple devices introduce signifant privacy improvements. Finally, adding the uBlock lite extension to Safari further improves its privacy protection. Safari 26 (I'm assuming it's name matches the jump in OS naming convention to the current year), combined with uBlock likely puts it on par with Brave in terms of privacy protections.

What about non-Apple devices? Does WebKit play a role on other platforms? The most notable, perhaps only example, is Kagi's Orion browser. The company just released the Mac version of the browser and the iOS/iPadOS versions have been available for awhile. A Linux version of Orion is currently in Alpha testing with a Windows version planned for release in 2026. Kagi's offering is going to be an interesting but mixed bag.

First, and most important, Kagi is offering something others do not: a paid service. The paid search subscription is currently the primary revenue stream for the company. And while Orion is being offered for free the company offers paid options that has a few added benefits. And it seems to me that this is an essential element to the future of the web browser.

We've all gotten used to the idea that the web browser should be "free". Apple users get Safari for free. Vivaldi is free. Brave is free. Chrome is free. But in all of these cases free is not free. These browsers are all the result of paid human labor and there are things going on behind the scenes to fund that work.

Kagi doesn't try to hide the cost but rather puts it up front. It's business model and plans are less like a web browsing company and more like Proton. While the focus thus far has been the search service and now the browser, it's also working on several others. But this is where it starts to get messy. Kagi also plans to do email though there are few details about that. There's nothing on the website but the CEO has mentioned it in podcast interviews. Unfortunately, like many others, Kagi is incorporating a variety of AI providers into several of its services. It's already in search and will be a part of the web browser and email as well.

Ugh. So, to summarize Kagi's offering: Orion will be a WebKit based, cross platform browser with a more transparent business model that relies an user funding, it is also going to be integrating AI. It seems that any technology company interested in growth is one that will also be focused on integrating AI LLM slop. So, no?

Going into 2026 the only single cross platform web browsers that I'm aware of that have real privacy protections and are free of AI slop are LibreWolf and Mullvad. And yes, these are excellent options but are based on a source under suspect management with suspect funding sources and which has now stated it intends to focus on building an AI browser.

The web browser is my most used app on any computer and I'd purchase one for $50 a year or maybe a $5/month sub. Preferably open source (GPL) but definitely no AI and it would need to be based on a source rendering/engine with a solid future. I thought that might be Orion but it seems it's not.

Addendum

In anticipation of the upcoming Linux version I've been testing Orion on the iPad and it's a decent browser but it seems obvious that the attention has been focused on the Mac version as the iPad version lacks support for the new menu system and still has odd quirks/bugs in day-to-day use.

Oddly, by comparison, there is the iOS Quiche browser being developed by one person that is in beta for the iPad. It has a stated goal of being privacy respecting with zero telemetry (like Orion) and it has built in ad/tracker blocking. The beta version of Quiche for the iPad feels more responsive and has none of the odd quirks I see on Orion. It lacks extension/plugin support but it's got quite a few custom options for the interface that Orion lacks. There are no plans for adding AI but this is a one person passion project with no plans for expansion to other platforms.

I'll stick with LibreWolf on Linux and will try Orion when it's released for Linux. But given the AI plans for Orion I don't expect I'll be a long-term user.

Le sigh.

2025-11-21

• Reduce or eliminate use of cloud services
• Reduce exposure to data collection by apps
• Reduce exposure to data collection via web browsers
• Reduce exposure to location tracking

First, I'll go over what I cut out. After that, I'll go over what I've switched to.

Apple Services, Apps in general

• I pulled all my data out of iCloud with the exception of the most recent email received. I've got that set to forward to my hosted email.
• Removed all iCloud files and Photos
• Turned off iCloud syncing for all apps
• I've always been restrained in my app collection and use. I made a first round of cuts in the early summer then again in mid summer. First to go were the most aggressive data harvesters and violators of privacy. I should have never installed the Walmart, PayPal and Amazon apps. Lol. They were the first to go.
• Most apps collect too much and at this point I've deinstalled most of them opting for websites where needed.
• Last to go: Apple Messages, the Apple Card and Apple Cash. While I trusted that these were secure, my general trust in Apple in the long term is largely degraded.
• Use of new apps/services: I have one app, MySudo which is a subscription that I'll continue to use as there is no alternative. I have no other subscription.

Summary: My iPhone, Mac and iPad mini are now fully logged out of iCloud. iPad Pro and HomePods remain logged into iCloud, primarily for access to control of Home app devices. Unfortunately the iPad Pro needs to be logged in because to maintain Numbers spreadsheets that are shared with a client. While I still have a free iCloud account no data remains there with the exception of the above mentioned Numbers files.

Google

• I still have a Google account but stay logged out of it. I treat it the same as the iCloud account. It contains no personal data and is no longer used other than to collect the odd incoming email from a service, account or old contact.
• Gmail: I've had a Gmail account since the first year it was available. I mostly stopped using it 5 years ago. I still have that account but moved all of that email to a local back-up in Thunderbird and Apple Mail on two computers. The account is now emptied of all email and just exists as a back-stop to catch any incoming email from old aquaintances that only have that account. I monitor gmail via Thunderbird on one of my computers.
• Docs: Nothing.
• YouTube: In years past I'd previously published a few videos. Those are removed. I have cut my YouTube use generally. When I do access it I usually do so via DuckDuckGo search in a trusted browser. When I do resort to using the website it is, again, with a trusted browser with no retention.
• Chrome: I was never a user of Chrome which is widely considered to be the most privacy violating browser.
• Search: I stopped using Google for search years ago. I mostly use DuckDuckGo and Startpage. Lately been trying out SearXNG.
• In years past I used Google fonts on my websites. I've stopped this practice. I'll leave it on current sites but will remove with any site redesign and no new site design will make use of the service.

Other services:

Amazon: I downloaded my purchase history and have deleted the account. There's not much else to say. I only used Amazon for the occasional month of video and for purchasing. I'll still use the site on occasion for searching products and reviews but that's it.

Microsoft: I had an account that was rarely used other than a few files on OneDrive. Deleted.

DropBox: Moved the gig of files I had stored there to a local back-up and deleted the account.

iPhone, data collection, location tracking

Most of the folks in my family seem to use the iPhone as a main computer. it's with them constantly and always in use. That was never the case for me. I don't like using the small screen for computing nor do make or recieve many phone calls. For me the iPhone is a camera and a mobile music/podcast player and, paired with an Apple Watch, a dashboard for viewing health/activity data. A fairly limited role.

As I began learning and thinking more in recent months about the constant collection of data from phones, I began to adopt a very different attitude about the phone. While I'd previously treated it fairly casually as the convenient computing device that was sometimes useful I now treat it as the invasive location tracking and surveillance device it actually is. A complete flip in attitude. Once that shift in my thinking occurred I began to audit the data collected by apps and began removing them. I turned off Location Tracking (for everything). I started leaving it in Airplane mode. I changed my phone plan to a cheap voice/text only plan for use when I needed to make a call or expected a call.

Current apps and usage on the phone

• All messaging with friends, family and a few clients is done via Signal. Almost no exceptions. It is cross platform, fully encrypted, open source and audited. It's free to use (though I donate regularly) and set-up only takes minutes. It's every bit as private/secure is Apple's messages but has the added benefit of being cross platform. I use it for all text and most voice and video calls with friends, family and clients. the only exception I've made are a few clients that I don't interact with frequently. Like messages, I can use Signal on my iPad, laptop and desktop which is good because I'm always in front of one of these devices.
• MySudo is my Signal back-up and my new phone service. For $5/month I have 3 phone lines/numbers (I'm only using one at the moment), 200 minutes of talk time, 300 messages, 3 email accounts with 5GB of storage. Sudo to Sudo calls/texts are fully encrypted. While I can't install it on my two Linux computers I do have it on the iPad which means I can use my iPad to make standard VOIP calls to any local business. And because the calls go out over the internet there is an additional layer of privacy not present with standard cell phone calls and all the metadata that phone companies collect with those calls.
• I've added a third party eSIM with 2GB of mobile data for the rare occasion that I need to use MySudo or Signal for a call while away from home. Of course a third party eSIM also connects to a cell tower but is far less intrusive, less tracked than a carrier phone line.
• My previous default phone carrier eSIM is now turned off. I'm keeping it for now simply to hold onto that phone number and in case I need it for a 911 call. I turn it on twice a month to check for voice mail or texts. I expect that need to diminish over time as I move future calls/contacts to the MySudo number or Signal.

Privacy measures on non-phone devices

• I switched email to RunBox based in Norway for $3/month. I also considered Tuta and Proton both of which offer fully encrypted email. I have free accounts with each of those services for use as needed. At the time that I made this switch my priority was getting my email out of the US. Looking back, I should have gone with Proton and may switch to them in the future.
• Web browsing on one of the GNU/Linux computers is via LibreWolf, a hardened security focused Firefox fork that runs on Linux and is also available on macOS and Windows for anyone interested.
• I'd initially stopped using the iPad Pro completely but in recent months I've been using it again along with the two GNU/Linux computers. LibreWolf is not available for the iPad and FireFox is crap on the iPad. In previous years I'd been happy with Safari which is far better than Chrome in terms of privacy but once I began taking a closer look I quickly discovered that Brave is even better that Safari. Like Safari Brave blocks trackers but, even better, it blocks ads by default, no extensions needed. Better still, it also offers per-site cookie/site data deletion upon closing tabs and that's something I really wanted once I realized it was possible. So, for example, when I visit something like AP News in Safari I've got those cookies tagging along after I've closed that site. When I close that tab in Brave the data is gone automatically.
• I now use Proton's VPN service full time on all devices. This is partly why I began using the iPad Pro again. Proton VPN on the two Linux computers often breaks Signal and several websites. I've tweaked the settings and firewall to improve this but I still experience a few problems. On the iPad Pro Signal and every site works with no problem.
• I've treated the iPad the same as the iPhone in terms of privacy settings, ads, analytics, location tracking, etc. It's locked down. That said, I actually do use it as a computer so I've still got a few essential apps that get used often.

Purchases

As mentioned above, I've stopped using ApplePay. I've stopped almost all purchasing with PayPal. I've shifted as much as possible to local purchasing and are cash only. For online purchases I'll use a masked card first. If that's not an option I'll opt to use my bank debit/credit card.

Data removal from people search sites

This last step is one that never ends and needs periodic review and updating and that is removal from people search sites. There are hundreds of them but if you hit the big ones first that often eliminates the data from the smaller ones as well. Do these first: Spokeo, Radaris, Whitepages, Intelius, BeenVerified, Acxiom, Infotracer, Lexis Nexis, TruePeopleSearch.

I started with Privacy Guide's Manual Opt Out list. And this one, the Big Ass Data Broker Opt Out List. I spent 4-5 hours one Sunday and got the big ones taken care of. I'm also working my way through Intel Techniques data removal workbook. I'm not stressing about this. I made a lot of progress in the 4 hours of my first effort. Some of the more notable sites no longer show my data. I'll gradually work my way through the others. It's not a race, it's a rainy day activity.

Summary

As the year closes I've made a lot of progress in recovering my online privacy. I'm under no illusion that I have achieved complete anonymity online nor do I need that. But there's a lot of space between that and fully cooperating with the full-time corporate/government surveillance and invasive data collection that I was allowing previously. I see no reason to disrespect myself in that way nor a reason to give them an inch.

I'm far from being a data ghost but I've removed some of the data that was available and I've greatly reduced my exposure going forward. For me this will be an ongoing challenge and one I happily accept. If surveillance capitalists want my current, up-to-date data, they'll have to work for it. And, to be honest, I'm confident they won't be getting much.

2025-10-26

I wrote a couple weeks ago about my progress in making my iPhone more private. While those measures were a step in the right direction I was still going to rely on my phone carrier for phone calls when away from home. As someone who doesn't make or recieve a lot of calls, that seemed fine. Basically, I'd leave the phone in airplane mode (cell radio turned off) and only turn it on when I needed to make a call to a standard phone line while away from home. When at home I would rely on the MySudo VOIP line making calls over Wi-Fi. I could have probably stopped there.

But it occurred to me that there might be an additional option. I should have known that data only eSIMS were a thing. Well, I did know because I'd bought one some time ago for my iPad. For some reason it just didn't occur to me that I could do the same for the iPhone. Why not? And yes, of course it's a thing. Lol. Sometimes it takes me awhile to think things through. Better late than never?

So with that thought I went looking and found a few inexpensive eSIM data only options. But as my goal was increased privacy I didn't just use my credit card to buy that eSIM I used MySudo (yes, the same app that I'm using for VOIP) to set-up a virtual, privacy card to make the purchase. That took a couple minutes. Then I purchased 1GB of data from KeepGo.com. They throw in a free GB so I've got 2GB purchased for $3. That data does not expire. Once it's used up I'll buy another. A 3-minute call with MySudo uses about 1mb of data. And I'll only use that when away from home and, as already mentioned, I don't make or recieve many calls so I'm likely good on data for a long while. I also turned off cellular data access for every app except MySudo and Signal.

I activated the new eSIM on the iPhone with a tap. Confirmed it was working and had a good signal. Then I toggled the standard phone company eSIM off. I'll keep that line and phone number for now but I may dump it in the not to distant future.

Yes, this data-only eSIM still has to connect with a cell tower to work. But there is a significant difference in level of privacy. My phone carrier is dead to me and I to them. With the exception of calls made to me their already sparse call log for me will go completely dark. Nothing. Their tracking of my phone location: Nothing. My daily activity is now invisible to them. Instead of that, every so often, my phone will access another provider for a bit of data. That provider will have little to no idea how that data was used. They certainly won't know that I'm making a call or who I'm calling or texting. And in terms of location tracking, well, there will be a ping from a device using some data.

All that said, the this is a phone I bought several years ago through a carrier so there is a link between myself and the hardware embedded IMEI and EID numbers. If I wanted true anonymity I'd need to pay cash for a phone. But I'm not a spy or a high value target. I'm just a guy that want's privacy and this is enough for me. I've added multiple layers of obscurity that were not there previously.

To summarize the cost of this: $3 for data that should last months. $5 per month for 200 minutes of data, 300 texts. I'll never need all those texts. Most months I probably won't use all of the minutes.

But what if I were someone who actually relied on the phone for daily calls? Could this work? Sure. My Sudo offers a $15/month plan with unlimited minutes and texts as well as 9 phone numbers. 1GB of data is good for about 3,000 minutes of phone calls, 100 minutes a day. But remember, that just needs to cover calls made when away from home internet access. When at home MySudo calls would just go out over home WiFi. So, likely, $20 would cover any user's needs.

A few additional notes regarding MySudo features:

• Sudo to Sudo calls and messages are fully encrypted. Any call or text to a standard phone line is not. That said, a call to any standard line is still better for a MySudo user in terms of privacy because the MySudo phone number is not traceable to a person's identity.
• MySudo also includes email accounts which, when sending to other MySudo users is encrypted.

Read more about MySudo, privacy and security
Any negatives?

• It's not possible to purchase a subscription outside of an Apple or Google App Store.
• The MySudo App on a larger iPad works but it's not great. Specifically it still uses an older windowing mode so windows cannot be resized and it feels weird on a larger iPad. Also, font sizes cannot be customized and the default is too small.
• The desktop version of the app is not available for GNU/Linux.

A note of caution

The public/private key pair that is created the first time you launch the app on your phone is stored only on the phone. There is no username/password option. If you loose your phone or if it is destroyed the company has no way to get you back into your account. You must have a back-up which can be on a local device, cloud or a companion device that you have used the export via QR code option with. Details here

911 calls

From what I've read a cell phone without an active carrier SIM can still put in a 911 emergency call. It's hard wired in and works without an active data plan. The main difference is that an exactly location is not automatically delivered to the 911 operator. Until I know more this is one reason I'm hanging on to my active carrier $20 voice only subscription.

2025-10-12

Note: This is part 3 in a series that I started in early February 2025 but never finished. Part 1: Becoming an activist Part 2: The Memphis Social Ecology Project

deCleyre was meant to be a full-time activist co-op. It was really just a carry-over of our first shared housing experiment, Douglass House. The difference is that we were purchasing this house and would own it as a co-op whereas Douglass House was rented and much smaller. The larger house would allow for more people, more activity. Also, it had a much larger yard and as we owned it we could do as we pleased with that yard.

Our vision was to be a place where daily life expenses were shared and thus freed up time for folks to live life, which, for a group of young activists, meant living a life of activism. I like to describe it as a beehive because I think it’s the perfect description minus the queen bee. We acted as bees in our community, moving between people, homes, projects, businesses and every space between. We pollinated, collected and dispersed. Busy bees.

We ran deCleyre as we ran many of our projects which is to say, as a fully democratic cooperative or collective. We co-owned it and we self managed it as as workers might manage a co-op business. We regular house meetings, sometimes weekly, sometimes just twice a month. We regularly shared meals and discussion of house affairs was a regular occurance at meals or just sitting on the porch together. Many of the projects had started at the previous house and carried over but here’s a list to sort of provide an overview of the kinds of projects we were creating. Many if not most of these would still be valuable today as a part of building in many communities which is why I’m sharing them! Some were fairly specific to our time, needs and location but even so served a purpose that is still often a need today.

• Food-not-Bombs: Collecting food from businesses, sometimes even out of dumpsters (because it was still perfect food that should not have been thrown away). We would cook in our kitchen then deliver once a week at the same location. We ate the meals with the houseless folks we shared it with.
• A mid-south RiotGrrl gathering we helped organize and host. A gathering for by and for young feminist punk rockers from the mid-south. Lots of zine exchanging, discussion of health issues and health activism, self-defense, clinic escorting, and networking for future traveling/organizing.
• Several community gardens. Our own large front yard was turned into a garden and this was followed by others. These were an always ongoing project that would pop-up, develop and sometimes end, sometimes not.
• A regional micro-radio conference to carry on the work of Free Radio Memphis and the larger micro-radio movement. There were others that followed. We traveled to Philly to participate in their conference.
• The launch of a bike co-op
• The launch of a media co-op
• Ongoing support of the food co-op
• Hosting of monthly community potlucks. This was one of the best things we did in terms of community building. There’s nothing quite like folks getting together to fill a house with good food and conversation. Often times accompanied by music, mini-dance parties, small campfires well into the morning hours.
• Protests of all kinds. This was never ending ranging from local protests of the Iraq war and economic sactions against Iraq to anti-racist protests to environmental related protests to support of political prisoners like Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu Jamal and others.
• Support of local labor picket lines.
• Constant flyering, distribution of literature, creation of literature and street art.
• Zine and book library, tabling at local events and punk shows.
• Safe space hostel for traveling activists/train-hopping punk kids. We hosted two groups from Antioch college that were a part of an environmental racism summer program… we hosted them two summers as they worked in Memphis with the local environmental orgs working in the black community where the most toxic of shit was happening. Elon Musk has located his nastyass AI shit in those same neighborhoods in Memphis today so the same fight is ongoing. During the 5-6 years I was there we hosted Pastors for Peace once or twice. They would drive a couple of busses across the country gathering supplies and speaking about Cuba and other issues. Then at the end of their tour would take the supplies to Cuba, breaking the law by breaking the economic blockade.

Some of these travelers often stayed long enough to be residents of the house and some did actually go through the process of joining and staying. I once tried to tally the number of folks that lived there off and on during the years I lived there and those that travelled through… it was something like 45 residents and easily 300+ that stayed while they traveled through. There were 8-14 people living in the house at any given time… it was a big house but we were crammed in tight sometimes.

And a last note, we traveled fairly often to attend/support protests, gatherings, conferences in other cities, towns: NYC, Philly, New Orleans, DC, Chicago, Chattanooga, Portland.

The shared housing was key because it meant we shared expenses. We all worked to pay the bills but mostly part time jobs. Cycling and a couple of used cars for transport. Some were students too. Though it can sometimes be difficult I would always recommend such shared housing for folks. It was a beautiful experience even with the difficulties. And it was of great benefit to creating the life space for activism.

But nothing we did was rocket science. The goal was community activism, as much as possible, in as many forms as possible. A lot of experimentation, a lot of failure. But constant effort. And a lot of fun and celebration mixed into it all… that’s what the potlucks and punk rock shows were for… oh, and just the random crazy fun stuff that hosting travelers always brought to our door. That was 25 years ago but I remeber it fondly as a time when I was able to co-create and share what felt like a fully human experience in which the participants acted together in a desire to create and build better, more just and democratic world. We only ever got a glimpse of that world but through desire and effort we did get to glimpse it. And it was beautiful.

2025-10-10

One of my ongoing experiments at increasing privacy has been a shift in my phone use. A bit of context: the phone has always been my least favorite computing device. The screen is too small, I don’t like typing on it and I rarely get real calls but I do get a lot of spam calls. So, for me, it’s always mostly been a camera and portable music player. Also, I work from home with good internet and rarely get in a car. Last, my work does not require me to be always available for text or call. With that context, this is my new and expected long-term phone specific privacy plan.

I’ve come to consider the mobile phone to be a last resort device and as a device for self-surveillance. The phone is the primary leaker of personal data, specifically in regards to location tracking so mine is powered off or in Airplane mode. And all location services are turned off in settings so, in theory, the GPS radio should be off. If I’m traveling I’ll take it but leave it off unless I need to make a call for an emergency. I’m not sure I’ve ever needed to make such a call but I have it there if I need it. Or, if at home, should I need to call 911. That’s it.

It can still be used as a camera and I can still copy music from my local network or an audio podcast should I want it for a walk or while out cutting grass or doing chores.

Extreme? I don’t think so. Once I could see it for what it was designed to be, no, not at all. Prudent is how I would describe it.

Bonus. I was previously on T-Mobile’s cheapest cell plan that included unlimited data. I never used the data. The plan was around $50. Turns out, they have a voice and text only plan for $20. Perfect. As of yesterday I no longer have mobile internet on my phone and I won’t miss it.

Most of my texting and audio calls to people I know now happens via Signal. It’s free and easy to set-up on any phone and can then be installed on a tablet or computer. There’s no difficulty and it’s secure. If a friend or family member wants or needs to talk to me they can install it. I sort of think of it as a “line in the sand” but one I intend to stick to because moving to a non-corporate, secure messaging service benefits everyone.

Exceptions

So, what do I do for making phone calls or texting that require an actual phone number? The answer there is pretty simple and inexpensive: MySudo. An app and service that seems to be primarily intended for use on an iPhone or Android device. That’s the downside. The app can only be downloaded from one of the Appstores and the service can only be paid for through the Appstore. I’ll make that concession. I’ve installed it on the iPhone and an iPad. I don’t expect to use it much on the iPhone but will use it on the iPad when needed as the iPad is a device I still use often with a VPN over wifi. Calls made over my home internet sound just as good or better than a standard cell call.

The other use for MySudo is for texting aquantances who are not family or close friends. I have a handful of these folks that now have the MySudo number. I’ve told them that I’ll only be checking the old number for texts or voice mails once a week. Essentially, that number is now my junk box or emergency “land line”.

That’s it. Those are the exceptions.

MySudo costs $1.99/month for 1 line which includes 30 minutes of talk time, and 100 texts per month, 3 sudo email addresses with 2GB of total storage data. $4.99/month includes 3 phone numbers, 300 texts per month and 200 minutes, 3 sudo email addresses and 3GB of data. Finally, there’s a plan for $14.99/month that indludes 9 Sudo phone numbers, Unlimited texts and unlimited minutes. That plan also includes a whopping 9 Sudo email addresses and 15 GB storage.

In my first trial/test month I went with the cheapest plan. I may bump up to the $4.99 plan which may be more than I need. But I can imagine that a small business/office setting might benefit from a service like this, especially the $14.99/month plan with 9 numbers/email addresses and unlimited text/minutes.

In case it’s not obvious, I’ll point out that MySudo has other benefits in terms of privacy.

• When I make a call from my cell phone my phone is not encrypted and is pinging/using a cell tower, my carrier has full metadata on that call, specifically where I called from, who I called and the time. All of this is kept in a database. A call with MySudo over wifi/internet is likely to a standard line so not really private as it is exposed on one end. But, at least from my end, that call metadata is obfuscated. The company providing service to the other number has my number but not my name or a carrier provider. If the call is between MySudo lines it is end-to-end encrypted and private.
• Like Signal, texting is encrypted when messaging other MySudo users though that encryption is pointless when sending standard texts to a standard phone line. Read more about MySudo encryption.

I’ve only touched on the basics of how MySudo can be used. They’ve got a whitepaper that details the many different ways their platform can be useful. Particularly worth noting is the use of Personas which I have not touched on in this post because I have not yet begun to consider how I might use such a feature. The whitepaper describes the details of how such a feature adds to user privacy.

A final note of comparison and a summary

Previously I was using and paying for two internet lines. A mobile line which leaked my location via cell phone towers every moment of the day. If I walked a mile to the mailboxes with an active connection to a cell tower that was mapped. If I drove to town the time and locations I visited were mapped. My mobile surveillance device would also log, for example, if I used an elevator in an office building, noting the elevation change as well as the speed of change. If I use a stair well this would be notably different and also logged. Along with these things if I was wearing a fitness band or watch all of this data was complimented with my vitals like heart rate. At any point during the day, if I used the phone to browse the web or use an app those actions were also recorded and correlated with my location. This is just a glimpse of the data that was captured. All of the above and much more data was collected and tied to my device and sold to various data brokers.

That device is now turned off unless I need to make an emergency call. Two or three services also require sms for 2FA in which case I have to activate the cellure connection long enough to recieve the sms text. The internet data on this line is now turned off.

My only internet connection is my home internet connection which also operates via a cell tower and has an associated IP address and location. It is a given that I’ll have the home internet but it reports only one geo-location which is an obvious one, my home so there’s no granularity. I use a trusted VPN provider with this connection so my provider knows nothing about what I’m doing. In this scenario Signal and MySudo provide me with the same voice, video and messaging as the cell phone but now with much greater privacy. Most of my communication is now encrypted. Only a few standard sms texts and phone calls to standard lines are exposed and only on the other end of the communication.

This new arrangement costs less and is less restrictive because calls can be made from more devices, not just a phone. In other words, now that it is set-up, it is actually far easier to use, costs less and is far more private.

2025-09-24

As someone who had come to prefer using an iPad for all of my computing the switch to GNU/Linux was an unexpected turn but one that has been far better than expected. Delightful even. But, seven months in, a laptop is still a laptop with a permanently attached keyboard and no multi-touch screen. There's no denying it, I have missed the experience of using a detachable touch screen computer. And yet, a switch of sorts seems to have been flipped in my noggin and the notion of using Apple's closed, locked down OS disturbs me. It's kind of wild that it never bothered me before but now? Yeah, it does.

I wrote in late August of my process to de-Apple my Apple devices. Mostly, that consisted of logging out of iCloud as well as turning off any sort of Apple analytics or tracking. And yes, of course, it's still possible to use a Mac or iPad with no iCloud account. Some functionality is lost but I do not want MY devices talking to Apple or any other US-based tech giants that have bent the knee: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. I do not trust them and want no communications with them. It's that simple.

That post also covered switching to non-Apple, free/libre software. On the Mac there are quite a few free/libre applications. The ones I'm using: LibreWolf, Thunderbird, Signal, LibreOffice, Scribus, Inkscape, digiKam, Kate and GIMP. Basically, everything I'm using on GNU/Linux.

There's not as much for the iPad but there are a few: Free/Libre software for iOS/iPadOS on Wikipedia. Of course, I'm using Signal which is fantastic. Then there's Collabora for Open Document files. I've not used Collabora for much yet but will be giving it a try in coming days and weeks. I used it to edit a spreadsheet this morning it worked fairly well. On a larger Word file a client sent it's a bit rough. I'll also be taking a look at Only Office.

Firefox isn't great on the iPad. My initial motivation to use Firefox aside from it being the free/libre option is tab sync and that works fine. But there are issues in terms of design and function:

• Zooming text has no keyboard shortcut and requires 3 taps/clicks to open. I do this often and there's no option to add this to the toolbar.
• Downloads require extra clicking as they are siloed off in a Firefox download area rather than just saved to the Files app.
• No extensions so, more ads.
• Finally, tapping/clicking a link on a web page opens the link in a new tab with no option to turn that off.

Supposedly Thunderbird is coming to iPadOS in the not too distant future. I hope that's true. Apple's Mail and Calendar apps are excellent but I'd prefer Thunderbird.

While writing this post I had another look for a free/libre text code editor. I didn't expect to find one but I did. I'd missed it in previous searches: Code App. It's not GPL licensed but MIT and though I have determined not to use Apple services I've decided to make an exception for this and purchase for $7 to support the project. This appears to be a full IDE type app, from the site:

Code App is a MIT-licensed desktop-class code editor for iPadOS with built-in Node.js, Python, C, C++, PHP and Java runtime.

It's far more than I need (and nearly a 1GB download). Wowza. But it does proper html page previews like Textastic and has built in ftp support. Combined with Mobius Sync (another app I may purchase) I could do website management from the iPad. Mobius Sync is not free/libre but uses the Syncthing core which is. They address the issue on their site. They contribute to and sponsor the Syncthing project so that's something. Would be even better if it was a free/libre software though. In any case, this opens up the iPad as a more ethical option for website work using a free/libre application.

Finally, there's NetNewsWire for RSS. An app that's been around for a long time and works great with FreshRSS feeds.

In the end the iPad is still Apple hardware locked down to Apple's proprietary iPadOS. I won't buy another but as already I own it I plan to make use of it with a preference for free/libre software where possible. Short of Apple being forced to open it up to alt stores in the US we'll be stuck with the App store for now. My hope is that eventually more tablets running GNU/Linux will become available and that when these iPads finally stop working I'll have more choices. For now, my tablet computing will have to remain on the iPad.

2025-08-29

Over the past year I’ve often come across folks talking about de-Googling which largely comes down to disconnecting from Google services by finding alternatives. When I began my transition away from Apple a few months back I wasn’t sure what I would do with my various Apple devices. I knew I wanted to switch to GNU/Linux on my 2012 Mac, but I would still have several devices that would be stuck with an Apple OS.

In those first weeks the first goal was obvious: cut my reliance on iCloud as much as possible, move my data to other services or to local storage. Within a few weeks I was able to downgrade my paid iCloud account to a free account. In the weeks that followed I was able to further downgrade my use of iCloud to the point that it was mostly just an email account not to be used for much.

That left my Apple devices in a sort of limbo. I no longer relied on them and they were partly freed of Apple services but still too connected, still bound to Apple in ways I was no longer comfortable with. So, they’ve mostly just been powered down to conserve batteries. I use the M1 iPad Pro to watch streaming shows or other video. The iPhone has never been a device I used beyond the camera and a source of audio during walks.

The past couple of weeks I have made significant progress freeing them from Apple, enough that I thought it would be worth sharing.

What’s the actual goal with this exercise? I want ensure my devices are private, secure and useful with zero reliance on Apple's default apps and services. Yes, still Apple hardware running an Apple OS. That cannot be helped as in previous years I made the mistake of purchasing a variety of movies and several favorite tv series from Apple's iTunes store. Of course that's a choice I regret now as I believe I'll need to keep at least one device running macOS to ensure access to those locally stored files.

But I've done everything possible to disconnect from Apple's services, limit the flow of my data to Apple servers and limit their attempts to otherwise control my use of the hardware I paid for. More on this below.

iPhone

The iPhone is my least used device and it’s unused and offline about 23 hours of everyday. I rarely make or recieve calls so usually I turn on cellular/wifi to check voicemail and listen to audio on a walk or when I’m outside doing chores. Beyond that it’s mostly just a camera. I’ve logged out of iCloud on the iPhone and have turned off all location services. I use Firefox as the default browser and prefer to use that instead of an app when possible. I have very few apps on the iPhone and it this point it feels stripped down to the most private, secure level possible. Any texting that might happen on the phone is via Signal.

M1 Mac Mini

It’s powered off and I treat it as a back-up computer should I need it.

It is logged out of iCloud and I’ve traded all of Apple’s proprietary apps for free software. I think this is a good step for anyone interested in software freedom but who may not be ready to jump into GNU/Linux. I’ve got most of the essential apps I’m using on GNU/Linux installed on the M1 Mac: Thunderbird, Firefox, Signal, LibreOffice, Scribus, Inkscape, digiKam, Kate and GIMP. Oh, and a couple other utilities like LocalSend (for quick sharing of local files) and LuLu, a free, open source firewall app that stops outbound traffic. Like the iPhone I’ve turned off Location Services. I think I’ve got it about as de-Appled as a Mac can be.

Unfortunately it’s not possible to delete the stock apps installed by Apple but none of them have a place in the Dock. Should I need to use the Mac I can do so without much trouble or ethical compromise thanks to the availability of the above free software. Yes, it’s still macOS, but the software I’ve added is secure and respects my privacy.

Here I’ll mention Naomi Brockwell who I found while doing research for an upcoming presentation on privacy and security. Her YouTube channel is a fantastic resource on those topics and amongst the videos I found several that were specific to Apple’s devices and one in particular was helpful in my thinking about disentangling the Mac from Apple: How to make your Mac Private.

iPad Pro

The last Apple computer relevant to this post is the iPad Pro which is still logged into iCloud. I’ll leave that for now as I have various HomeKit devices that I still use and as far as I know iCloud is required for Homekit. I can live with it. This will be the one device that serves the specific use of checking what little email I still get in iCloud and for Home device control. Like the iPhone, I’ve removed unnecessary apps, turned off location services. So, even with iCloud it is fairly locked down.

2025-08-19

Back in late May and early June I began to give GNU Emacs a try. I’d opened it once or twice before only to quit it after a few minutes. Why bother when there are so many other text editors to choose from? The first thing I noticed about GNU Emacs was that it used different keybindings from those that have become fairly standard across most text editors. So, right off, that was a barrier. But that was just the start. I quickly discovered that almost everything about the application was different from every other text editor I’d ever used. What’s a buffer? Windows in GNU Emacs behave very differently from a standard application? What’s a Frame? Oh, a Frame is what I think of as an application window in most apps. The list goes on but those are a few of the earliest observations and difficulties.

I’d concluded that Emacs was a relic of the past using keybindings, terminology, application behavior that is contrary to most other apps.

People said yes, yes, but have you tried org mode? You can use Emacs as a mail client or read news groups! It has a built in web browser! It will do everything. It is adaptable and extendable. It is it’s own operating system! It’s a nearly endless list because users can add new functionality. I remain intrigued by the notion of doing my email from within Emacs though the set-up seemed to be far beyond my capabilities. So, yes, very powerful, I understood that and could understand the appeal. It reminded me of Obsidian in that it is an extendable app with a large, dedicated community of users that always seem to be pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with a single app. But where Obsidian just a youngster (initial release in 2020) GNU Emacs is a software elder initially released in 1985. It’s odd keybindings, terminology and design date back to a time long before today’s keybinding standards existed.

There was something intriguing about the fact that this elder app still has so many passionate users and is still actively developed. And by this time I’d begun learning more about GNU as an operating system and with that new knowledge a kind of appreciation and respect was growing. According to Wikipedia “GNU Emacs has been a central component of the GNU project and a flagship project of the free software movement.” It felt wrong not to try. So I kept circling and on the fourth try it stuck. To be honest the 4th try was really the first actual effort. Unlike the first three looks, I knew before opening the app to expect a different experience. I knew I would have to make an immediate effort to learn beyond the normal learning of a new app.

As I type this in mid August I can say that using GNU Emacs is now daily practice and has been for a couple months.

My use case

Since February 2024 I’be been doing anything text related in a single text file, the OBTF (One Big Tex File). That file stays open all the time and is a daily log of activities as well as a place for notes, blog post drafts and pretty much everything else. It’s been great having everything in that one file. As plain text files go, it’s a fairly large file at 1.4mb and 20,000+ lines. Emacs has no problem with a file of that size. I’ve never encountered lag in typing or saving files. Some other text editors also do very well with large files but some struggle.

Most of my writing is intended to be a blog post and once I’ve got a draft ready to publish I change its tag from Draft to Published then copy/paste it into a separate markdown file that exists simply as a place to process markdown into html which is easy thanks to the installed Markdown plugin. From there I copy the html, and, still in Emacs browse to my local folder for blog posts where I go through several steps, all in Emacs to publish a post. The final step is uploading the file in Filezilla.

Which brings me to website related work. I manage all the html/css updates for my sites as well as client sites in Emacs which does a great job in terms of displaying code in css, html, markdown (via the markdown plugin). I’ve gotten the hang of browsing the file directory within Emacs.

What I’m not doing with Emacs

I’m not using it for all the things it is capable of though I’m still interested in some of those. I’ve tried the web browser and it’s an interesting experience and reminder of the early days of the web with just a basic presentation of text and images with no styling. But not something I see myself using regularly. Are there use cases for it? I’m not sure.

I can imagine I’d like to use it for email but the set-up looks to be challenging to a level I’m not interested in taking on at the moment. I’m actually really happy with Thunderbird/Icedove so it would be an exercise in curiosity that, for now, I’ll forego.

What I may use it for in the near future

Related to Email is Calendar and To-do related tracking. I’ve got all that set-up in Thunderbird/Icedove and it generally seems to work pretty well. The benefit of keeping it there is notifications and repeating to-dos. And, of course, those often go hand-in-hand with email.

That said, unlike email, using the calendar function in Emacs is easy peasy! I’d forgotten to try it out and just this morning as I’ve been working on this post it occurred to me that I needed to at least give it a look. Given how much time I spend in my OBTF in Emacs having my calendar/todos fits just as well here as it does in Thunderbird. There’s really no setup involved. I just opened the Tools menu and selected Calendar which brings up a 3 month overview in the Emacs Buffer. New diary entries can be made via a right click on any day in the calendar which will bring up a contextual menu. If the Diary is already open in a window or buffer the new item will be inserted at the cursor. Or, the keyboard can be used to navigate the calendar directly and new entries added via keyboard.

I’ll stop there in describing the Calendar simply because that could easily be it’s own post. The point is that the GNU Emacs Calendar seems really useful, quick to navigate and likely much faster to create new entries. I’ll be using and exploring it in coming days to determine whether I might try it as a Thunderbird/Icedove replacement.

The frame on the right is split into two windows with an html document on the top and a Directory Browser on the bottom. Notice all of the columns of information in that browser, most of which I never need to see. Seems like a waste of space.

Windows vs Frames

Another couple of features I wanted to touch on is Windows and Frames. Unlike most apps I’ve worked with in the past, GNU Emacs refers to separate windows as Frames. A Frame can be split into multiple Windows. In the first screenshot of this post I’ve got two Frames side by side. The Frame featuring the Calendar is split vertically into two windows. When I first started using Emacs I thought I would use one full-screen sized Frame split into various Windows as they can be split vertically and horizontally. In practice I was never quite able to sort out how to organize and control Windows in a way that made sense. What has worked better for me is to keep two Frames side by side and split those horizontally as needed, usually to open a directory above or below a document being edited.

A special kind of Frame is the Speedbar (above) that I’ve recently discovered and will likely use more. It provides a detached sidebar that can be used to quickly navigate buffers and files of the Frame it is associated with. It seems like a more efficient use of the screen than the Directory Browser as it can be arranged as a tall, narrow pane displaying only the name of folders/files.

A few concluding thoughts

Though I find myself fairly comfortable in Emacs I know that there are quite a few features I’m not yet using. Some of them I may never use and I’m okay with that simply because it’s such an excellent text editor as I am using it now. I’m certain the current text editing experience will improve because there are still keybindings I’m not using and I expect to gradually learn more of those.

Finally, though I’ve customized a few things, those customizations are minimal compared to what’s possible. I don’t doubt that going forward I’ll continue to fine tune as I learn more and that as I do so I’ll become ever more comfortable using the app.

2025-08-13

One of the problems of America is it’s culture of hyper-consumerism. We’ve come to find ourselves in a culture of never happy because we always want the next thing that we think will fill the void but it never does. It’s a permanent state of wanting more which leads to a permanent state of servitude to our stuff.

The things you own end up owning you. - Tyler Durden, Fight Club

In building lives based on convenience and consumption we built our lives on insecurity and dependence. Or to put it another way, we built our lives on self-subjugation. We cannot live in freedom if we live in constant insecurity and dependance. We cannot live in freedom if we are ever fearful of loss. Not only can we not live in freedom, we cannot defend against facism because that requires risk.

Real, meaningful democracy requires a process of active, daily citizenship. And I’m not talking about voting every 2 or 4 years. Far from it. That’s the bare minimum. No, I mean actual, daily interest and engagement in our neighborhoods, our community, our town, our city. I mean active involvement in the the collective exercise of self management and mutual care. Decades ago, we went in another direction but exploring all that requires far more than the scope of this post.

My specific point is that America allowed itself to be diverted from democracy, choosing instead “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the form of nice houses full of nice stuff and nice cars all paid for by wages always decreasing in value or threatening to decrease. If our thinking is always on the next purchase, a never-ending promise of happiness that never manifests in that shiny new thing, how can we possibly be caring about our community? How can we be engaged in our collective well being?

We can’t. What America of the Past 75 years seems to show is that it’s citizens were not actually interested in even minimal responsibilities. And guess who stepped in to fill the space in our absence. Corporate America, that’s who. Our neglect created a space for capitalism to creep ever inward. The white aristocracy of men have always had control but any bits of progress since the founding needed to be expanded and defended. But we failed to do that because we were too busy with our shiny distractions.

So we find ourselves, after decades of inattention in a nation of people that lie to themselves daily, telling themselves that there’s nothing they can do. We put our heads down and go to work. And as we are led into fascism some of us offer meager protest and I don’t mean to undervalue the effort gone into the protesting of 2025 or the resistance being offered to ICE. All important. But fascists are not interested in elections or the previous norms. Capitalists are happy as long as the profits increase and consumption continues. They will continue removing rights. They will continue to intimidate and remove any sense of personal and community stability, safety and security. Fascism wins if we refuse to fight and fully resist. They depend on our willingness to self-subjugate, to put our heads down, work, obey, and hope for the best so that we might hang on to what we have. They depend on our desire for convenience and comfort.

We have already passed into this new America. They will continue to push and pull to take us further into subjugation. We can go along with that subjugation or we can resist. But if we are to resist it means we have to stop with the pretending that we are powerless. We have to stop pretending that everything will be okay if we just give it time. We have to stop pretending that the next purchase of the shiny thing will make it better. Stop pretending the someone will save us.

A list because we all like lists, right?

• Stop buying unneccesary stuff. You don’t need the new shiny Apple product. Put new purchases on indefinite hold. Okay, buy food, yes. But anything else that is not a neccessity? No. Save your money.
• Along the same lines, evaluate what is neccesary. If something you’re used to having breaks don’t assume it has to be replaced. It likely wasn’t something you actually needed. Do without. You’ll live. That’s the point of this. We bought a lot of shit we never needed.
• Prepare for increasing instability: social, economic, climate, everything. Our future is less stable. Accept that and prepare for it.
• Develop family and community resillience as an adaption to a less stable world.
• As you’re no longer focused on the next purchase, turn your attention to your neighbors. Spend time with your neigbors. Volunteer in your community. Join a project or start one. Share your knowledge, skills, expertise or interests in a project.
• Develop a plan for working less, making less, helping more.
• Strategize with your family and neighbors for making ends meet together. Share time, meals, tools, feelings, thoughts, ideas. Learn to work as a team, as a collective.
• If and where possible transition to simpler technology that you can control and repair. If your community doesn’t have some sort of shared maker space consider starting one. It can be in one building or several. Turn your garage into a maker space. Imagine a neighborhood where various neighbors shared garage space with one another. Shared tools, resources, expertise.
• Support your local library. Volunteer there. If they offer classes, offer to teach one. Help them build as a center of not just learning but mutual aid.
• Along with the switch to simpler technology, get a better handle on your computing. Authoritarian regimes, dictatorships, etc do not tolerate dissent. Remember that new truth and act on it. Take control of it. Stop relying and trusting in corporate cloud services. Get all of your data out of those clouds and make it local where it can be private, safe and secure. Take a long, hard look at your mobile devices. Tablets and smart phones should get special scrutiny. Make an effort to learn about and understand how your mobile devices are leaking your data and how this might be used against you. Apps and services should be assumed to be insecure. Question whether you need them in the first place and then take the time to verify that they secure before further use. Encourage others to do the same.
• Along the same lines as the above, consider how your security or lack of can affect others. What you do online can cause problems for others. Where and what you post, the services you use, etc may not be private. Your location may not be secure. As you visit people IRL remember that.

That’s just a start. There’s much more than could be added. We can all be doing more to shift our focus in this new reality. Living in under a fascist regime requires it.

2025-08-13

It’s been a slower start than I’d hoped for but we are making a bit of progress. I’m going to take the long view that a slow start is better than no start and if I keep at it, it will grow. Here’s a progress report.

• Three weeks ago I had my first request for an assisted GNU/Linux install on a Dell Latitude laptop. We met-up at the library and the install was done in thirty minutes. There were a couple odd hiccups after the reboot. His was the first upgrade that did not just reboot into the new Mint OS. Instead the computer was looking for the usb drive. We had to reboot into the bios and tell it to use the internal drive. Upon reboot we were greeted with an error: “Invalid partition table”. I did a search and found a temporary fix: hitting the enter key contiuned the boot and there were no issues. He didn’t have time to delve further into the problem but it’s in my notes and to-do to look into it further for him and for future installs.
• Two weeks ago we had seven laptops donated over the course of a few days.
• Last Thursday I did an introduction to GNU/Linux and Free Software presentation at the local library. Unfortunately it was not well attended with only two folks showing up. I don’t mind, the two that showed up were really interested. I’m thinking of it as a practice run and now the presentation is done so I’ll try again in the near future and use the same presentation. In the meantime I’m considering follow-up presentations on a range of topics related to privacy, security and free software.
• This week I got back into town to begin upgrading the donated laptops to GNU/Linux Mint with Xfce. Each took about 30 minutes to upgrade followed by an additional 10-15 minutes to apply updates after rebooting. Easy peasy! I’ve got 4 of 7 done and ready for adoption by new users. These are all 6+ years old with only 4 to 8GB of memory and hard drives rather than SSDs. Even with those constraints they seem to run fairly well, certainly usable for general computing.
• A fun tidbit: A part of this project is being housed at a local non-profit that supports people in recovery and while I was upgrading the laptops one of the staff asked if I could add the network printer to the desktop computer we’ve set-up for their clients to use. I opened up the printer utility and the printer was already there and offered to install extra software when I selected it. I did that and it followed up with an offer to do a test print which I did. Time to set-up and test print was 10 seconds. I'd guess it's not always that simple but it's another data point to illustrate that GNU/Linux often works out of the box.
• Last, I’ve scheduled 2 days at our library for the last week of August to do assisted GNU/Linux upgrades. I’ve got it up on the library website and am hoping that our little local paper will mention it this week. I’ll be there and am hoping some folks will show up!

Next to do

• Finish upgrades on remaining 3 donated laptops.
• I’ll be waiting on the nonprofit staff to arrange for the adoptions then we’ll sort out dates to meet and do a new user orientation and account set-up.
• Schedule dates in September for assisted installs at the library.
• Set a topic and schedule a date in September for another presentation at the library.

2025-08-02

I’ve been helping an activist/journalist friend work her way out of Google services, primarily Gmail and she’s mentioned how many other activists she knows who are also using Gmail and it really seems like a problem that the activist community needs to deal with sooner rather than later. It was never a good idea to rely on Google for email but given what we see going on in the US today it is clear that such continued reliance is not just negligence, it’s dangerous. No one who values their privacy and security should use Gmail but activists and journalists are often dealing with sensitive data that requires extra protection and security. If you’re communicating with other activists, actively planning protests or other direct action, related to political protest or labor organizing, you should not be using Gmail. If you are it’s time to fucking stop. If you’re a journalist conducting interviews or other journalist activity over email, same. And don’t use Google Docs or Google Drive.

Do not assume your data stored at Google, Microsoft or Apple to be fully private or secure. Of course those companies will insist that it is and some is likely more secure than others. But these are all companies that are increasingly cooperative with the Trump administration. Activists storing data need to assume that their data is compromised. And remember, you are also compromising other people’s data. Your choices directly impact the privacy and security of your contacts and anyone you exchange data with especially if that data is in one of these services. Even worse, when you download apps from the various app stores, do you pay attention to those that access your data? Do you take note of what data they access and whether it is actually needed for the app in question? And is it just your data or the data of your contacts also being accessed?

Yet another consideration: Is it even your data? How sure are you that you’ll have access to that data in the future? We assume that these are “our” accounts and thus, it is our data. But you don’t have to spend much time searching to find numerous examples of users who have been locked out of “their” accounts because you were in breech of the “Terms of Use”. Here’s just one of the latest to cross my feed: Mike Kaganski who lost access to “his” account for a week because he sent an email with his hotmail account that Microsoft decided was a violation because it contained too many links. Huh. He sent an email with too many links. That sure seems like the kind of severe behavior that should warrant an account suspension. As Larry Vincient [commented[(https://mikekaganski.wordpress.com/2025/07/25/microsoft-anybody-home/#comment-1792) on the blog post about the incident:

Your data in the cloud is “not” your data. Once it’s in the cloud it becomes the cloud platform’s data regardless of what legal agreements, statements, policies,etc. are in place. They grant you access based on the agreements or payments you may be making however it’s NOT your data anymore. They have the legal horsepower to get out of any situation and can cut you off whenever or delete whenever they choose without recourse. It’s ultimately someone else’s computer and they can choose to do anything with it at any time or block your access. Say this isn’t true all day long but this is a perfect example of this process in action and this happens to a lot of people, you just don’t hear about it.

Kaganski eventually recovered the account but there are others who have not been so lucky.

Beyond these specifics, leftist, anti-fascist activists should be making more of an effort to educate themselves and their fellow activists on the general conduct and ethics of capitalist tech that they insist on continuing to use. Not only is your data being harvested and used, but there is evidence that all of the big three inject non-obvious malware/spyware into various apps in their operating systems. Beyond the big three that provide operating systems and services, there are a host of publishing services that leftist activists continue to use including Substack, X/Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, etc. Not only are all of these services aggressive harvesters of our data and potential security risks, but they intentionally continue to host fascist content.

File storage, emailing, publishing and computing generally are all integral to much of our activism but we’ve given far too little attention to the reprecussions of those choices. It seems to fit with our general culture of lazy tech ethics in which we adopt what is most convevient with little thought to important details. And it’s inexcusable at this point because there are other, better services that are fairly affordable ($15-40 per year). Yes it takes time and effort to make such a switch. But taking time and effort for your computing is your responsibility. The privacy and security of your data and others’ data is important. If you’re still using Gmail or the others get your move started. And talk about it, encourgage others to do the same.

Alternatives that are based outside of the US and which cover email and, to some degree, file sharing:

• Runbox.com
• Mailbox.org
• tuta.com
• mailfence.com

Finally, going beyond your privacy and security, it’s worth pointing out that at this point both Google and Microsoft should be considered military contractors and not just “tech companies”. If you’re an anti-war or anti-genocide activist it’s worth considering the ethics of using the services of companies that are specifically providing services to the military.

2025-07-31

It’s been five months since I set-up my local files “cloud” and I thought I’d write a short update. I’ve made a few changes but, in short, it’s been a great experience with zero issues.

My initial cloud was going to be syncing between the LinuxMini and an M1 MacMini. I expected to continue using the iPad for computing while out on the porch, working off of files on the Mac that would then sync to the LinuxMini. That worked fine but what I didn’t initially plan for was that I would so quickly move all of my work to Linux including document and graphic design on Scribus and Inkscape. I abandoned the idea of using the Affinity apps on the iPad for that work. So, shortly after that post I bought a used Lenovo Thinkpad off of Ebay for working on the porch or any other place outside the cabin. That changed things a bit.

First, it was easy to make the changes I needed. My computers, my cloud. Rather than leave the M1 Mac on full time as a file server to the iPad I decided to keep it powered down most of the time. It still syncs and can be used to backup with rsync but mostly it’s turned off. The LinuxMini is the primary, daily computer and it syncs with SyncThing to the Lenovo laptop anytime I wake the Lenovo from sleep to use it. If I’m going to town to work at the library I simply wake the laptop and give it a couple minutes to sync before I leave. Easy. When I return I wake it up, for a couple minutes and tidy up any tasks I may have left open when I left the library. Then I close the screen and I’m ready to work on the Mini.

The only thing I have to do with this local cloud is give the laptop a couple minutes before leaving and after returning to sync. It’s zero effort on my part aside from lifting and closing the screen. Once a week I plug in my external drive and run Rsync on the Mini to backup. Some would backup everyday but once a week is enough for me. This sync covers my essential files, all kept in the Documents folder, but does not include photos which I manage separately with an external hard drive.

A final note, in case it’s not clear, there are at least these three important benefits to this local-only files approach:

1. Security. I have zero concerns about Google or Apple or any other cloud provider because my data is here, locally.
2. Cost. There is no expense other than my computer and an external drive which I would have anyway.
3. Reduced carbon footprint. My computer would be on anyway. Now I’m not contributing to extra emmisions to host my files.

2025-07-20

As I’m writing this post it’s 85°F with 80% humidity at 8:30pm after a very hot, humid day in Missouri. There was no breeze at all today, just the sun bearing down with its relentless gaze. Do you know what provides the sweetest relief to this kind of stifling heat? A shady swim in the chilly waters of a woodland creek, that’s what.

I mention that to begin this post because it helps to set the story that free, libre software provides as a contrast when set against the never-ending efforts by Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and others to constantly control our computing with ever expanding digital restrictions management and proprietary software. A small but recent example from my own experience two days ago when I booted my Mac after a system update and was notified that Apple had taken upon itself to change one of my settings to not just download updates but to automatically install them as well. I had to reset it to download only. It seems like a small thing but it’s just another of many small acts of contempt by the company that owns and controls the operating system. It’s not the first time that Apple decided to over-rule one of my decisions and it won’t be the last.

Moving to Free/Libre Software, even if just in small ways and in small steps, add up over time to something significant. Such acts are in direct opposition to the accumulation of acts of contempt by companies that, year by year, add new restrictions to their DRM as they reduce our own ability to control the computers that run their software. Getting started with Free/Libre Software can begin with just one app or with installing an entire OS.

Each of us has different use cases, tasks and access to different hardware, you’ll need to think about your own set-up and where you would like to go with it. Also, outside of your current actively used set-up, do you have any older unused computers sitting on a shelf or in a closet? Many older computers are great candidates for an install of GNU/Linux and are another opportunity to learn and explore. My first GNU/Linux install was on this 2012 Mac Mini that had been sitting on a shelf for two years and is now my daily work machine.

If you’ve considered your personal ethics and decided that you need to begin a change in your computing, don’t think you have to jump in head first. This isn’t a “go big or go home” scenario. Taking small steps that add up to gradual but steady progress is equally significant and is better than making no progress. If you’re not sure about what defines free/libre software I’d suggest starting with this overview: Free Software Is Even More Important Now.

Dipping your toes in

An initial approach can be very simple. Many Free/Libre applications are available for all the desktop platforms. You can get your start with no risk or long-term commitment. Maybe start with a web browser. Most have heard of Mozilla’s Firefox and may already have it installed. But you may not be aware of forks of Firefox. For example, LibreWolf which is focused on security and privacy offers a Windows version and one for macOS as well. The Mac version comes as a disk image and looks to be available for both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.

Dipping in a bit further

Another step that might take a bit more time is trying out Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client. This is what I use on GNU/Linux but I’ve also installed it on my Mac. Set-up of accounts was easy. I only boot that computer up to install updates every so often but in the few minutes I’ve used it there it works exactly as expected. It’s fairly different in terms of visual design when compared to Apple’s Mail app but it’s a robust application and I’ve found I can easily manage all of my email with no problems. I’m a fan of saved searches and Thunderbird’s saved search feature is easy to set-up and works very well.

Thunderbird isn’t just a mail app, it also includes an address book, calendar and task manager. I’m using them all and, like the mail app, they’ve all proven to be robust and dependable applications.

Ready to wade in a bit deeper?

Office productivity software is an important category of applications you may want to explore. If you’re a regular user of Microsoft’s Office applications or Apple’s iWork apps, consider trying LibreOffice. It’s a fully featured suite of applications with years of development and all the Office apps you would expect. No, it’s not identical to Microsoft and Apple’s offerings, it does require some effort to learn. This is true of all powerful applications when we use them for the first time.

In the few months of using LibreOffice I’ve had no problem opening files in the usual format from Microsoft Office. Word, Excel and Powerpoint files all open easily and are also easily exported from LibreOffice. Apple’s files from Pages, Keynote and Numbers are another story. In some cases it works, on others, not so much.

Need an online, secure collaborative office suite to replace Google’s offerings? I’m a big fan of CryptPad, a suite of free/libre apps. This is a great project and well worth using and supporting.

Free/Libre Software for Graphic Design and Coding

If you have need of graphic design software there are some really great apps that you can explore, available not just for GNU/Linux but Mac and Windows as well:

• Gimp for image editing.
• Inkscape for vector.
• Krita for painting.
• Scribus for page layout.
• Kate for text editing and coding.

And here’s an extensive list of Free software that would be useful at the workplace.

Whatever OS you’re currently using, Mac, Windows or GNU/Linux, there is a large ecosystem of free/libre software for you to tap into when you’re ready to get started. Every proprietary app you can replace is more control you have over your computing than you had before. In a world of oligarchs and corporate giants it may seem like our personal decisions and actions are unimportant, that our ability to have an impact are so tiny as to be irrelevant. But how you compute is entirely up to you. The applications you use everyday, the OS you use every day, these are your choices. You can choose free/libre software that is built cooperatively with the full intention of respecting its users.

Find a starting point that makes sense for you.

2025-07-17

Ten years ago, after a short period of weight gain, I decided I needed to get in the habit of better tracking my diet and exercise. I used an app (or, a series of different apps) on the iPhone to do the diet tracking and an Apple Watch for the exercise tracking. I don’t think I’ve missed a day of entering in my food in that 10 years. And while I still use the iPhone and Apple Watch, I’ve decided to begin the transition to a non-Apple process for these tasks. I’m sort of experimenting at the moment.

Step One: Downgrade the role of the Phone As a part of the larger process of disconnecting from Apple Services. I’d already turned off iCloud syncing as a part of stepping down to the free tier of iCloud a couple months ago. Step two was to turn off any analytics sharing with Apple and I’ve done that with everything on all my Apple devices so that’s not just related to the health tracking. I’m also making it a point to just keep the phone in airplane mode, wifi/cellular off except when needed. So, it’s mostly just sitting on a shelf. lol.

Step Two: Transition the data collection/storage to a computer I’ve been using an iPhone app called FoodNoms for the past 7 years so first thing was to export that to a csv file. I had no idea what the export would look like or how useful it would be. Turns out, it was really useful and a good starting point for my new system.

I opened that csv file in LibreOffice Calc and flipped the sorting so that the most recent entries would be at the top. Right off, I’m just going to say, this new process will not be as easy as the phone-based tracking. Nor will it have the nice infographics I get with the phone apps. That’s okay! While some of the charts are useful the truth is that I’ve learned most of it is eye candy. At the end of the day it’s a lot of fluff I don’t actually need. The key bit is that 6 years of data are right there for me to use going forward.

Spreadsheets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets! I’m a data nerd. In years past I built custom databases with FileMaker Pro for all sorts of things from invoicing to local plant surveys to recording astronomical observations. Several years ago I began to realize I was less interested in keeping up with new versions of FileMaker and that my data was somewhat trapped in those proprietary databases. I wondered if I could move it all to spreadsheets. For the most part that worked and I moved everything to another proprietary app, Apple’s Numbers. I thought, I’ll always use Numbers. On the upside, it’s been fairly easy to transtion from Numbers to Libre Calc. Mostly just exporting to Excel files then opening in Libre Calc and saving to ods files which can be opened on any computer.

Let’s take a moment to compare how this looks in terms of data security, backups and longevity. The Apple-device based tracking was being accomplished in Apple’s Health and Fitness apps along with FoodNoms. Without iCloud my data was not getting backed up. Looking at my phone, it reports the following storage use:

Apple Health: 5.5 GB Foodnoms: 994 MB Fitness: 126 MB

The real doozy here is that 5.5 GB used by the Health app. It tracks a bonkers amount of health data. BONKERS. All of the Foodnoms data is wrapped up in there. As is all of the exercise data. How does it add up to 5.5 GB? Well, as an example, if I open up the app and navigate to Active Energy, which is just one of many different sections of data collection, I can view “Show All Data”. That reveals a daily breakdown of daily active energy. If I click on a day I am treated to that day’s data and oh my, is that a doozy. Each days has hundreds of entries just for that category. The watch is sending data constantly, every few minutes there is a data record for active energy. If you wear an Apple Watch do yourself a favor: Open up the Health app on the iPhone and spend an hour really looking at the vast store of data that you are likely sending to Apple servers. Every minute of every day, all the data from your heart rate to your sugar intake.

So, yeah, it’s no surprise then that that one app is storing 5 GB of data. BONKERS. There’s likely a lot more that could be said about this but for now, for the purpose of this post, I’ll move on.

The spreadsheet I’ll be using going forward is currently 3.5 mb and will sync between my two computers and backed up to a local drive. At this starting point I’ve got the daily diet log on one sheet and an activity log on a second sheet.

Recording food is pretty straight forward in my case because my food is homemade from scratch, often the same meal repeated often. It’s easy for me to Copy/Paste rows from day to day. Chances are very good that today’s food intake is nearly identical to yesterday. When it changes it’s likely to a food I had at some point in the past week or month. Today I had blackberry oatmeal for dinner so I did a quick keyword search for blackberries and a couple seconds later copy/pasted the row into today’s entry. Super fast and about as easy as entry into the phone app.

Recording the day’s exercise is just a matter of looking at the phone for the data. My primary practice is to balance each day to about 1500 calories of intake, keeping an eyen on carbs and sodium. Because my diet follows a pattern the default is for everything to be about the same. When I do change things up having the data in front of me ensures that my goals are being met. I really just need those few essentials. I’ve got more if I need it but I rarely look.

I won’t have the minute-to-minute data I have on the phone but I don’t actually need that. I’ve been tracking my sleep for a few years and I’ve hardly looked at it. Most days I have a fairly good understanding how well I slept and if I got in close to what I want in the way of sleep.

For now I’ll continue dual entry into the phone apps and spreadsheet. But at some point in the not too distant future I’ll just use the spreadsheet. I’m not sure what I’ll do when the Apple Watch stops working. It’s 7 years old. Right now the battery still seems to be doing well but at some point in the next year or two it will degrade. I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on with my body after 7ish years of fairly close monitoring of my activity. I know that if I walk take a 30 minute, 1 mile walk on the gravel road I’ll burn around 125 calories. If I take a 50 minute trail walk I burn around 200 calories. Outside chores vary by intensity but I usually guess pretty accurately by duration and exertion how many calories were burned. I’m not sure I need a heart rate monitor anymore. I can get a fairly accurate number by just recording what I’ve done and for how long. And I have a $15 scale to get my weight every few weeks.

I’m fairly certain this will prove to be a fairly managable, future-proof solution that’s easy to update and back-up. I may put together a third sheet in the spreadsheet that presents some sort of daily summary though I’m not sure that’s something I’ll need.

When I moved my computing to GNU+Linux in February I still didn’t have a clue about the change of thinking that was coming for me in the next six months. And, frankly, I’ve got Richard Stallman to thank for that. Once I began tapping into his many articles and speeches, my entire understanding of my personal computing shifted to the degree that I’ve felt compelled to flip the entire table over. For years I’ve spent many hours a day at a keyboard so nothing about this was casual for me. The simple truth is that computing is a primary element of my life.

I grew up watching Star Trek and superficially the Apple ecosystem of hardware, software and apps seemed to be slowly fullfilling the vision of computing I thought I wanted. Though it’s popular among Apple folk to complain about Siri I found it amazing that with a voice command I could control lights and appliances. It still feels like the future while taking a walk to simply say Siri, call my sister and have her on the link a few seconds later. Or that I could take a photo of a plant, insect or any other critter in nature and get the identification seconds later. In addition to being an excellent camera the iPhone felt like a tricorder. Same for the iPad. Constant, over-the-air connection to the internet, all of my documents and the people I know.

Yeah. Six months later I look back on my previous views of computing and I just shake my head at how easy it was to slip into. How could I not see the compromises I was making? Perhaps I needed to see the larger shift of America under Trump 2.0 to fully reckon with the dystopian dark-side of ever-present computing devices with location tracking. All of my data: my location, my phone calls, my photos, my documents, my passwords, my heartrate, my sleeping schedule, my voice, my fingerprints, my face. Fuck, fuck, fuck. When I list it out like that, it sounds insane. Honestly, absolutely insane. I’d placed great faith in the notion that I could trust a multinational corporation with every possible bit of data and knowledge about me. What did Apple do to earn that trust? I can hardly believe I went along and looking back on it, I’m deeply embarassed.

But here’s the thing. A lot of us did it. Many millions still are. Perfectly comfortable with it. If you’re still in that way of thinking I urge you to stop. Stop. Take a breath and then have a very long think about what you’re sharing and the faith you’re placing in a company, a corporation with the sole mission of maximizing profit via the colonization of every aspect of your life.

Have a good long think on that.

2025-07-04

My own journey into free software began with my ethics. It was, and is, deeply personal but simultaneously connected to my understanding of the larger world I am a part of. I’ve long believed and argued to those around me that what we do as individuals matters. We are not helpless, we are not without power in our world. And our ethics are important. Our ethics should be primary to who we are which means they should be taken seriously. It’s been my lifelong practice to actively consider my ethical framework as a part of my daily life. My ethics are my personal, philosophical operating system. I critque, measure and challenge my behavior based on these ethics. Put another way, my ethics are meant to be the basis of the standards of my behavior.

I recently realized that I had a deep mismatch between my claimed ethics and my behavior. A chasm that could not be reconciled with any kind of justification. To be honest, I don’t think it was a recent realization at all. I’ve known it on some level for a very long time. It was a nagging feeling of discomfort but rather than turn my attention to it fully I did what we often do when we are afraid to act. I turned the light elsewhere and pretended there was no problem. I lied to myself because to confront the incongruity woud mean disruption to my convenience and my comfort. Making compromises for convenience and comfort is a slippery slope. It’s easy to muddy the waters with hand-wavy justifications and that’s what I did for a long time.

The thing is, we live in a time and culture when personal ethics seem to have lost their value and meaning. In progressive, leftish online spaces like Mastodon I regularly see casual comments flung around that seem to acknowledge the extreme harm and violence of capitalism as a system. A casual acknowledgement of oligarchy and loss of democracy. In response to the rise of fascism in America it’s accepted and even popular to single out “big tech” and, specifically US-based big tech: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta being most notable. That’s all well and good but it seems to stop at that. We pretend that we have no choice. Boy, this sucks, doesn’t it!? We moan, we complain but at the end of the day, we shrug and accept. we compromise.

Now, more than ever, our ethics matter. To be clear, our ethics always matter. Our ethics always matter. Speaking for a moment to my fellow citizens in the US, if we as a nation had spent the past 70 years paying more attention to the functioning of our democracy we might not be in the current crises. As citizens we have failed because we didn’t do our job. We were not accountable to ourselves or to one another.

Now, finally, I will get to the point of this post. We spend a great deal of our time using computers. Many start their day reaching over to a smart phone that they will carry with them everywhere all day long. That they will use all day long. And when we’re not using those many of us are likely using some other computer for work, fun or whatever purpose. The point is that computers are embedded in our lives now. And it is long past the time that we made more of an effort to confront the ethics or lack of ethics we have in regard to how we use these devices and the roles that they play. Our ethics should matter and so how we compute should matter.

From the hardware to the OS to the software applications we use, there is much we should consider. I’m arguing here for a more ethical approach to computing and I’m suggesting that it should be a priority because the impact it has on our personal lives and our society is significant. The marketing of capitalism has taught us to think of technology as an object of desire rather than as a tool. When our phones had cords we treated them as boring household objects. Useful and important, yes, but just tools that enabled an important action. Apple turned the computer into something else.

I’m not arguing against attractive visual design in hardware or software. I’m arguing against allowing ourselves to be manipulated by marketing. But more significantly, I’m arguing that we take a more thoughtful and critical approach to how we evaluate the computer hardware and software being offered and accepted. In February I had to step back and take a look at my ethics in regards to my computing, the tools and the companies that provided them. When I began the process I realized that I’d not taken the time to really consider the tech I was using. Frankly, I had adopted a great deal simply because it was convenient and worked well for me. There were no ethics involved. I used Apple and iCloud because it worked well for me.

But on the perphery of my thinking there was this dark cloud looming and when I pulled it in and broke it up I began to get a sense of what I’d been overlooking. The low hanging fruit are those things almost everyone complains about, even the hard core Apple fans. For example, Apple is greedy and stingy. Yeah, this manifests in all sorts of ways ranging from exhorbitant costs of hardware upgrades, costs of iCloud tiers or lack of more free storage in the free iCloud tier, treatment of developers, the general running of the App Store, increasing frequency of Apple promotions and advertising in various apps in the OS and so on. That serves as the background for a general, growing frustration and realization that yes, indeed, Apple is a giant global corporation, that is primarily concerned with profit. In other words, a capitalist doing capitalism.

All of that, well, it’s just a reminder that behind the marketing is an ugly truth. This is the point where I would have previously said to myself, yep. It is ugly. Capitalism is ugly, destructive and unjust. But Google, Microsoft? Better to just stick with the devil I know.

But this is where I had to shift to an honest reckoning of my options. This was the pivot where my lack of ethics became painfully clear. The moment I turned my eyes to GNU/Linux and the free software movement was something of a personal revelation. My previous excuses for inaction began to crumble in that moment. In the first two to three weeks after my first install of GNU/Linux I was mostly focused on the practical aspects of making the change. How stable was this operating system? Could I find the apps I needed to do my work? Would those apps work as well or were they a compromise compared to the paid apps I’d grown accustomed to? Would I enjoy working in this OS and with these apps or would I find the experience a degradation? Would I find myself in friction and frustration? In those first days I’d assumed I could “make do” but that overall the experience would be less than whan I was used to.

In those first days I was still primarily concerned about something Apple users are fond of talking about which is the “delight” that comes with using well designed, quality apps in an ecosystem of apps that just work. There’s a belief that Apple and the apps of it’s developers meet a higher standard than others. For now I’ll leave that as a matter of opinion for others to work out. But it’s a narrative that exists out there and some Apple users will assume it’s true. For the purposes of this post, I’ll simply say I got past those kinds of assumptions in the first days and weeks. I moved on to other considerations.

I’d still not grasped the larger ethical framework of the free software movement. My vague notion was that “free and open source software” offered an equal or better alternative because the offerings were not dictated by corporations primarily interested in profit over users’ needs. FOSS was open and the result of people working together cooperatively. Okay, yes, true and yes, an improvement over closed, for-profit software. From my frame of reference, I was ready for software that was being developed by humans for humans not for profit but to fill needs, that’s what made it better. But still, I was just beginning to get the larger story.

At some point I began visiting the Free Software Foundation and then, from there, GNU Operating System. It was at this point that I began to take a deeper dive into the history of the free software movement and, along with that, the philosophical, ethical foundation it was built on. Ah ha! What had been a vague notion was now brought into sharp focus. I’d not had the vocabulary I needed. I spent each week of June delving deeper into the history and the finer points. Rabbit holes? Yes, plenty.

Ultimately this is a movement about freedom, which is to say, liberty. So the question of your personal ethics in relation to the software you use comes down to a question of whether your ethics can be satisfied using software that you have no control over and will never own. At its core the proprietary software of Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon and others will never be yours to use as you wish. It is their software, their OS. And, by extension, the hardware it runs on, in many respects, is never really yours either. Ultimately, you are subject to being locked out at any moment without cause. You are subject to their whims. Users of products of each of those companies will find themselves, subjected to corporate dictates based on what benefits corporations the most. Suck it up buttercup, you don’t get a vote.

If we value our freedom as citizens it is incumbant upon us to consider the qualities of the computers we use. If those computers are closed to us, if they are locked up behind proprietary code and liscensing we should reject them out of hand because, by definition, they are not designed to serve freedom or democracy. They are, at their core, designed to serve capitalism and profit.

The intent of proprietary computing is that everything users do, ultimately, fall under the dictates of the owners of the code. All of it. Their networks, their media, their software, their hardware, it forms a totality of experience completely outside of your control. And that my friends is cause for a complete rejection of what they offer.

You can agree to your own subjugation, that’s your choice. It may seem more convenient. It may seem comfortable. It may even seem pleasurable and safe. But in the end, you’re handing over your own fate.

Note: This is the first in a series that will explore how anyone of any skill level can begin to explore and use free/libre software. This is not an all or nothing situation. We can begin by taking steps that will gradually empower us and lead us to a better, more democratic and cooperative computing that places emphasis on users needs and desires.

Part 2: Begin the journey: Finding a practical starting point Part 3: Begin the journey: A gentle exploration of Free Software

2025-06-26

Which side are you on?

In the fall of 1992 I bought my first computer, a Mac Color Classic, to write my Masters thesis. I knew nothing about computers. I only chose a Mac because I was new to Memphis and one of the only people I knew was a Mac user that lived across the apartment complex and when I told him I needed a new computer that’s where he guided me. I shrugged and bought a Mac.

Not only would I be writing my thesis using that computer but I aquired my first email account for communicating with my advisor in Vermont. During and after the thesis writing I used it to create a community newsletter and a variety of flyers. In those first few years as a computer user it never occurred to me, not once, to question the ethics of the hardware or software. I booted it, opened “programs” as needed, did the work and walked away. Proprietary, closed software was all I knew. I didn’t even know enough about computing to begin to question it.

By 1998 I was in the middle of a small, growing activist community. The Color Classic was regularly used by a couple people to make flyers and zines and had served its purpose but we wanted to build a website and I was told by the local ISP that I would need a new computer because it would not run Netscape. I was comfortable with Mac OS and had learned enough to understand that it was the underdog fighting to survive. Microsoft was the big, bad corporate wolf. Apple’s was the hero, it’s Mac designed to be easy to use. I bought my second Mac. I’d still not heard of GNU/Linux. I didn’t feel trapped by proprietary software because the Mac was the tool I used. I was “free” to install different programs to do different things. It would never have occurred to me that there was a different way to do computing other than to choose Windows.

What I did know was that my Mac crashed pretty often but I accepted that as normal and learned to troubleshoot. By 2000 I was actively identifying with Apple as the “the good guy” standing up against Microsoft. When they announced OS X the Apple press and users on forums made a big deal about it being a shift to an OS based on Unix (or something to that effect). And it was during those early days after Apple announced OS X that I began hearing about Linux. That it was a free, open source operating system similar in design to where the Mac would be going with OS X. I still knew nothing about the ethics, only that it was “free and open source”. Had I made any effort to really investigate the history, philosophy and ethics of this other computing world, I think I would have jumped ship. Sadly, I did not. I was curious enough to actually install Yellow Dog Linux on a partition. My vague recollection is that I found it fascinating and that, while it mostly worked. I used it for maybe a month, booting back and forth between it and Mac OS. I hadn’t planned to actually switch, I just wanted to get a preview of what was coming with OS X. I deleted it and waited for the OS X Public Beta.

Regrettably, at no point in the 24 years that followed did I ever stop to consider the brief glimpse I’d had into this other computing world. Of course I knew it was there, as it lived as the perpetual meme: “Surely this is the year of the Linux desktop.” My take for years was to chuckle and think something along the lines of “Those poor Linux users, what are they doing?” The nerdiest of the nerds, uselessly suffering with a terminal and an operating system that never seemed to improve. Now, I had no actual evidence for this opinion because I had not actually looked into it in the years since I installed Yellow Dog. Why would I? Apple’s OS had gotten steadily better. Faster, stable, visually beautiful and all the apps I could ever need were there. All running on hardware I had come to appreciate for its sleek design. It was the one form of consumerism I’d allowed myself with almost no questions.

I never felt trapped. Never. I never felt restricted or constrained. I never felt that my freedom was being impinged upon. Just the opposite.

The iPhone came and then the iPad. Both even more locked down, more restricted than the Mac which I had viewed as entirely open. When you’re in it you don’t realize you’re in it. Or, at least, I didn’t. But with iOS and iPadOS it was obvious that things were different. These devices and their OS were completely locked down. In fact, it was questionable if they were really computers. They were computing devices, easy to use, secure and safe enough for anyone, including my aging relatives with zero computing experience, to use. No problems installing apps, using email, browsing the web, messaging, collecting and even editing photos. In her final years my granny, in her 80s, was messaging and emailing her family with no difficulty. Saving photos of great grand kids and random memes. She rarely needed tech support because her iPad just worked.

And I embraced it too. After 20 years using the Mac I found in the iPad a device that still let me get most of my work done and I was happy to stop futzing with the OS. Though OS X had been stable it still required maintenance and often a bit of troubleshooting. But something about the utter simplicity of the iPad, it’s form factor, just grabbed me. By 2017 I preferred it and by 2020 my Mac was rarely used and I resented the times I had to use it. If you’ve read my blog at any point in the past 7 years you’ve very likley gotten tired of my frequent posts about using the iPad.

But with the iPad, I was fully aware of the constraints, I loved using it anyway. And I accepted and even championed the degree to which it was locked down because I celebrated the fact that non-technical people like my granny could participate in “computing” with no fear. Those that want open computing could choose other platforms. If it was their best option non-technical users like my granny should be able to choose locked down, proprietary platforms.

Unfortunately many people, likely, most people, don’t have much of an understanding of the choices. In a world where so many of our interactions are increasingly dominated by just a few mega-capitalists, the obvious OS options are just the three provided by Apple, Microsoft and Google. Our access to information is often limited and our ability to understand the information we do have is always limited. We just push forward sometimes with far too little consideration about the technology we adopt be that industrial agriculture, combustion engines, corn syrup or operating systems. We blunder through it often choosing the most convenient options before we ever consider, much less understand, the long-term implications of those choices.

As individuals and societies, we make often make life altering decisions with far too little discussion and consideration. And we can look around and see what a mess we’ve gotten ourselves into as a result. When we fail to make the effort we cause ourselves harm on a variety of levels. Bringing this back to the specifics of computing and the current context of 2025, we seem to be at a pivotal moment. Computers are central to modern life and are a part of daily life on every possible level. How we choose to use computers matters.

Centralized Social Media The election in the US of Trump has come at a time when many now openly refer to the wealthiest in the US as oligarchs and the US itself as an oligarchy on the verge of autocracy or dictatorship. We regularly acknowledge the harm being done by “big tech” with AI being a notable focus the past couple years. But along with that we have the previous 15 years worth of increasing concentration of internet use into a handful of siloed social media, most notably, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. When talk about the secret algorithms used by companies seeking to keep us engaged with a mix of outrage, misinformation and feel good animal clips thrown in for relief we call it doomscrolling.

OS Lock-In And of course most people do their doomscrolling using devices that are increasingly not fully their own devices. On the surface, from just very casual thought, these devices may seem to be ours. I bought this iPad, it’s mine to do with as I please! I own it, not Apple! But no. That’s not actually how this arrangement works. The choice to buy the iPad was mine, yes. As long as it’s turned off I can choose to use it as a place to put my sandwhich. I could paint a picture on it with some acrylic paint. I can throw in a lake if I want. But the minute I power it up to use it as a computing device, I am now operating under a new rule system dictated by Apple. In this relationship the simple, ultimate truth is that Apple gets the final word. This is, in no way, an exaggeration.

Device Expiration Date Yes, every Apple iDevice comes with an undeclared expiration date that Apple gets to determine. Why, how? I cannot choose to run a different operating system on an iPad and this is important for many reasons. For example, my 2014 iPad is now beyond use. The version of iPadOS it runs no longer gets security updates nor do newer apps work on it. the last version of iPadOS that did work on it did not work as well because it was not optimized for such old hardware with features that were not supported. After its last upgrade it was much slower.

Is it rididulous for me to expect an 11 year old iPad to still be useful? I’m typing these words using a 2012 Mac Mini that is running the most recent version of Trisquel GNU/Linux with no problem (so, technically it is a Trisquel Mini). It get’s security updates on a regular basis. In the next year or so I’ll have no problem updating it to the next version of Trisquel when it is released. It’s modern OS and most apps open instantly. I might be able to use this computer for another 10 years.

App Lock-in Of course, it goes without saying that because users are locked in to Apple’s OS they are also locked-in to Apple’s app store. Apple sold me a device but that one-time sale was not enough for them. They demand that any and all expanded use beyond the default apps be conducted through their store. Their device, their rules, their store.

While there’s much more that could be said about Apple’s ownership and control of their users’ devices, it’s worth expanding outward to include the OS, apps and services offered by other companies like Microsoft. One recent example is Microsoft eliminating the option for a user to set-up a local account on their computer. Nope. The company requires new user accounts go through an online Microsoft account. Technically, at the moment, there are work arounds to set-up a local account but they are not obvious and require users to work around Microsoft’s efforts to elliminate an option that should be an easy choice at the time of account set-up.

Along the same lines there are countless examples of Microsoft changing user settings with updates. Paul Thurrott, a journalist covering Microsoft for many years, often shares such stories. Just one recent example Giving in:

“I would decline Windows 11’s offer to”backup" my Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders to OneDrive during Setup, but in each case, it would later ignore that decision and simply enable the feature."

In the above linked article he refers to Microsoft’s behavior as predatory. It's not the first time he's characterized their behavior in such a way. Nor is he the only one to notice. Microsoft regularly and with intent, abuses its users. It’s policy. And, as if going behind users backs is not abusive enough, they also fill the user experience with advertisements and AI slop. Ultimately this is subjugation.

I don’t use Microsoft or Google products but it’s not hard to come up with plenty of examples for both. All three of these companies are invasive in their own ways. All three of these companies agressively seek to control and own the user experience with the goal of increased profits. And of course their reach is global and permeates into every realm of life where computers are used: Home, school, business, government… and every space between.

I accepted Apple’s behavior for far too long. And then, one day, I said nope. Nope. Nope. NOPE. On some level, at some point I began to care about how they, a profit seeking company, were treating me as a human being. I simply had to stop pretending that it was okay for them to treat me in such a way. And that it was in my best interest to stop cooperating. We do not have to comply with their malicious, invasive and abusive profit seeking. We can walk away even if it seems difficult. And we can share when we do and encourage others to do the same. We can help each other in the process.

I’ll end with this. Pete Seeger singing Which side are you on?

2025-06-24

2025-06-20

After spending more time reading through the Free Software Foundation I decided to try out one of their recommended free GNU/Linux distributions: Trisquel. I’m perfectly happy with Mint but the idealist in me wanted to at least try the ideal free distro. Would it work for me? When I made the decision to leave Apple for GNU/Linux I had not yet begun to consider the finer details of the ethics of a fully free or libreOS. I just new that Mint was suggested as one of the easiest for beginner distributions and that was enough in that moment. But now that I know what I know about the ethics and ideals, I also understand the practical implications of defending and holding to that ideal. If possible, I want to do that because it’s a priority that I live my ethics. Why just go half way? I expect to write more about that soon, for now, back to the installation!

My trisquel powered computer, ready to go

I downloaded Trisquel with the KDE desktop, flashed a usb stick, then booted the Lenovo laptop off the stick. It booted with no problem though wifi didn’t work because it’s a fully free distro which means most wifi cards are not supported because they contain closed source, proprietary drives/firmware. I plugged in to ethernet and enjoyed it for a couple hours. Enough to know that I was interested in installing it on the desktop Mini.

A pdf and the Dolphin file manager

I backed up the desktop Mini’s home directory and boot it into Trisquel. Aside from wifi everything was working as expected, even bluetooth which was somewhat surprising. The install took 10 minutes. I copied everything back over from the backup of my home folder then spent the rest of the afternoon and evening downloading apps, setting up email accounts and customizing the KDE desktop. I really like my current configuration in Mint so I’ve set this up the same way.

Lofi playing in a web browser, Emacs opened to my OBTF

After two full days of use I’m feeling pretty well settled in with the same apps and workflow. It feels very similar in use. The KDE Plasma desktop on Trisquel is somewhat different from the Cinnamon desktop on Mint but this is mostly just noticable in terms of customizing things like panels, themes, etc. The Application Menu in the panel has a different look but serves the exact same purpose, same for the Dolphin file manager. KDE Plasma includes KRunner, a search and launch utility similar to Apple’s Spotlight and that’s a welcome addition. Of course, being based on KDE the default apps tend to be different.

And because Trisquel ensures that all apps are fully libre they do not include Firefox and Thunderbird but, rather, a debranded fork of each: Abrowser and Icedove Mail. In addition to the logo/branding removal required so that they meet the strict definition of free software, it seems various mods of each are in place to improve privace, security and to bring them into better alignment with free software goals. For example, the default search engine in Abrowser is DuckDuckGo HTML, a version of DuckDuckGo that does not use JavaScript (JavaScript is problematic as it often includes proprietary licenses. Read more at FSF. While Abrowser works fairly well it is based on a slightly older version of Firefox and I’m not sure how often it is updated but it lacks features found in the current version of Firefox like side tabs. I mention this as I suspect that as I spend more time here I’ll notice similar differences in other apps. (Edit to note: A user over on the trisquel forums shared the Sidebery extenision that enables side tabs in Abrowser and it works very well. YAY!!

Another notable example, the version of Emacs that ships with Trisquel 11 is 27.1 which dates back to 2020. It’s worth highlighting at this point that the mission of Trisquel isn’t to offer the most up-to-date apps with the newest wiz-bang features. The mission is to offer freedom respecting, non-proprietary software. The point here is to understand the importance of the ethics over convenience. One of the problems of the culture of the nations of the Global North is our headlong rush into the latest and greatest with too little regard for the ethics and values that often underly that rush. Hint: It’s not respect of users’ freedom and privacy. And on a larger more general scale, it’s a culture that also fails to consider a broad range of human and ecological problems such adoption causes.

I’m only a few days in to using Trisquel but I’m generally happy with the software that is included. I’ll choose the ethical option over convenience. Given how much of my lifetime is spent computing, I’ve realized how important it is for me to take full responsibility for understanding and appreciating the process. And along with that I want to recognize the time, energy and commitment of those that make it happen. The folks at Trisquel have a page, How Trisquel is Made, that provides an interesting peak into the development process. They also publish a page: Software that does not respect Free System Distribution Guidelines which provides a listing of the problematic applications and what steps have been taken to bring them into alignment. Taken together, both pages provide additional, helpful context in understanding the scope of the work in maintaining and building Trisquel so that it continues to meet the standard of a fully free operating system. Along the same lines I’m going to start volunteering some time to help update the Free Software Directory. They offer a weekly IRC meeting on Fridays for folks interested in helping out and I attended my first today and was able to log my first entry. Woot!

It’s all got me thinking about how all of this interconnects with our larger ethical frameworks. Free software is just one manifestation of a larger value system. More soon.

2025-06-10

With Apple’s WWDC25 announcements comes news that most pre-2020 Macs are ineligible for macOS 26. I don’t recall Apple’s policy for providing security updates for older Macs running the previous versions of macOS. A search seems to indicate about 2 years of security updates so anyone not eligible to upgrade this year will get another 2 years of security updates.

Obviously, given my recent turn to GNU/Linux I’m going to take this as an opportunity to encourage Mac users to add GNU/Linux to their line-up. Take it as an opportunity to learn. Productive and fun computing does not require macOS. My 2012 Mac is running the latest version of Linux Mint without breaking a sweat and gets all the latest security updates.

Let me say that again, my 2012 Mac easily runs the current distribution of Linux Mint with no problems. And for anyone who is not a regular reader of my blog here’s what I’ve been using that 2012 Mac to do on a daily basis:

• Design and layout using Scribus which is a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) application comparable to Adobe InDesign or Affinity Publisher. Newsletters, annual reports, etc are all easily done with Scribus. As a regular user of Affinity Publisher I was able to confidently use Scribus after 3-4 eight hour days. Unless a client requires a document in the Publisher format I’ll do all future projects in Scribus.
• Vector design and editing with the excellent FOSS application Inkscape instead of Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer. In truth, I’ve not used Illustrator in years but I mention it because others do use it. About the same transition time as with Scribus. I don’t use this kind af app as often so it’s been more gradual as need arises.
• I now do all of my photo cataloging/organization in digiKam instead of Apple Photos. Transitioning out of iCloud and Apple Photos took several steps. I wrote a post about the process.. I still capture all my photos on my iPhone but it all get’s stored on a local drive which is backed up. At any given moment I have access to all of the most recent photos on my iPhone if I need them. I don’t use my iPhone as a photo viewer so it’s rare that I need to access from there. Storing on a local drive was no problem for the years before iCloud, it’s no problem now.
• I use digiKam to edit my personal photos. Any client work that requires photo editing for websites or document design get’s done with GIMP, another FOSS app.
• All of my writing and website work is now done with a mix of excellent FOSS text editors. I’ve had trouble choosing because there are so many choices. For the past two weeks I’ve settled into the old school original Emacs and I’m loving it. In prior weeks I’d been trying and enjoying Kate, Ghostwriter, Bluefish, Sublime Text and the default Text Editor app that comes with the Mint installation.
• Web browsing and email are other categories with a lot of choices. Currently I’m using FireFox and Zen for the web. Thunderbird for email. I’ve also tried Evolution and MailSpring for email clients, both are very good.
• LibreOffice has rounded out the toolset and is a fantastic suite of office apps to replace Apple’s iWork (They don’t call it that anymore) and Microsoft’s Office.

And last, a note about the general feel of using GNU/Linux on this 2012 computer. It’s VERY fast. And no, this is not an exageration. The computer boots to a usable in 22 seconds (Timed from the start-up chime). Open time for Scribus is 5 seconds which is faster than the 2021 M1 Mac opens Affinity Publisher. Start-up time for most apps is instantaneous to 1 second. The Cinnamon desktop I use with Linux Mint is a pleasure to use and easy to manage with all of the intuitiveness a Mac user would expect. Most apps can be installed or removed with one click via the included Software manager. System Settings is there for all the usual plus a lot of additional customization that cannot be done on a Mac.

Does it look exactly like a Mac? No. Does it work exactly like a Mac? Also, no. But it’s close and I found the transition easy and daily use just as easy. Easy enough that I would feel comfortable setting this up for my 78 year old iPad using dad, giving him a 15 minute orientation and know that he’d be fine for a good long while.

We all have different priorties in our computing. Personally, I’ve found it very liberating to make this transition. Being liberated from new, expensive hardware feels pretty fantastic. And the same for transitioning away from cloud-based computing. Sure, there is a conveniece factor that comes with the Apple and iCloud ecosystem. Strangely, I didn’t feel the “lock-in” until the day I did. And on the day it clicked for me I determined to step back and away from it. The joy of GNU/Linux is that my 2012 Apple manufactured computer and the 2018 Lenovo Thinkpad I bought used off of eBay in March both look and work exactly the same way.

Going forward, I can easily use any computer manufactured in the past 15 years and know that I can easily customize it to suit my needs in an up-to-date OS that is dependable and secure. Even better, it’s an OS and app ecosystem that is maintained and curated by the users. Let me say that again, GNU/Linux and the FOSS application ecosystem are built and maintained by users. Tens of thousands of people in an open community rather than a trillion dollar company that prioritizes profit and perpetual growth along with the whims of investors and Wall Street.

I’ll end with this. Apple is not the rebel, it’s goal is not to change the world for the better. Many Apple users still cling to the old Apple identity created by the “Think Different” marketing campaign two decades ago:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

In 2025 Apple is not that. It is my hope that the computer of the near and far future is one that prioritizes human needs and experience over capitalist driven profit and growth. From it’s first days the core ideal GNU/Linux has been user freedom and openess. No marketing needed. As a new GNU/Linux user I’ve been deeply impressed and inspired by my first few months exploring this new-to-me community-driven ecosystem. I heartily recommend it.

2025-06-01

We've got a plant that grows everywhere around here and by everywhere I mean it. I have a near limitless supply. Perilla frutescens is an annual plant in the mint family native to southeast Asia. It's commonly grown in Korea, China, Japan and India as a crop. Bonus, it attracts butterflies. Another bonus: it's fairly nutritious. 7 carbs and 7 grams of fiber per 100g serving. That serving also provides 23% of daily calcium, 9% iron, 43% of daily vitamin C.

While there are numerous Korean recipes I just wanted to try it in pesto. I put a big handful of it into a food processor with a couple of big kale leaves, a good bit of garlic chives and blended it with some oil, garlic, salt and 15 peanuts. Super yummy. I'll be making this all summer. Topped it off with vegan parmesan (1/4cup rolled oats, nutritional yeast, garlic powder , salt and some peanuts ground for a couple seconds in a coffee grinder).

Easy, somewhat nutritious and cheap!

2025-05-20

A few weeks back I began thinking about the possibility of starting up a local community project to upcycle older computers. I contacted a local nonprofit where a friend works, Madison County Recovery Allies (MCRA), as well as my local regional library where I've been volunteering for several years. I sent both orgs a proposal and both want to join in.

I met with the friend at the MCRA two weeks ago and we discussed the goals and a game plan for getting started. Last week we set up a work area for processing computers in one of the unused rooms. We've got 3 donated desktops that are likely candidates for Linux installs. These will be used for a small onsite computer lab for MCRA clients. I'm hoping to get the first installs done in the next week or so. It seems reasonable that the lab could be ready for use in early June. I'd also like to be able to offer one-to-one tutoring to help anyone interested in learning apps like LibreOffice Writer or Calc.

At least one local business has expressed an eagerness to support the project though we have not formally reached out to them or any other yet. I'm excited as it now seems that not only is this project going to happen, but it's going to start off with a lot of support. I meet Friday with the library to discuss their interest in the project and what role they would like to play. By the end of May or the first week of June I'd like to send out an appeal to local businesses for donations of old computers. That, combined with an article I expect will get written in the local paper, should see us off to a good start in getting an initial wave of donated computers as well as generating awareness of the project in general.

I'm hopeful that June, the first full month of the project could see us off to a busy start. I expect to be doing all the work myself during the first couple of months but I'm hopeful that a person or two in the community might be interested in volunteering. My current thoughts on volunteer hours would be two days, five hours each. One day for Linux installations, one for tutoring/training, split between the two locations which are just a couple blocks from one another.

I hope to have another update in a couple weeks after I've made a bit of real progress.

2025-05-03

It's been on my mind to write about Apple enthusiast user culture for the past couple weeks and this morning the title of the current Rebound podcast got my attention: General Misery About Life and Technology. I write this post as a former Apple enthusiast, a 30+ year user of Apple computers and devices. When I bought my first Mac in 1992 I just needed a computer to write my masters thesis. It was just a tool. I got on the early internet for emailing my thesis advisor and wrote my thesis. Then the computer went mostly unused for three years.

It was around 1997 that I began to serve as my activist community's informal computer nerd and I also began to slowly sink into Apple user enthusiast culture. Ironic because the community I was a part of was an anarchist community and if you know anything about anarchism you know that at it's core it is anticapitalist. But at the time Apple was the little tech company about to go out of business pitted against Microsoft, the megacorp.

I called a local ISP to get internet access and was told my Color Classic would not run Netscape Navigator and that I would likely need to upgrade my computer. I knew the Mac so step one was to read the Mac magazines of the time to sort out a new computer. It was my first dip into MacWorld and whatever other Apple/Mac magazines I could find. I found an option I could barely afford and bought it. As I began spending more and more time in front of a screen learning to code websites I turned to those magazines and the early Apple enthusiast web to learn about desktop publishing and graphic design. I started with Claris Works which became Apple Works and began using those apps to design flyers and pamphlets to promote our various activist projects.

As I dipped into that world I began taking note of the tech industry of the time, I began to root for Apple as the scrappy underdog. Yes, yes, I was aware that it was a capitalist, but it was also the only choice I was aware of that was not Microsoft. So I let it slide. By 2000 I was spending much of my freetime in front of a Mac. Not just a Mac, but my Mac which was no longer just a tool but a valued possession. When I wasn't working on a website or designing a flyer I was looking for new ways to use it. I dipped my toes into FileMaker Pro to catalog our little community library and put it online. I was learning Quark and not long after InDesign.

I think there's a strange thing that happens when one spends a lot of time in front of a computer. For some it is just a tool and never more. But for others we begin to tinker and tweak. The look for reasons to stay in front of the screen. We spend so much time with the tool that we come to view it as an extension of ourselves, a necessary extension that we don't want to be without. We've seen a similar thing happen with people and their smart phones.

At some point during those years, my identification with Apple's computers and Apple the company began to mix as my time spent online also included more time in Apple user communities, mostly news/rumor sites with forums and then also blogs that included comment sections. And it's a slippery slope because there's always something new just around the corner. Not just another shiny product that promises more happiness in the form of a temporary dopamine hit, but there's always another new app to try, another website to open in another tab and on and on. It fits with our nature as humans (or my understanding and experience of being a privileged human living in a wealthy nation in 2025), that we're always looking for the next thing and when we think that thing is to be found with a tap or a click of a link, well, you can see where that goes.

And so, I found myself sliding down that slope. It's easy. And I think there's a lot of quiet background psychology that goes on. Everything from a kind of tribalism to identity to social status seeking and more I'm sure. Frankly, it's weird as fuck that we are so susceptible or, at least some of us are. It seems pretty clear that these are all human traits used by capitalism in marketing. But, wait, back to Apple.

The turn-around of Apple in the early 2000s and it's rise to its current stature as a tech behemoth today is quite a thing. I went along for the ride. I allowed myself to mostly ignore the ugly underside of this reality because "they're all guilty of something" made it seem like a no-win situation. For all of their apparent greed, at least Apple seemed to be taking real action on their climate and environmental impact. They paid lip service to diversity and seemed to promote an almost progressive culture so I mostly ignored the fact that it was marketing. Until I didn't. And then I began to consider the viability of making some sort of switch.

But even then I knew it would require some real effort. It's easy to make excuses to just stay put. And the truth was, I knew Apple's OS, I knew the apps I relied on, I enjoyed the ease of use that came with familiarity. I'm sure the same is true of those that use and are enthusiastic about using Windows every day. And the people that use and rely on Google services. It's easy to think that there are no other options or that the other options won't work for us. And the monetary investment in apps further sticks us in place.

Back to the episode of the Rebound that I mentioned, I gave it a listen. I've not listened to it or any other of the other Apple-oriented podcasts that I've listened to in the past. Why bother? But I am curious, what is the cut-off for other people? At what point do users decide they've had enough? Apple podcasts are often full of snark, and, in recent years, increasing frustration and cynicism. Apple's growth into a trillion dollar goliath is lost on no one with two eyes. It's been a very long time since the days of the scrappy underdog Apple and longtime enthusiasts can't unsee the truth of capitalist greed as each year brings more outrage. It bothers people to see such extreme, obscene wealth accumulation even as the company is correctly perceived to be engaged in a perpetual money grab with it's app store policies and the malicious compliance response to regulation and court rulings. It's iCloud pricing is ridiculous as is its hardware upgrade options such as drive storage. Then there's the union busting at its retail stores. And of course, that's just a sampling.

But customers just keep paying. Enthusiasts who are likely most aware of the enshitification and malicious behavior just keeping on handing over their cash offering little more than the increased bitching we hear on podcasts and in forum posts.

I think it's easily understandable that the non-geek majority of users stick with Apple simply because tech is not something they're focused on. For many folks (my family is a great example), an iPhone is their only computer and the inner workings of Apple is of no concern. They just want an easy to use device they can use but not think about. But the enthusiasts that know the details of the machinations of the company are also often technical to the degree that they could actually choose to migrate to easily accessible alternatives. While not terribly easy it is actually very doable. And I'm not just talking about an all-or-nothing switch to Linux but even just sincere discussion of the alternatives along with a sharing of efforts made to implement those alternatives in a process.

I'll end by pointing out that I think such a public discussion amongst podcasters and other published media would make for useful and really interesting content. Stop bitching and dig into actually useful exploration of technology. I suspect folks might go from feeling their computing is miserable or frustrating to finding it enjoyable again. Personally I've found it a lot of fun and really rewarding to return to a more independent computing that I control. I've not only liberated myself from the group think of Apple consumerism but I've opened myself to new computing experiences.

2025-05-01

Happy May Day! It's been over two months since my first install of Linux Mint on my old 2012 Mac Mini, now dubbed LinuxMini. I've got quite a few posts covering various apps and aspects of the migration but thought I'd write up a two month status report.

My initial plan was for Linux to be an experiment and eventual migration while my initial main goal was just to begin the process of migrating away from iCloud. Instead my enthusiasm got the better of me and I ended up moving far faster than planned. Once I determined that Scribus on the LinuxMini could replace Affinity Publisher it was a done deal. Secondary to that was confirming that Inkscape could replace Affinity Designer and it can.

My iPad pro is powered off for the first time in years. I have one particular client that prefers files delivered in the Affinity file formats so those jobs will still happen on the iPad. It has many years of service still to go and the battery will last even longer if I'm keeping it shut down when not in use.

Once I was confident that I was all in on the transition to Linux/Scribus/Inkscape I wanted a computer I could use on the porch. I couple weeks ago I ordered a used Lenovo t480s from eBay for $250. Released in 2018, these are highly recommended for their durability and repairability. This is true of most of the older ThinkPads and there are quite a few of them on eBay, often in excellent condition. The one I ordered looks like new. I booted it into Windows 11 to confirm everything was working then installed Linux Mint. I spent the evening installing the various apps I've come to rely on over the past month:

• Bluefish for html/css coding
• Obsidian for writing in the OBTF
• Ghost as a compliment to Obsidian for processing Markdown
• Signal for texting
• Scribus for document layout/design
• Inkscape for vector design
• Zen for the web
• Evolution for email though I installed Mailspring last night and am pretty sure I'll stick with it
• DigiKam for photo management
• Rhythmbox for music
• Syncthing for keeping all my files in sync between the LinuxMini and the M1 MacMini

Though I've not used it on the battery much it looks like I can expect 3-4 hours of battery life. I work from home and always have an outlet nearby so I'm not too worried about it. The speakers are fairly weak but I had no problem pairing my AirPods Pro and have been using those.

A few app/workflow updates

Scribus I've now delivered several client projects that were produced in Scribus. It's been a pleasure to use and I have zero doubts about it's feature set or my ability to use it. I'm so glad I pushed past the first couple days and initial experience. I judged too harshly and erroneously based on my own lack of effort. I've still got more to learn but I'm feeling really comfortable in this app.

Inkscape I've not spent enough time in Inkscape to get comfortable with it yet but I've used it enough to know it will get the job done. And I discovered it has a feature still missing from Affinity Designer: bitmap tracing. Last week I was working on a website for a new client who does not have her logo in a vector file, only a jpg with white background. Tracing the logo with Inkscape was just a couple clicks.

Surprise! Bluefish has been the biggest surprise in my website workflow. An old-school code editor that doesn't seem to be getting much in the way of active development that may be my favorite for updating html/css files. It does exactly what I need it to do without extras I don't need. I'm using it in conjunction with gedit/xed, both really great text editors that offer html syntax highlighting.

Web browsers and Email Clients I think I've finally settled into the Zen browser for the web with Vivaldi as a back-up. For email I thought I'd settled into Evolution but a few days ago came across Mailspring and I prefer it for a variety of reasons though I'll keep Evolution around for contact management. Mailspring has a very helpful unified inbox and keeps threads together better. Performing searches in intuitive and, for the first time in any email client on any platform, search feels nearly instantaneous. The visual design is very well done and reminds me of Apple's mail app but with much better performance.

Linux and FOSS Outreach This will get it's own post soon. I've been reading of the coming deadline for users of older computers that Microsoft has deemed unworthy of running Windows 11 and, not surprisingly, I'm also seeing a campaign developing to help facilitate the upgrade of those computers from Windows 10 to Linux. As I live in a fairly low income rural area where access to computers is already a problem, this seems like a worthwhile local project and it looks like I'll have some support in getting it rolling.

Slowly but surely, I'm getting closer. I stopped using Google search years ago. I need to track down the last few accounts that use my google account for login. I don't actively use or rely on gmail but am monitoring for a while as I expect there might still be an account or two that remains linked. Yesterday this article in the Nation popped up in my Mastodon feed. I've known about Google's role in military technology generally and Israel specifically for awhile but having the reminder in front of me prompted me to take care of another deGoogling task yesterday.

I've logged out of my Google account and hope to delete it in the fall. I added all my YouTube subscriptions to a folder of bookmarks in the browser and deleted from YouTube. I've also got same in my RSS feed. I'll still watching a a bit but I have an adblocker installed so I feel like I'm not actively contributing much to Google's bottom line nor am I being tracked to the same extent.

There are two more tasks I'll have to deal with before I can actually delete the account. I use Google forms for various embedded forms for a couple of client websites. I'll have to work with them to find alternatives. I may be stuck for awhile but I generally feel okay about it as my use of the account is now down to the bare minimum.

Same for iCloud. I've turned off iCloud messages entirely. All friend and family texting now goes through standard texting or Signal. Signal is preferred but there are a few folks that have not set-up accounts there yet. I'll likely keep the account active far awhile but I'm not paying for anything and no longer rely on Apple services for anything significant though I still have an Apple Card that I need to cancel.

I have separate, original account set-up for the app store which I'll have to hang onto for access to purchased apps and media. I may still purchase an occasional month of AppleTV+ but intend not to purchase any additional media or apps.

I still have an Amazon account but have removed my payment method which was a Chase/Amazon Visa account set up years ago. I've cancelled the Chase account and not used the Amazon account. I'll likely delete within the year. I should have shut the Chase account long ago given their support of Israel and poor climate record.

2025-04-06

For most of my adult life I've made it a point to actively boycott companies that seemed to have shitty ethics. It's difficult because capitalism is shitty at it's root so I don't think that ethical consumerism within capitalism is a solution to the problem. I don't want to be stuck in the lesser evil. But the problem is systemic. And so I've tried to just limit consumption generally which is, of course, better for the environment anyway. Better to use stuff as long as possible, repair and buy used when possible. Most of my clothes and shoes were passed down or purchased used. In fact, much of the stuff in my tiny house was acquired that way. Purchasing new is my last resort.

I think most of us know too much get's thrown far too early. It's fundamental to our culture of consumption. We trash perfectly usable objects just because. And on top of the waste most don't seem to consider where products come from. Made in a sweatshop by children? Shrug. It doesn't register for most. Step into any big box store and you're surrounded by products shipped in from offshore factories that you know nothing about. The source of the labor, the likely environmental degradation and climate emissions are not on most people's minds when they put something in their cart. Unethical, thoughtless hyper-consumption is at the core of capitalism and most of our planetary-wide crises. There's no serious discussion in the nations of the global north to change this. The vast majority, certainly those in the US, just don't seem to care.

In the early days of 2025 we find ourselves in a new, very deliberate shake-up of the global economy. It goes without saying that the current crop of idiots in the White House are not attempting degrowth or anything resembling a climate solution. But it seems increasingly likely their trade war will result in something between deep recession and depression for some nations. I'll not pretend to understand the scope of what's coming but it seems likely that they've broken the smooth operation of the global economy. Which is to say that production and consumption will slow for awhile. Likely a long while.

How does all this play out over time? I have no idea. I'm just a fucking goofball living in the woods. I spend most of my time talking to my dog, my cat and any squirrels that will pretend to listen. But I do think it's fairly obvious that the status quo of the past 70+ years was not sustainable. That US foreign, domestic and economic policy was not concerned with long-term human and ecological health, human rights or global social justice. Nor were US based multinationals. The status quo was charging into faster into a deepening polycrisis with the climate emergency at the center of it all. We were going in the wrong direction.

Again, I know that the cheeto and his fuckwits care not a lick about the climate crisis. They most certainly do not care about human rights or social justice. But as I pointed out, most US citizens also have not cared about their own personal conduct in relation to the global crises we helped create by living as we do. Our lifestyles our built upon global inequality and unsustainable over-use of resources. So while we should all rightly criticize the policies of the current administration we should also remember that, the vast majority of the US have conducted themselves in a way of life that shows little consideration for those we share a planet with. Be it other species on the verge of extinction, other humans in the Global South paying the price of extreme climate change or our future children. My fellow citizens of the US, generation to generation, have failed to take on any kind of responsibility. The response is always the same: It's not our fault, it's the system, it's government policy, it's corporate profit seeking.

It's all of us and all of that. A government "by the people, for the people" is not compatible with a culture that emphasizes, to the extreme, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". The first is about taking personal and collective responsibility, the other leads to the abandonment of that responsibility.

If your favorite local hardware store started flying a Nazi flag would you shrug and go ahead and step through the door to purchase that garden hose you need? Many US companies and, relevant to this post, most of US big tech have all bent the knee to the Trump administration. For the sake of business and profit, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and others are all going along, playing by the new rules.

They may not be flying a Nazi flag at corporate headquarters or on the corporate website, but don't kid yourself. They're all going to play along as long as they need to. Business comes first.

That Nazi owned hardware store on Main Street isn't going to get my dime. Nor is Apple or any of the others. For too long, far too long, we in the US have told ourselves we're powerless to act. It's convenient because it means we give ourselves permission to just go along. We're comfortable, why rock the boat? Why risk it? Why inconvenience ourselves. Easier to look the other way and keep on scrolling for the next outrage or the next cute dog in jammies video.

You can tell yourself you're too busy that it's too much work to make changes. But that's simply not true. It's really not. We make excuses for why we don't protest just as we make excuses for our continued patronage of companies that are cooperating. They're complicit. And so are we if we're going along.

I'm 40 days into my efforts. Like anyone else, I found iCloud photos to be extremely convenient. But like many, I remember a time when I had digital photos before iCloud. For decades I kept my photos stored on a local computer. I did the same for all of my computer files. That was the norm.

So, no, I absolutely did not have to remain in an an iCloud subscription. It took a bit of effort to transition because I was also switching to an entirely different operating system, Linux. But not everyone has to do that. Save your photos to a local mac if you have one. If they won't fit on the internal drive get an external drive and put them there. You can set your Mac to download all original iCloud photos and you can set the Photos "System Library" to be an attached hard drive. All the originals will download.

Anyone can take the time to move files out of iCloud to a local drive. Many are still using free iCloud accounts and would probably be well served to back up to a local drive. We can help each other to do these things. We can quit iCloud, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta. We can take more responsibility for our data and teach our friends and family less technically adept do the same.

Help those you know set-up email accounts with paid services like Fastmail or Tata. If you can afford to host it, do it.

We're not as powerless as we've told ourselves. We've just not made the effort. Now is the time to make the effort.

2025-03-29

The full Scribus window with left toolbar and panels docked on each side.

In my last post I shared a few things that turned out to be incorrect or just lacking in information. Honestly, I should have known I'd not taken enough time and should have used the app another day or two before posting.

First, I incorrectly stated that there was no way to neatly organize the free floating palettes by docking them to the side of the document as I'd come to expect based on past use of Adobe InDesign and then Affinity Publisher. Not only can they be docked but it turns out it is possible to dock them on both sides of the document! I don't know how I missed this. I'm sure I tried dragging them to the side and that nothing happened. Apparently I didn't try hard enough.

Second, I wrote that I was used to having the usual toolbar on the left side of the document. Turns out, the top toolbar palette can easily be relocated via drag and drop to the left side of the app window. Jeesh. I hadn't even tried to move it.

Third, I also mentioned that the toolbar icons were too faint and barely usable. Turns out, there are multiple choices in the settings app for the toolbar icons. I tried the other two options and they work as expected with easily viewable toolbar icons. That said, it remain's true that the dark mode does not work, at least not on my computer. Unfortunately, this remains true in the 1.7 beta. I hope they get that resolved as darkmode feels essential at this point.

Lesson learned: Take more time before posting first impressions!

Also, before going any further, I just want to tip my hat to the developers of Scribus which was initially released in 2001. This FOSS app has 24 years of development behind it. In hindsight, the title of that first post, "Can I replace Affinity Publisher with Scribus", is in indicator of how little I knew of Scribus when I opened the app the first time. I hadn't even bothered to read a review. I mention all this because I think it demonstrates the bias I had going into the experience. I assumed that a FOSS app would not be as capable as one offered by a for-profit company.

Scribus 1.7 beta, the right sidebar of Scribus showing the docked properties and text properties palettes.

Okay, on to the real point of the post which is to offer a few more notes on my experience thus far. Mostly the focus here is in trying to manage layers/page elements in a Scribus document as that is what has proved most difficult for me thus far. It's been a couple weeks since that first impressions post after about 9 hours of use. In the days since I've converted another client project to Scribus and put together a simple flyer for a client. The simple flyer was, well, simple and easy to manage in Scribus.

The other was a 2 page, six panel marketing mailer with lots of layered elements and that was a challenge at first. Two of the panels consist of a grid layout with text over polygons over images. 25 "layers" on one and 65 on the other. I struggled at first because Scribus has two kinds of layers. There's an actual Layers panel where one can define different layers but there is also an option for stacking elements that are not defined as layers. Oh, and those elements can be grouped which I expected would make for better organization. Let me dig into these three and explain how I'll use them going forward.

Viewing and Managing Stacked Elements

This is similar to what one might do in Apple's Pages app or other similar apps. Add a new polygon, say, a square with a gradient and that's an element. A text box is another. In any document with many elements it's going to get out of hand very quickly especially on a smaller screen like the 15" I'm using. I'm sure 27" display would make it a bit easier but it still seems a bit clumsy. All of these elements are viewable in the Outline Panel but it's still just a long list of elements in the document.

As new elements are added they are given generic names based on the object type and order of creation: Polygon82, Text43, Image24 and so on. For comparison, Affinity Publisher just calls each new element a layer and each one is labeled based on the file name or initial text. Sunshine.jpg appears with that name in the layer panel. A text frame is titled based on the first few words typed into the text frame. It makes for easy management. And those are layers are page-based so there are fewer to look at.

Scribus 1.7 beta, left sidebar with the docked outline palette on top. Below that the layers, align and distribute palettes each in their own tabs.

With Scribus elements are not split-up per page but are document wide. In a graphic heavy document design, say, a 12 page annual report with images, call-out boxes, charts, etc, managing elements all those elements with generic names is going to be quite an effort.

All that said, it is possible to click over to the the "Info" panel and manually relabel an object name. It's extra work but I think probably necessary. Going forward I'll label objects as I add them.

Groups?

There is an option to group elements but it seems very difficult to work with. Clicking on a group does not allow for drilling down to select objects. It just selects the group. To work with objects in the group the user must use the Outline panel and select objects in the group from there. Lots of extra mousing and clicking going on. Layers to the rescue?

Layers

Looking at the Layers page for the Scribus Wiki Manual it would appear that I'm planning to use Layers in a way not intended or well described. The description on that page would seem to suggest a somewhat restrained use of layers. Partly this reflects the fact that layers are document wide rather than page specific. My intention is to create a new layer for each document page. I'd expect that a 12 page document will have one layer per page and only elements for that page will be added to that layer. It should make for easier management of the elements on that page. Essentially I'll set-up and manage layers in the same way that Affinity Publisher does automatically. I think this will work fairly well but it leaves me scratching my head. Again, I'll admit and reiterate, I'm new to Scribus.

I've now logged about 30 hours with the app. I definitely have a better feel for it and it's far better than my first impressions left me. I was far too quick to form a negative opinion and should have known better. Even at 30 hours of using the app I was learning more this morning as I started writing this post. A learning curve should be expected with a powerful app like Scribus. I had to put in a similar effort into learning Quark and Indesign 25 years ago.

I'm no longer worried that the app won't be up to the task. Over the coming weeks I expect to spend more time reading the Scribus wiki and forum as I learn or encounter issues. It's up to me to actually make the effort to learn the app.

A lesson I'm learning as I go into the second month with Linux and FOSS apps is that it's important to be aware of my bias and to give more credit where it is due. And, flowing from that, to acknowledge the time and energy put into building this app ecosystem which I am increasingly grateful for. Thank you to the many volunteers who have built so many useful apps for people to use.

More on Scribus soon!

2025-03-27

Okay, let me get this out of the way first: I learned long ago that Apple's Music app is absolute garbage for playing local music shared by a Mac on the network. Absolute and utter garbage. Essentially, it's broken. I would open Music on the iPad and attempt to stream via Home sharing and it would take 3-5 minutes to show my music except when it failed to do that at all which was about 50% of the time. On the iPad I eventually resorted to a 3rd party app which loads the music instantly from the network drive.

I'll take this as a moment to point out that my interpretation of this disfunction is Apple wants you to subscribe to Apple Music. Your local music, even music bought from their store before their streaming service existed, is of no concern to them.

So, you know, fuck you Apple.

Now, back to using Rhythmbox on the LinuxMini. Of course it's free and open source and I believe it came pre-installed with Linux Mint. It works perfectly. The interface is clean, simple and functional. Sources are listed on the left side and include your music library, various online services, internet radio, podcasts (yes, it has a podcast feature) and playlists including smart playlists. The top bar is the usual play/pause control with a album art, scrubber and volume.

After opening app I selected the Import button which allows for browsing to a local network drive to select a folder of music. I browsed to my Apple music library on the external drive attached to the Mac and selected that folder. Did not select the option to Copy files as I want to stream from the network drive and save space on the LinuxMini drive. Rhythmbox spent some time scaning the folder. I came back a few minutes later and the scan appeared to be finished, I clicked the browse button and my music was waiting for me.

Playing music is as easy as opening or switching to the app. The music as always there, waiting to be played with a click. Huh. Imagine that. To reiterate: Apple provides an app that has been intentionally broken to push users away from using their local music to an Apple subscription. Apple and it's users often tout the fact that "it just works". Uh huh. Except when it doesn't. Except when Apple wants you to pay more.

Linux offers a FOSS app that works perfectly for the same task.

One of my first considerations in moving from Apple to Linux was photo management. I've moved my photo workflow to digiKam. And I'll say right up front, this is NOT the app for families that want to live in one large, shared photo library in a cloud. digiKam is for managing a local file photo library. I might work over a local network though I've not tried that.

One of the stickiest bits of the Apple ecosystem is iCloud Photos. Photo sync between devices has been perfect for me since I started using it. I take a photo with the iPhone and it syncs to all of my Apple devices within minutes. To this day it still feels like magic. Not only that, with machine learning working behind the scenes, the Photos app almost always successfully identifies the categories and specific names of the living organisms I tend to photograph. Insects, reptiles, trees, fungi, moss, lichen, almost anything is properly identified. This means if I search for fungi, frog, moss, butterfly or anything like that I get results through no effort of my own. Beyond that Photos identifies very specific identification allowing me to click right through to example photos from the web as well as a Wikipedia entry if the identification is for a living organism of some kind.

I was relieved to see that digiKam has face detection and recognition built in. More about this later. Unfortunately the app does lack some of the other machine learning features I've grown accustomed to, again, more about this later. DigiKam seems to be most recommended photo management app I've seen in the Linux world and after a few days of use I understand why. Fully featured, well designed and everything I've come to expect for this kind of app. Not only is it open source, it is available on Linux, Mac and Windows. Twenty years ago I used and became proficient in managing and editing my photos in Aperture and Lightroom, digiKam feels like that kind of app.

The migration process

Long before turning off iCloud photos I had set my Mac to download and keep an original copy of every file. I created a back-up of the Photo library on an additional drive as well. Now it was time to export all of that media into a structured folder system that would make sense and be useful as a starting point for future organization.

My first step in this process was to use the M1 MacMini running the Photos Takeout app to export all of my original photos and videos from the Photos library. It took 36 hours but eventualy I had a 130GB folder of my original photos and videos exported by Year>Month>Day. (Note: As I write this I'm days into the further steps of this process detailed below. It occurred to me well after this step that I should have taken more time before the export to take advantage of Apple's automatic machine learning to tag my files with keywords. For example, I could have searched for Fungi and then selected all the found images to add Fungi as a keyword. Same for bird, lichen, butterfly, flower or any of the other things I often photograph. Photos Takeout adds keywords to image metadata when it exports and digiKam reads that. It would have saved me a lot of time!)

Step two: Copy those photos over the network to an external hard drive attached to LinuxMini to serve as my new active Photo library. I'll keep the original Apple Photos Library as an archive. But my current plan is to work from digiKam on the LinuxMini going forward.

Step three: Use Grsync to backup the newly exported media folder to a second external drive.

Step four: Open digiKam and create a new Catalog. Set the media source for that catalog as the folder of exports on the external drive. digiKam imports the media. I left the default setting of digiKam to keep the actual metadata database of any Catalogs I create on the internal SSD of the LinuxMini.

Step five: I'm now in the long slow process of weeding out photos I should have long ago deleted. I've got lots of near duplicates where I need to just pick one and delete 3-5 others. As I go I'm also adding keywords/tags as well as captions. This step would have been much faster had I spent more time in step two but I'm well into it now decided that I didn't want to start over. Honestly, I'm taking it as an opportunity to rediscover and enjoy my photos as well as learn more about how to fully use digiKam.

Overview of the application window with the left-side panel showing the dates tab for browsing images. The center consists of the image thumbnails and the right-side panel showing the images properties pane.

At this point in the process I feel pretty good about having a well organized photo library that is no longer trapped in a closed, propriety library format in an app that only runs on Apple devices. All of my files are neatly organized in an understandable folder structure easily viewable via any file browser which I have backed up to a second external drive using Grsync.

digiKam First Impressions

This isn't meant to be a review of digiKam as I'm still in the first days of use and I've mostly been focused on the basic metadata features involved with organizing the catalog. I've not even looked at editing images yet. What I can say is that digiKam makes it fairly easy to add metadata with an easy to use and organize keyword/tag system. Metadata such as tags and captions can be added to groups of selected images. A few notes below.

Overview of the application window with the left-side panel showing the albums organized as years>months. The center consists of the image thumbnails and the right-side panel showing nested tags in the tag management tool.

Adding Metadata

As I work through the catalog to add captions and keywords, digiKam is set to write that new metadata to the original media files. Some files already have metadata that had previously been added in Apple Photos. digiKam allows for nested tags which I'm taking advantage of as it makes tagging easier as multiple related tags are all grouped. An example, for a photo of a honey bee I've got Natural>Insect>Bee. Having the groupings also makes for better search as I can look for a specific or a category.

Face Recognition

This was a pleasant surprise that I didn't expect. Just as with Apple Photos the app first detects faces and then the user assigns a name to those faces. After creating a sample of named faces I ran the recognition process and sure enough the app added suggested photos for each person I'd tagged. And it was fairly accurate. Once I scrolled through the suggestions and confirmed for each person I could select all to confirm with one click. The app took care of the rest.

Exporting an image to iNaturalist.

Sharing

The app has built in sharing to a number of services one of which is iNaturalist which I use and am happy to see. As digiKam lacks Apple's built-in machine learning to identify species it will be convenient to be able to upload to iNaturalist which also gives me the ID of things.

Overview of the application window with the left-side panel with the date-based browser open and the right-side panel showing map location of the current photo.

Navigating/Exploring Images

The left side pane consists of numerous tabs for searching and browsing through images in a variety of ways: dates, tags, faces, locations, faces.

After I've had more time with the app I plan to write a follow-up post. For the moment I'll conclude by saying that while transitioning from Apple Photos to digiKam does mean switching to a different way of managing photos it's not actually new. It's just a return to what I was doing before I moved my photos to iCloud and the Photos app. All the familiar organizational and editing tools are here.

So, you're a frustrated Apple user looking for alternatives?

I'm old enough to remember 2022 when most tech pundit podcaster folks were complaining constantly about how difficult and confusing Mastodon was. They were frustrated with the direction Twitter was headed in but they were still comfortable there. They'd been there for years and they didn't want to deal with Mastodon because it was just a bit different and they'd have to adjust.

It struck me as odd because I'd always assumed that a part of covering technology is being willing to learn about new developments and certainly a new social media based an an entirely new, decentralized protocol was important. Certainly it wasn't that complicated and might even provide for a better experience.

After several months most of those folks finally moved over and they got the hang of the new place.

Bad Apple, but the Apple you know

Jump forward 3 years and many of these same pundit podcaster folks have been very consistently and loudly complaining about many of the choices Apple has been making the past couple of years. There are countless threads in the new narrative with a general story being that the company has grown arrogant and greedy, putting profit over users and developers. It's a very long list that I'm not going to try to summarize here.

But as the discontent continues and even seems to intensify they just keep on keeping on. And I get it. You get comfortable, you invest in the ecosystem over years of app purchases and maybe media purchases. You become proficient in the OS and the apps you rely on. Even more, there's a lot of convenience that comes with devices are all designed to work together seamlessly. Add to that families with even more devices and that presents an even larger investment. In that regard, the stickiness is somewhat rational and understandable.

And for a lot of people it becomes a part of their social identity. People that identify as "techies" end up with a weird kind of loyalty to their platform of choice with its own subculture, its own "community" and it can take a lot for some folks to consider switching even if they are repeatedly given reasons to do so. This is even more true for pundits, podcasters and content creators that make their living discussing Apple products and the company more generally. For those folks there is a whole other level of lock-in. All that said, this kind of change doesn't have to be an all or nothing change. More about this later.

From scrappy underdog to monolithic capitalist

I've been a satisfied user of Apple tech for 30+ years. Thirty years ago it was easier to root for the scrappy underdog that many thought would go out of business in the late 1990s. It was easier to overlook the fact that Apple was still a multinational corporation whose mission was to make a profit. In 2025 it's hard to see anything other than an ever growing trillion dollar company that seeks to maximize profits at every turn. A company that will bust unions while it wears a mask of progressive diversity. A company that encourages ever increasing and constant consumption with a never ending parade of updated, mostly non-repairable devices.

There's nothing unusual about Apple in this regard. At it's core capitalism is about profit and that's it. It's a rare company that put's ethical behavior before profit. But I still make an effort to look for those that do and weed out those with the worst track records. It's a never ending effort to choose the lesser evil. It's why I focus on minimal consumption to start with.

In recent years as tech companies have grown in prominence many a scandal has surfaced, often repeated enough to indicate a clear pattern of corporate disregard for anything close to ethical conduct. The worst possible corporate behavior barely seems to register for most people.

But let's say that it does begin to register. What if we do notice the repeated misconduct, sometimes the criminal conduct, what can we do? Or, perhaps we just get tired of feeling that a company no longer offers the best products or services. Specifically, what can an Apple user invested in the company's ecosystem of products and services actually do if they begin to grow uncomfortable with continued patronage? Microsoft? Google? NO. If you'd asked me six months ago I would have answered that there are no alternatives, no better options.

And I would have been wrong. Linux and Open Source apps are an obvious solution but one I hadn't actually considered because I'd long ago written it off as a poor substitute. The basis of my conviction was bias and prejudgment based on nothing more hearsay and jokes I'd heard over the years. No experience, no research, no evidence.

Writing this post in Obsidian.

Yes, Linux. I'd guess that a statement shared with Apple users would likely induce a mix of eye rolling, scoffing or just uncontrolled laughter. But I would likely be correct in guessing that most people reacting in such a way have not actually used a recent version of Linux or even looked into it what it entails. Like my own, it would likely be a reaction based on hearsay. Most techies have heard the joke that every year is surely the year of Linux on the desktop. Yeah, that.

Here's just a partial list of things I've heard over the years:

• Linux is a substandard user experience
• Linux is difficult to setup and manage
• Using Linux usually requires using the terminal
• Linux is unreliable, not stable and/or easily broken
• The open source apps that are available for Linux users are free which means they provide a poor user experience and lack features
• Installing apps requires the terminal
• There aren't many apps and those that exist are difficult to install
• I won't be able to do the work I need to do because the specific app I use now is not available on Linux

An easy transition?

Admittedly my experience is only based on one month of usage. Perhaps in 3 months or 6 months I'll regret these writing these words. Maybe my computer implodes on April 1st. Maybe the big disappointment is just around the corner. I'll admit to being new to this OS.

But here's the thing, my first month with Linux has not only been mostly smooth sailing, it's been an absolute pleasure. And yes, many of the apps I'm using are new to me. But, you know, coming from macOS and iPadOS, the overall experience is not that different. I can imagine any competent computer user with previous Mac or Windows experience would easily understand the Linux Mint desktop.

The Linux Mint Cinnamon Menu

Once I'd made the decision that it was time to switch I spent a couple days looking at the options and possible install problems. I chose Linux Mint distribution with the Cinnamon desktop environment as it's recommended as one of the easiest, most stable distros. For anyone coming from the Apple ecosystem, the main sticking point at this moment is that the newest M series Macs are not supported. You'll need an older Mac or PC.

Second to that, it's fairly common to need to do an update for Apple's Airport/wifi hardware to get it working. And bluetooth can be flakey. I made sure I had ethernet, a wired keyboard and wired mouse for the set-up. The install took 15 minutes. I booted up the 2012 Mac Mini and as expected needed to download a driver to get the wifi working. That took a minute after which I had wifi access.

Then I just took a minute to admire my new computer OS. No, it's not identical to macOS but it is so similar that I understood what I was looking at immediately. All of the same elements are here. By default a panel along the bottom that most closely resembles Windows. I've not used Windows in years but I understood what I was looking at immediately.

I spent the first day checking out various options in System Settings. I opened up some of the default apps like those in Libre Office. I jumped into the Software Manager (App Store) and installed some apps. I used Firefox to login to some favorite websites. I logged into my Mac via smb file sharing and copied over files I knew I'd want to use. I opened up Thunderbird which is Mozilla's email app and is installed alongside of Firefox as the default email client. I set-up the two email accounts I expect to use going forward.

The Linux Mint Cinnamon Panel with app icons centered for a Dock-like appearance.

After a few days I added a second panel to the top and put all the menu items (Applets in Linux lingo) up there. I put the Menu in the top left. I centered my pinned apps on the bottom panel. It functions just like Apple's Dock. My point in sharing a few of these details is simply to illustrate that setting up and using Linux, particularly a distribution like Mint, is not all that different from Windows or macOS in day-to-day use. More than anything it likely comes down to the availability of apps for a user's tasks. In my use case it seems I've got everything I need to do graphic design and page layout, writing and publishing on the web and general office apps. YMMV.

I find the default apps are very well done. Rhythmbox for music, LibreCalc for opening spreadsheets exported from Numbers, are getting daily use. Thunderbird is an execellent email client but I downloaded Evolution and have come to prefer that. I'm using KeePasXC for passwords, Signal for messaging, Librewolf and Vivaldi for web browsing. Obsidan and Ghostwriter for markdown. VSCodium and Filezilla for coding and remote file transfer. digiKam for photo management. Finding and installing apps could not be any easier. Open Software Manager, type in searchbox. Look at results for descriptions and reviews. Click install. Open.

Final Thoughts

I was lucky enough to have an older back-up Mac to serve as my jumping off point and I think it makes sense to make the first move using a secondary computer if possible. I'm also in the fortunate position to work from home with a schedule I have a lot of control over which meant I had extra time and flexibility as needed as I was setting up. I don't view this as an all or nothing endeavor so much as a process for moving away from closed, corporate controlled computing to something best described as open, community computing. Anyone interested can begin taking steps in the process.

If you're someone that's frustrated with Apple's offerings and/or recent corporate conduct, don't assume you're stuck with Apple, Google or Microsoft. If you've never used or looked at Linux it's likely far better than you realize. Again, it's not all or nothing. Just begin exploring options. Be open to experimenting and learning. Don't expect an identical experience. This is an opportunity.

Apple to Linux Journal - Linux troubleshooting successes!

My simple LinuxMini work nook.

Today marks one month exactly with Linux and I was glad to solve two of my three issues that have continued since install. And, to be clear, these were obviously not deal breakers, just bothersome. Linux Mint is meant to be an easy way into Linux and it absolutely has been. Windows and macOS are not without their problems and that fact should not be forgotten. In one month of use I've had no other problems or bugs to deal with. Mostly it's just been a fun exploration of new apps and yes, some of that certainly requires learning but that's to be expected on any new app on any operating system. And, I'll add, not only has it been a fairly easy transition, I've been able to continue getting all of my work done. Daily website updates have been easily accomplished and today I delivered my first document laid out in Scribus on the LinuxMini. This is all being done from a 2012 Mac that feels as fast as the 2021 M1 Mac. Okay, on to today's successful fixes!

First, I've been having an issue when streaming music with the two apps I've settled into: Shortwave and Rhythmbox. I'm mostly using Rhythmbox which is perfect for streaming music from a local network drive. Far better than Apple Music which was useless for that purpose. In any case, the issue I was having was that after 30 minutes of perfect playback the app would start to stutter every few minutes. Just a one or two second gap but often enough to be annoying. After several searches over the past few days I finally found the solution in this post at the Linux Mint community forums. Apparently, the most recent version of Linux Mint migrated from an audio subsystem called PulseAudio to Pipewire. It was suggested that reverting to PulseAudio might fix some issues. So I gave it a go and I've not had any problems since. Each of these three lines is meant to be entered into the terminal one at a time:

If that doesn't work and you want to revert that change and use Pipewire again, run the following lines one at a time:

The second was a fix for bluetooth and, as it turns out, the problem was, at least in part, user error. I found the fix on this thread on the Keychron subreddit. In my case this was not a Keychron problem. Two of my keyboards are Keychrons but I was also unable to pair to my trackpad, mouse or any other keyboard. I was mistakenly choosing the option to connect and, apparently, because the computer had already identified and connected to my bluetooth device, my click to connect was actually disconnecting. What I should have done was choose Pair. Here are the steps:

1. Put Bluetooth device in pairing mode
2. Open Bluetooth on the Linux computer, it's an app called Blueman and resides in the panel. When the app opens click the Search button.
3. When it finds your bluetooth device right click it in the window choose Pair. Once paired right click again and click trust. That's it.

Here are the specific instructions with a few more details for anyone using a Keychron keyboard:

1. Remove the keyboard from known bluetooth devices if it's there.
2. Hold Fn+[1-3] to start pairing with the keyboard
3. In blueman-manager press "Search" (or type scan on in bluetoothctl)
4. DO NOT CONNECT THE DEVICE, pair it instead. Right click on device in blueman-manager and select "Pair" (or type pair <mac> in bluetoothctl)
5. Pairing takes a couple of seconds after which keyboard disconnects. Wait until it fully disconnects
6. Now, connect the keyboard. Double click it in blueman-manager (or connect <mac> in bluetootctl)
7. After keyboard is connected, make it "trusted". Right click the device in blueman-manager and select "Trusted" (or trust <mac> in bluetoothctl)

One last problem to work out is to get proper file sharing set up on the LinuxMini. Currently I have read access and can copy files from any folders I've set to share but I'm unable to write to those folders. From the reading I've done it seems like this is a known issue that others are having. In my use case it's not a problem at the moment as I'm using the M1 Mac Mini as the local cloud file server and two way sync does work between that Mac and LinuxMini via Syncthing. And, importantly, I have full read/write access to that M1 Mac and all it's attached drives from the LinuxMini.

Apple to Linux Journal Series Home

It's been a month since I installed Linux on my old 2012 Mac Mini, now dubbed LinuxMini and I thought I'd collect the various posts I've written into one page which I'll update with future posts as I continue on in the process.

The posts detail the concrete steps taken to migrate from Apple's iCloud: my own local cloud for photos, files and music with email, calendar and task management shifted to my domain/web host. There are also several posts that are less about the specific steps taken and more about the ethical considerations that have prompted my migration away from Apple hardware and services.

Current migration status as of 2025-3-16: In just under a month I was able to downgrade my iCloud from the 200GB plan to the 5GB free tier. I was approaching the 200GB limit of that plan and would have likely needed to upgrade to the $10/month plan for 1TB of data which was far more storage than I would likely ever need as a single user. Instead I moved all of my data to my local network and Apple will get nothing from me. A win-win.

Nothing about this migration was terribly difficult though it was time consuming. And it required at least one local computer with enough external hard drive storage to host my local cloud. I took my time and I made notes before hand about my devices and the cloud services they use. In my case an M1 Mac Mini is the server with files hosted in part on the internal drive and others on external drives.

At the end of the day my goal was to be free of corporate clouds and services and to replace them with my own local network. While my focus has been reducing my dependence on Apple services I'm also minimizing my use of and/or closing other accounts. The point of this change is to remove my dependence on an industry, specifically the US-based tech giants that are, in my view, doing greater harm than good in the world. These accounts have been deleted or are being minimized in use:

• Microsoft: I had an account that I didn't use, I've deleted.
• Google: I don't use it for search and have never used chrome. I don't currently use gmail but over the years I setup many other accounts using gmail as the login/registration so I'll need to change all those. I use an ad blocker so I don't see ads on YouTube but I'll migrate over subscriptions to rss. I still have a client's website that uses emebedded google forms so I'll need to sort that.
• PayPal: I'll likely be stuck with this for a bit but I am no longer allowing funds to accumulate in the account like I used to. I've made the same change with Apple Cash.
• Amazon: I've never paid for Prime, and currently order elsewhere when possible. I'll go for full deletion sometime in 2025.

The posts:

• 2025-02-17 - When computing and tech are turned against us
• 2025-02-19 - Progress on migrating away from the Apple ecosystem
• 2025-02-22 - Apple to Linux Journal: First Days
• 2025-02-25 - Apple to Linux Journal : A week of progress
• 2025-02-26 - Apple, big tech, lock-in and the corporate colonization of life experience
• 2025-03-01 - Apple to Linux Journal: Building a reliable local cloud replacement for iCloud or other corporate cloud-based computing
• 2025-03-04 - Apple to Linux Journal: Apps for notes, blogging, coding and remote file management
• 2025-03-06 - Linux Utilities: Autokey, Diodon and Ulauncher
• 2025-03-07 - Apple to Linux Journal: Moving email from iCloud to my own domains
• 2025-03-13 - Apple to Linux Journal: Can I replace Affinity Publisher with Scribus?

Upcoming posts currently in draft:

• Apple to Linux Journal: Local photo management and editing with digiKam
• Apple to Linux Journal: Email with Evolution and Thunderbird
• Apple to Linux Journal: Music with Rhythmbox and Shortwave
• Apple to Linux Journal: Libre Office instead of iWork
• Apple to Linux Journal: Local cloud file and back-ups

Apple to Linux Journal - Can I replace Affinity Publisher with Scribus?

First, I'm just going to say, I adore the Affinity suite of apps. Publisher and Designer in particular are two of my most used apps on the iPad. Affordable one-time purchases rather than subscriptions, regularly updated, stable and fully featured, these apps have been key to working from an iPad. And I expect I'll continue working with them for the forseeable future as I expect the M2 iPad Pro easily has another 5 years of use. All that said, as I've begun to shift my time over to Linux I'm going to be actively looking for the apps I may want to switch to in the future or begin incorporating into my workflow now. I want to know ahead of time that yes, this app is actually something I'll be able to depend on when the time comes. In searching for Linux apps in the category of desktop publishing Scribus seems to be the most likely, possibly only option. I didn't see any others.

I installed it a couple days ago and as I've just finished one of my regular quartely newsletters for a client I copied all of the assets and final pdf over to LinuxMac and am now in the process of setting up the document in Scribus. It's a small, easy project to use as a test case and also my introduction to using the app.

Lot's of learnin' going on. After several hours of use my initial impression was: this is an app with the features I need but boy is it a pain in the ass to use. For comparison, the switch to the Affinity suite of apps from Adobe apps was a breeze primarily because the apps share similar UX language. Mainly, a palette of tools that make up the left side of the window and corresponding tool options along the top that change based on the current tool in use. And both offer right-side panel for various easy-to-access essential features such as layers, colors, layer effects, etc. It's all right there on each side of an open document. So I was coming from years of using Adobe apps and familiar tool bars to the Affinity apps with close enough UX layout that I was able to easily deal with the differences.

On Scribus? NOPE, nope, nope. My first impression: Scribus feels like it's rooted in word processing with a toolbar above the document window and that's it. Access to the many needed tools are only accessible via floating palettes that occupy way too much space on a small-to-medium display. Almost all the tools and options are available but the effort required to keep palette windows organized adds a lot of friction. That's on a 15" screen. It would likely be less of an issue on a 27" display. That said, I've used the app around 6 hours and I expect I'll sort out better ways to arrange the workspace as I use it longer but I'm doubtfull it could ever be as space or time efficient as the docked, ever present panels of Affinity.

A few complaints after the first six hours:

• One notable issue I'm having: no dark mode. Due to a health issue that developed a couple years ago I have difficulty using bright screens so I use dark mode full time. The current version of Scribus does not have a functional darkmode though it is reported to be in the next version. Apparently there is a darkmode in the current version but it does not work for everyone and isn't working for me.
• A bug, perhaps related to the above, the icons in the main toolbar are way too faint. I'm guessing a bug because my system is set to dark mode.
• Thus far working with Tables is proving to be the worst part of the experience. UGH. It's painful, truly.. It works but feels half-baked. Creating the table is easy. Adding or deleting rows and columns is easy. But working with text in the table is a nightmare. It's not possible to select text across multiple cells and change text attributes or the text style. Instead the user has to go into each cell and change it manually. Got a table with a lot of cells and decide you have to make a change? Yikes. A partial solution would be to set a paragraph/character style for the text going into a table. If changes need to be made then just edit the style. That's what I did but found that upon changing the size of my text in the style only affected some of the text in the table. Many cells with the style refused to change to the updated style. Also worth noting, I don't see an option to set the vertical position of text in the style. Text aligns to the top by default so the best option here would seem to be to remember to set the text to middle vertical align as it is entered into each cell.
• Layers? I'm used to having layers in Affinity Publisher where any new object is treated as a new layer on a page. There is a layers palette in Scribus but every new object is just a part of the default background layer. I'll have to rethink my understanding and use of layers in this app. In my limited use thus far it seems like it's more akin to Apple's Pages app in that the order of objects in the background layer can be rearranged but they're not visually represented as layers in a visible palette.
• On Affinity, I can select text, copy then paste the style on other text. Big time saver.
• Working with color is so slow. In every app I've used other than Scribus changing the color of text or a vector object involves tapping a color tool which presents a color wheel or some other color tool. It allows for easy click selection of a color to apply. Not so with Scribus which has a very small selection of predefined colors. Want to use a different color? Go to the edit menu and select Colors and fills and add a color to the palette. It's not just an extra click to get there but also requires that you create a name for the new color. Once saved it will appear in the document's color palette. There's no option to select a color from an object on the screen. Perhaps this is one of those things that becomes easier over time but it seems more convoluted.

As I continue to write I'm in my second day of use, I'm now at about 9 hours and I'll admit, it IS getting a bit easier. My initial impression that all the same tools and features one expects are here, but getting to them to use or change does seem to require more effort. But, again, this could just be my lack of experience. I think it's fair to say that there is a higher learning curve here. This is an app that I won't learn by just doing. It's forcing me to do a lot of searching online to find things. I don't think there's a downloadable manual but there is an online how-to wik. I wish I'd started there. I'm remembering now what it's like to start with a powerful, complex app for the first time. A learning curve is to be expected. From past experience I know that the tools are, I know what I need to do, but now I need to re-learn where they are, how they are adjusted, and if they might labeled differently.

Scribus Application Settings

Scribus Document Setup

Also, worth noting, another significant difference are the Document set-up options. All the basic and expected options are there: Document size, margins, bleed, etc. But there's far more that can be set-up for each document! Set-up for each document essentially offers the same settings screen that one gets with the app itself and it's far more detailed than what is offered in Affinity Publisher. So, for example, I can set the default font and various font attributes in the app settings. If I don't bother with the that option in the document set-up the document will inherit the setting. Same for various other palettes/options. In other words, it helps to pay close attention. I can set various shape and image options in advance in the app and in each document. It's absolutely something to pay attention to when getting started.

I expect I could go on writing this for days as I continue to learn the details. Instead I'll publish this as a first impression and revisit at some point once I've actually become familiar with the app. It's only with that kind of familiarity that I can comment on whether or not the friction persists beyond the learning phase. I'll conclude by saying that my first day's impressions were mostly correct. Scribus is a fully featured, fully capable app. It seems very likely that it can be a replacement for Affinity Publisher and Adobe InDesign. But it's not the kind of app I'm going to learn just by doing. If ever there was an app that benefited from a user manual, this is it.

We need a global foundation for an open source web engine

My perhaps too simple take on the current situation with web browsers: We need a new governance model for the development and maintenance of the web browser rendering engine. The current situation is we have three big players:

• Chromium/Blink which is open source but under the control of Google.
• Webkit is open source, associated with Apple and I assume it's somewhat under Apple's direction.
• Gecko, open source and under the direction of Mozilla.

So, two under the direction of US-based corporations, both of which dominate their segments of the tech industry. The third a US based organization that depends on Google for much of it's funding, funding that may disappear.

Have I got this right? Does this seem like a solid foundation for one of the most important tools used by bililons of humans? In terms of computer technology, there anything more important than the web browser in 2025?

After the recent dust-up with Mozilla and it's changes in the TOS Firefox users, a smallest of the three above, are looking for alternatives. A common suggestion is to just switch to LibreWolf or some other Gecko based solution. But this misses the larger point that these alternatives all depend on the continued existence of Mozilla.

Chromium/Blink is the dominant player and there are many third browsers based on it: Vivaldi, Microsoft's Edge, Opera and a host of newer entries like Brave, Zen Browser, and Arc. I'm sure there are many more. My favorite is Vivaldi which I have been using on the iPad (On Apple's iOS devices it is required to use Apple's WebKit) but on Linux it is based on Chromium. But, the problem is that these are all browsers based on a web engine controlled by Google. As much as I like Vivaldi I'm not comfortable using a Chromium based browser because at the end of the day it is a browser dependent on Google.

Beyond Apple's Mac and iOS devices Webkit seems to be a minor player.

Why is there not broad discussion and a plan to develop a solid, long-term foundation for an open source web rendering engine independant of any corportation or nation? I'm not sure how it would be organized or funded but, just spitballing, thinking of Wikipedia as an example starting point or inspiration. Base it in Europe, Canada or anywhere but the US. Fund it with a mix of sources and treat it as a public commons resource. Fork one of the current open source rendering engines as the starting point.

It's insanity to sit-back and wait on this. Letting our window into the web be dictated by Google, Mozilla or Apple is a mistake.

Text Editor

Apple to Linux Journal: Moving email from iCloud to my own domains

A mistake I made over 10+ years ago was depending on Apple for my email. It was easy, it was convenient. I'd done the same with Gmail before that. As of 2 weeks ago my email, according to Settings for iCloud showed that I was using around 5GB of storage. In my migration process the past two weeks I first moved all my Photos then my files to my own local network cloud. I was saving email for last. It's actually been fairly easy to do using a method that I suspect works pretty well across many services.

The key is IMAP which most email providers use as a default these days. Here's what I did. I'd already had two email accounts for my two domains set-up, I just wasn't using them for much. Both of those accounts are set-up on the Linux Mac in Thunderbird.

One consideration is data storage limits on email. You'll want to know if you have any and what they are. At the moment both of my email accounts are provided by my web hosting service and are not limited. If that changes I'll look into a dedicated email provider, probably Runbox.

I've got those two accounts as well as my iCloud account set-up in the default Apple Mail app on the iPad and Mac. The transfer is very simple. One of my accounts beardystarstuff.net is primarily for my personal website, mostly blog posts and personal email. The other, beardyguycreative.com is for my freelance work. My iCloud email was mostly just a mix of personal and freelance related email. That's my own problem to sort out. I winged it a bit.

Most of my sent email (2GB) is client related so I just moved that to the Sent mail of beardyguycreative.

I used Thunderbird on the LinuxMac to creat a "iCloud archive" folder on the beardystarstuff account and almost all of the mail went in there. A couple other smaller folders on the beardyguycreative account. After a moment those folders appeared in the Mail app on the iPad.

Initially I was working from the ipad and selected around 200 emails in the iCloud sent folder, then just drag and drop those over to the Sent in the beardyguycreative email account. Done. Selecting more than 200 at a time would sometimes cause Mail to become unresponsive on the iPad so I switched to doing it on the Mac and it was much better with much larger selections with a better indicator of the messages being moved over.

Repeat for each folder in iCloud, dragging to the folders in the two domain accounts. Looking over at the LinuxMac, I could see the email being downloaded into the appropriate folders and accounts. Done.

With this last task done my iCloud account is now down to around 1.9 GB of data so I'll cancel my 50GB iCloud plan at the end of this month. For now I'll just move any important emails that show up in the iCloud account. Going forward, the only money I'll contribute to Apple's bottom line is the occasional month of AppleTV+. I long ago stopped using email in my Google/Gmail account with the exception of a notifications for few online google forms I use. I don't even look at it anymore.

I expect to keep accounts at both Google and Apple but going forward I plan to slowly pull any last bits that are tied into those companies and I'll never use either for important email.

Linux Utilities: Autokey, Diodon and Ulauncher

Upon switching to Linux I noticed there were three things missing that I was missing from the iPad: Text expansion, Clipboard history and Spotlight search. The iPad does not actually have a clipboard history but I was using a third party app for that function. These are the three I'm using on Linux.

Autokey is an easy to configure app for text expansions on Linux. In the Apple ecosystem these were built into Keyboard settings. On Linux Autokey offers this. I installed from the Linux Mint Software manager and upon starting the app it presents as a new item in the Panel. Getting started was as simple as opening the main window from the Panel then using the provided examples as templates. Great time saver!

Diodonis a clipboard manager that is accessible via the panel. Tapping previously copied text will insert it at the cursor into the current document. I installed this through the built in Software Manager.

Ulauncher is a Spotlight type launcher. Coming from the Mac and iPad I was missing this on Linux. It's not in the Software Manager so I downloaded the .deb file from the uLauncher website. Upon first run it informed me that it was using the hot key activation Ctrl+Spacebar. Like Spotlight on Apple's devices Ulauncher can be used to open apps, browse files, perform quick math calculations. It's also possible to download extensions but I've not explored that and may not. The basic functionality is what I wanted and I've got it. It's glorious.

Linux apps for notes, blogging, coding and remote file management

I've written a couple times in the past couple weeks about switching to Linux. As I've mentioned I'll still be stuck using Apple devices for a few years due to my reliance on the Affinity suite of apps but I'm shifting everything else to a Linux Mint Mac Mini and it's been great thus far. This post is specifically about using the LinuxMac for updating local static websites that consist of folders of html, pdf and image files. It's a fairly basic, straightforward set-up of making local edits that I upload via ftp. And I generally use the same apps for writing/publishing blog posts. Bascially, I spend a lot of time in markdown and html followed by ftp transfers.

For context, my iPad based workflow relied on iCloud storage for each folder of website files which were edited in Textastic and uploaded using Textastic's built-in ftp client. A very stable, fairly simple and straightforward workflow.

My intention was to use an external drive attached to the M1 Mac Mini as the new "local" file store so that I could also access from the iPad if preferred. But after using that set-up for nearly 10 days it became apparent that the apps I'm using are having some issues with that set-up. The new arrangement is working off of files stored on the LinuxMac that are automatically synced every couple of minutes to the M1 Mac. I wrote more about this about this local cloud here.

FTP on Linux

• FileZilla
• Nemo (the default Linux Mint file manager)

Kate and FileZilla

My first stop for FTP on Linux was FileZilla which has been around forever and seems to be the most widely recommended FTP client. After a week of use I'll say this, it's functional. It's a far more complicated UX than Textastic which is, to my eye, a perfectly simple and functional two pane layout. But, being a dedicated file transfer app alse means that FileZilla has more features. I'm just not sure I'd ever need them. One downside to the experience: browsing my local network drive where I'm keeping all of my files is terribly slow. When I click to open a folder on the network it takes nearly a minute, a FULL MINUTE to open. And it doesn't seem to cache so if I click back to that folder it's no faster. YIKES. It's fine accessing local files but no, not workable for network stored files.

That said, there IS a solution for better file transfer using network drives for "local" file storage: Nemo, the default Files app included with Linux Mint has FTP built in. It does NOT allow for key-based login which I need for one site so I'll still need FileZilla for that site. But for all of my other sites it's fast and solid and thanks to the built in window tiling, it's easy to arrange two quarter windows on the right side of the screen alongside of a half screen text editor. Now that I've switched to local files I coud just settle on Filezilla for everything, I'll experiment a bit.

Text/Code/Markdown Editors

I touched on text editors in a recent post but wanted to add a few more details now that I've spent more time with them. The five I'm currently trying:

• Kate
• Sublime Text
• VSCodium
• Text Editor (default, included with Linux Mint)
• Text Editor (Gnome version)
• Ghostwriter
• Obsidian - Markdown specific Apple Notes Replacement

Kate and Nemo

Kate is my current favorite. I'd given this a go in the first days after set-up but deleted it due to instability. In just the past couple days, after using all the others I decided to give it another go and I'm glad I did. Perhaps due to the faster ethernet connection it has been perfectly stable. It's been a real pleasure to use the past few days. Bonus, really nice visual design which I appreciate as I'll be looking at it more than any other app.

Sublime Text is the runner up. I was leaning towards buying a license when I decided to give Kate another try. Actually, the $100 cost is why I tried Kate a second time. After several days of use I'd only begun to scratch the surface of what this app can do. It's a solid app that has no problem with all the fundamentals and even did fairly well browsing my network drive with only a few hiccups. It does not have built in FTP or web preview but neither do the other apps. That said, it is extendable via custom snippets, macros and packages. I set-up a couple snippets which took a bit of time as I was a bit confused. But this is an app that does far more than I need.

VSCodium is similar to Kate and Sublime Text in terms of the expansive feature set and extendabliity via custom extensions and extensions. I'd mentioned in a previous post that the app was not seeing my network as a potential file storage location. As it turns out, that's a limitation of installing from the Flatpack in the Linux Mint Software Manager. Samcommented via Micro.blog that the problem would be solved by installing using the instructions and files at the VSCodium website. He was correct and VSCodium is now able to access the files being shared via the M1 Mac Mini. But, unlike Sublime Text, it seems to struggle with the files on that local network drive. It's not nearly as slow as FileZilla but it does seem to take some time saving files. While I used it last night it started throwing errors indicating that it had not been able to save. Even worse, one file, this One Big Text File that I'm typing in and the file where all of my daily notes and drafts get written, reopened with no text. Just a blank file. Yikes. I had a recent back-up but this has spooked me off the app for the moment. Like Sublime Text I'm sure I've just begun to scratch the surface. I'll give it another go before making a decision. But if I continue to see delays in saving files or any other indicator that the app is having issues with accessing files on the network drive I don't see myself using it.

Editing to note: I gave it another go and had the exact same problem. An error on saving followed by an blank file. So, VSCodium is a BIG NOPE.

Text Editor is the default text app included with Linux Mint. It provides a lightweight, much simpler experience compared to the first three but it's very reliable thus far. I expect at will come in handy for more general text editing. I'll also continue to try it out as a primary html editor as I debate whether to purchase a license to Sublime Text. My needs are fairly simple and this app may be all I need.

Text Editor - Gnome version is another very light weight text editor, the default included with Gnome. It's even more minimal in appearance than the default Text Editor with no files sidebar. Instead it uses a more minimal top bar menu.

Ghostwriter is more focused on Markdown and seems to do this very well. A nice, non-nonsense interface and I figured out that by doing the package installer instead of the flatpack Ghost has the ability to save to the network drive. Bonus, Ghost has the very handy feature of being able to copy Markdown as html. So, when I've got a post ready to go I can copy it as html and paste it into my post template. On the iPad I had been doing that using a Shortcut.

Obsidian is what I've settled on as an Apple Notes replacement. I've used it off and on for the past couple years. It now feels more useful than ever as I've got quite a few notes that I want to keep around but don't want to import into this OBTF. Years of random stuff, some of it with embedded images and pdfs. It's my junk drawer. I'll store the files in a folder that's being synced between the M1 Mac Mini and the Linux Mac. I'll use Obsidian on iPad and Linux Mac to update it.

That's it! I've had this post in draft for 10 days or so as I've experimented. I use this category of apps so much I expect it will change but this feels pretty great for the moment.

Building a reliable local cloud replacement for iCloud or other corporate cloud-based computing

It's been 10 days since I installed Linux Mint on an older 2012 Mac Mini and began the process of migrating from Apple's hardware, software and iCloud services ecosystem. One of the more important tasks I've completed is building my local cloud replacement for Apple's iCloud. I should say nearly completed because I expect I'll be tweaking things for a bit. Here's how it works.

Hardware: A base model M1 Mac Mini is the cloud home. Two attached hard drives are the back-up for that M1 Mac Mini cloud.

Computer-to-computer syncing

Syncthing is used to keep files in sync between the M1 Mac Mini and the LinuxMac. Currently I've only got that set-up to sync a specific folder, Websites, that is stored in the Documents folder on each computer. It's a bi-directional sync. Any changes I make to any file or folder in Websites on the LinuxMac sync to the corresponding folder on the M1 Mac Mini. Remember, this is all local network.

Setting up Syncthing is pretty easy though I admit to being a bit confused at first. They provide a getting started page.

The basics:

1. Download the app to each computer. It's available for Linux, Mac and Windows.
2. Open the app on each computer. The app will have a button for the user to open a web page where the administration happens. It's a pretty simple page with shared folders on the left and devices on the right. Each computer is given an id which you share with the other so that they become aware of one another. There's a button on lower right side "Add Remote Device" to do that.
3. Next is set-up of a folder to share back and forth. They include a default folder to share, I ignored it and I kinda think it just confuses the set-up. Using the Finder on the Mac I created a new Websites folder on my Mac in Documents. I then went to the administration web page and set that new empty folder to share and used the bi-directional option. When you set-up a folder to share that folder is given an ID that you'll share with the other computer.
4. I hopped over to the Linux Mac and went to the admin web page there. I used the add a folder button and entered the folder ID from the Websites folder on the M1 Mac Mini. So now Syncthing on the LinuxMac knew about the shared folder. Next I had to tell it what local folder would be syncing. I already had a Websites folder with all of my subfolders of websites. I entered in the path to that folder to sync and saved.

Within a few seconds of saving this Syncthing began syncing. Within a couple of minutes all of the folders from the LinuxMac were on the M1 Mac Mini. Every few minutes the M1 Mac scans for changes and performs a sync as needed. This is all automatic and happens in the background.

And because it's bi-directional it means when I want to sit on the porch and work from the iPad any changes I make to a file in Textastic will sync. When on the iPad I'll likely work from the files on the M1 Mac as I'm viewing that is the cloud home but given the near constant synching between the M1 Mac and LinuxMac I don't think it matters. Oh, and if I ever want to check the state of synch I can open up the web admin page in a couple of clips to confirm all is working as it should be and see the time of the last sync.

Computer to external drive backup Next, I needed to back-up from the M1 to external drives. I'm using RsyncUI to do this. Github pages always confuse me so here are the links you actually need: the downloadable DMG file is linked on this page the user manual is here. I followed the user manual to setup a task (choose it in the sidebar of the app) to synchronize a local folder (on the Mac) to a remote folder (on the external drive). Once you've chosen the two you can click the synchronize in the sidebar to see it listed. The manual suggests doing a "dry run" first which will present a basic preview of what will be done. Doing that also enables a progress indicator when you actually run the action. If you jump right to performing the synchronization the app will prompt you to do a dry run first. Set-up is pretty easy but there is no background action going on here. It has to be run manually. I'll probably run this every couple of days.

That's it. That's my local cloud replacement for iCloud files. It's cross platform, local, my responsibility and completely in my control. I'm using two computers, two external drives I already owned and two applications. Monthly cost is $0.

Apple, big tech, lock-in and the corporate colonization of life experience

Over the past few weeks, months really, as I've been considering the state of the world and the US (as many have) I've found myself increasingly of the mind that it was time, probably past time, to more specifically redefine my use of computing technology. I've written about the most recent kick in the ass that finally got me moving and that was Apple's recent decision to renew it's advertising with a Nazi-owned social media company.

Of course, this is happening in the context of a far larger problem. Cory Doctorow speaks and writes of this larger problem often. Call it enshittification, call it capitalism, call it tech oligarchy, it's all of these things. But specific to my computing, the hardware, the OS, the apps and the internet, I'm making a renewed effort to further disentangle myself from those that can only view humans as consumers and customers. Which is to say, I want capitalists to have as little control over my life and my experiences as possible. Why give them that? No, I'm done.

It's become increasingly obvious that the US is a full-on oligarchy. It's not been a democracy for decades and in truth, it was never a democracy. It was a republic with a thin veneer of democracy via representation. And what semblance of democracy that did exist was bought and paid for by corporate lobbyists who don't just influence legislation but often write much of it. All this to say that as we watch a truly new reality emerge in the US (and in the world as it responds), I've decided not to just go along for the ride.

The people of the US have forgotten the power of collective direct action. Be it in street protests, general strikes or otherwise. Collective action is the way to force change from the bottom up. It can take many forms be it the above mentioned gatherings of thousands to millions of people together in streets but I would argue that it can and should also happen in our daily "private" choices. What we do in our homes as individuals and families, if done in conjunction with public statements can be another kind of movement. Simply put, it is the boycott. We support companies when we purchase their services and products. We support harmful industries when we repeatedly use larger categories of products (fossil fuels, meat, etc).

Much of my life is a never-ending effort define and redefine my ethics and to put those ethics to use in how I interact with the world. A part of how that is observable is the long list of things I boycott. I quit eating meat in 1989 because of concerns about animal welfare and then, later, affirmed by concerns about climate change. More recently I quit Facebook in 2015. I should have also quit Instagram but I only did that at the end of 2024.

Ethical choices under capitalism are nearly impossible because at its core capitalism is a system that disregards the public good in favor of maximizing private gain. And so the boycott is ongoing, a process of trying to minimize harm and, if possible, build alternatives that value the public good. In the case of computing and the internet, multinational corporations like Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Google and Twitter have only ever attempted to maximize profit by mediating, owning and controlling our experience, our time in the world.

Over the next few months I'm hoping to continue writing about the specific process of migrating from Apple to Linux but I intend to also write a bit more about what we can be doing to support and build the alternatives. because it's not enough to boycott those things which are causing harm. What are the pathways to better, more ethical computing choices? Hardware, operating systems, apps, the open web, social media are all a part of the problem and the solution. But, also, how we might serve in our micro-communities, be they families, neighborhoods or any other social sphere we move in? Perhaps it's time to be more open, more vocal about why such choices matter and to also offer help to those who might be interested in making such moves but who lack the knowledge to do so. I don't want to be pushy but I do want to bring it into conversations and I want to make it a point to offer assistance to those interested.

Apple to Linux Journal - a Week of progress

I'm feeling really good about this move. My sister has observed of my personality that once I have made my mind up on something I don't fuck around and it's generally true. Once I decided that I needed to migrate away from Apple it became my focus. I expected most of the process to a couple months but I'll likely be mostly finished within this second week.

Linux fixes

File Sharing In my last post I mentioned that I had not gotten file sharing working on the LinuxMac. It's working now. What was the problem?

Poor implementation and documentation

On the surface it is made to seem easy. Open the Linux Mint Files app to your home directory, right click on a folder and select Properties or Sharing Options and flip the switch. There's no general file sharing option in the Settings app that I could find.

When trying to access the shares from the iPad the Files app would just give me an access denied message when I tried to login with my username and password. On the LinuxMac I tried turning on the guest access option for a folder that does not require an account and with that enabled I did indeed have full read/write access to the folder. Obviously I didn't want to leave that open but it was a clue.

In searching around I found the solution in this thread. It turns out that, in additon to turning on sharing for specific folders, I also needed to add my username to the samba password database via a simple terminal command:

"sudo smbpasswd -a denny"

I found the solution in this thread which contained a lot of other information that I didn't need to use. In other words, my solution was buried in a forum post and I spent a good bit of time looking for it. I'm grateful that the forum exists and that the people were taking the time to help one another. That's fantastic.

But it's also the perfect example of why we still have the nerd joke of "This will be the year of Desktop Linux!" I should not have had to do this. In 2025 turning on file sharing in system settings is essential feature. This is exactly why that joke still exists.

Migrating from the Apple apps and services

The unfortunate reality is that I have quite a few files in Apple's Numbers and Pages apps. I'll likely need at least one Apple device on hand to keep access to those files. This is a longterm constraint based on a previous choice about computing. What's important now is to continue taking steps into this different computing paradigm. This is a different path based on different values and goals.

The primary goal of minimizing my dependence on Apple services is almost complete which also means I'm contributing less to their bottom line. Yes, yes, I know, it seems pointless given the immense wealth and dominance they hold, but I've done my part to lessen their grip. And in my personal life it feels good to have made the decision and effort.

Switching spreadsheets from Numbers to a more open file format

I spent a bit of time using Libre Calc to edit my accounts spreadsheet exported from Numbers. It's basically just several sheets that I use to keep track of money, bills paid, etc. I had to redo a bit but it's working just fine now. I'll have more to convert over but there are a few that are somewhat complicated and I expect they will have to stay in Numbers. A couple are shared with a client and they may also have to stay in Numbers.

I found a third party, open source iPad app made in collaboration with Libre Office that allows for editing the native ods file, Collabora Office. Seems to work fairly well. Not nearly as smooth as Numbers on the iPad. In the end it may be that spreadsheet tasks get moved to the LinuxMac at least until such time as the Collabora app is improved. It may be that as I spend more time with it I find it better than my initial impression.

Migration from iCloud Photos

This is the biggy. I think most of us place a high value on our photos. I'd already had my Mac set to download copies of all images and videos to the local drive. I've made a backup of the Photos Library and turned off iCloud photos for the Mac, iPhone and iPad. I'll work for a few days with no access on devices to get a feel for the new workflow and ensure that everything is working. Going forward any photos taken on the iPhone will be saved/imported to the Mac via a cable. Good ol' days computing.

I've also downloaded an app Photos Takout designed to export from an Apple Photos library into directories of folders in several differet formats. It also has a smart export feature that will just export new photos as they are added. This seems like an ideal way to transition out of the proprietary Photos library.

Migration from the Apple Podcast app

This is a fun one. The solution is completely open, obvious and functional: RSS. I'm using my FreshRSS account at 32bit.cafe where I've got all my other RSS feeds. It's not an instant process but the result is worth a bit of time and I'm pruning down my podcast subs as I go. Every podcast has an RSS feed somewhere, most can be gotten with a quick DuckDuckGo search then it's just a matter of adding it to my RSS feeds into a Podcast folder. Easy access from the LinuxMac, iPad or iPhone via FireFox or any browser. And it works perfectly.

Firefox app on an iPhone open to the FreshRSS website.

Firefox app on an iPhone open to a podcast post in the FreshRSS website.

Firefox app on an iPhone open to my folder of podcast subscriptions on the FreshRSS website.

Firefox app open to the FreshRSS website with my folder of podcast subscriptions.

Migration from Safari

Like any nerd, I've toyed with lots of browsers over the years and one of the old standby browsers is Firefox. I've been using it off and on for awhile on the iPad and it's proving to be a nice new web browsing home on Linux so I've switched to it as the default on the iPad and iPhone as well. I've setup sync on all devices and tab sync is proving not only useful but more reliable than it's been on Safari.

Migration from Apple Notes

I'm generally very happy working in plain text and markdown. I've been keeping all of daily notes in the OBTF (One Big Text File) for the past year and that will continue. I'll gradually migrate older notes that may have been put in Apple Notes earlier on into text files. I'll have to sort out what I want to do with notes that have had pdf/images attached. The obvious answer is to just chuck those in a subfolder alongside all of the text files.

Migration from iCloud Mail

This last one will be the most gradual. I've got a lot of email coming into my iCloud account so I'll be keeping the basic 50GB iCloud plan for awhile. I'll gradually get everything moved over to one of my self-hosted domains.

Apple to Linux Journal - First Days

Note, I started writing this at the end of my first day with Linux Mint but have been adding to it over the subsequent 4 days of use. I expected I'd publish it here but it's sorta written as note to myself.

The first day with Linux went fairly well. Downloading, creating a bootable thumbdrive and install was easy. And by easy I mean almost anyone with some experience using and maintaining a computer would likely understand those first few steps and be able to accomplish them. That said, the resulting install was not perfect. There were two issues both of which required basic tech that some may not have immediate access to:

1. Bluetooth on the Mac Mini is mostly non-functional. I've tried 4 keyboards and none work. If they connect at all it's temporary and at no point can I actually use them to type. Luckily I had a wired keyboard and mouse so that I could continue the installation. For the forseable future I'll be using a Keychron keyboard plugged in via USB. Far from a deal breaker but is an example of something not working out of the box. An old logitech mouse with unifying usb reciever working great thanks to the third party Solaar app. I'd suggest having a wired mouse and keyboard handy when getting started!
2. Out of the box wifi may not work. Perhaps this is more of an issue with older hardware. This was the case for the Mac Mini, wifi did not work out of the install. I had watched a few Linux Mint videos before hand and this issue was mentioned so I was ready with an ethernet connection and was prepared to look for the driver which was found and easily installed.

What I've got set-up thus far:

Thunderbird Calendar

• I've used my domain name based accounts to set-up email, contacts, calendar and tasks in Thunderbird. I've set these up on my Apple devices as well. I'll copy all my iCloud contact, calendar and tasks data to these accounts. I'm not sure what I think of Thunderbird yet. It's interesting to have Contacts, email, tasks and calendars all in one app. It's working well enough.
• FileZilla for remote website updates via ftp.
• Firefox syncing with iPads.
• Accessing the M1 Mac Mini from Linux Mac was easy so I've got my websites copied over to an attached hard drive as well as most of my iCloud documents. That drive is backed up via rsync to another drive.
• Trying text/code editors: Sublime Text, Kate, VSCodium, Text Editor (included the default text editor). More below on this topic.

Still to sort out:

• Do I need an RSS app? I'm likely to just keep reading RSS on iPad.
• I'll need to learn how to use Sublime Text. The basics are easy of course so the usual html edits are no problem. But I'd come up with a really helpful, automated process using Textastic and Shortcuts on the iPad. More on this in below notes on text editors.
• Less immediate to basic function but a problem that I'll need to get sorted, I've not been able to get filesharing from the Linux Mac to work. I can see the Linux Mac from the iPad and have selected folders to share but cannot actually access any shared folder. A quick scan of the internet and I've found others having the problem. Will come back to it later.

A few of the things I'm loving:

• System settings. Yes, this seems funny. It's not like I hang out in this app but being new to Linux I appreciate that the layout is easy to navigate. Thus far I've had no problem finding the things I need to get everything sorted.
• I stay in Dark Mode full time and the default theme is very easy on the eyes. Generally appreciate the visual design of the OS/Desktop. And because it's Linux there are lots of additional theme options to choose from. I'll stick with this one for the moment as I'm enjoying it.
• Window Snapping! On the iPad Pro I bounce between Stage Manager and the old Split Screen multitasking. I appreciate that with Stage Manager I can have 3 to 4 windows open. But I like the ease of use of Split Screen. Linux Mint has offers multiple modes together. I can pull a window to the edge of the screen: top, bottom or either side and it will snap and fill half of the screen. Meanwhile I can have freely sized windows elsewhere in the same space. It's still sort of free form, but easier to manage. Oh, and it tiles into quarters too.

Text/Code editors

Text Editor

• Text Editor is the default preinstalled text app and has built in support for Markdown- imagine that! Not something you'll find on a Mac. That said it's missing some of the features common to iPad Markdown editors such as export to other formats like pdf or html. Nevertheless, it still seems very solid, easy to use without being overwhelming. It has no problem accessing network folders and files which is important as I'll be working from a network folder. Handles the One Big Text File(OBTF) via the network with no problem. Bonus: tabbed browsing and unlike most text editors on the iPad, it has 'Change Case' right there in the contextual menu.
• Sublime Text is another option. It's excellent but at a cost of $100. Handles network files/folders with no problem. That said, it lacks sorting of files/folders in the sidebar!?! What?? I've only begun to dip into what's possible with the app though. Hoping there are ways to automate my blogging process.
• VSCodium is a free option similar to Sublime Text. But this seems like a no go from the start because there seems to be no way to open folders from the local network. UMMMMM, what? WHAT? Honestly, wtf. How can I not be able to open up a folder from the local network in the sidebar?? After further investigation I'm seeing that this may be a problem with the "flatpack" install presented in the Software Manager. Will come back to it.
• Kate was the first I downloaded, similar to VSCodium and Sublime Text. I deleted it because while it seemed to see and handle networked folders it kept crashing.
• Ghostwriter is a dedicated Markdown app but only saves local files. When I access files on the network it errors on saving and I've not found a fix.

Third party apps

Software Manager

The Software Manager for finding and installing new, apps is easy to use! Keyword or app name searching with a one click install. Many apps require that other components be installed and a pop-up alerts the user to this so, technically a second click is required to proceed with the install after that pop-up. It's been a seemless process. I noted above though that it's not perfect. The VSCodium install from teh Software Manager seems to be different from what one might get via a different install process. Investigating.

• Shortwave Oh my, this is going to be a favorite. An app for playing internet radio and right off I'm finding some fantastic LOFI which I've been listening to a lot the past year. Discovered via this video on one of my favorite new YouTube Channels, Veronica Explains.
• Liferea for RSS. Seems to work pretty well.
• For photos, I've installed Digikam but have not used it and have no idea how well it works to manage or edit photos. Worst case scenario I can keep using my Mac for photos. The key thing is to pull them out of iCloud so I can downgrade that plan. The long-term goal is to migrate out of the Apple ecosystem.

General impressions thus far

Going into day five of using Linux Mint and I'm already finding myself feeling fairly comfortable. Another few days and I think I'll feel fully at home. A common perception people seem to have is that Linux is difficult and I'm guessing years ago this was certainly more true. And I may yet discover that it is more difficult than I currently realize. After 4 full days and a bit of looking around I've still have not found the bluetooth fix. (I'm using the most recent version of Linux Mint (22.1) on a 2012 Mac Mini. While Bluetooth does show up as active and working, when I try to connect to any bluetooth keyboard the connection is not stable. If it connects at all it will then disconnect seconds later. It will continue to connect and disconnect.)

On the surface though using Linux Mint should seem relatively familiar to anyone who's used Windows or Mac. It's probably closer to the Windows experience as it has a generic, default task bar at the bottom with a start menu that has a search bar and lists installed apps and functions like shutdown and restart. And, like Windows each window has it's own menu bar. That said, most Mac users should have no problem adapting.

From Mac to iPad to Linux!

Work Spaces

After using macOS for 25 years I switched to the iPad because I enjoyed and appreciated the simpler experience that still let me get my work done. It enables me but also stays out of my way. The Mac and Linux offer sharp contrast with a seemingly endless list of options to use and organize windows. The default Cinnamon install of Linux Mint has 4 workspaces. I'm familiar with Spaces from the Mac and even the iPad with Stage Manager has a similar though more basic implementation. But I'm not at all certain these are helpful for me. I'm finding myself drowning in windows that seem to be breeding on their own. lol. I'll either come up with a better way to organize them or I'll stop using the feature. I'm not sure which way it will go.

I'm open to new (or new old) features and methods for working. Over the past four months I'd created my own blogging system based on iPad apps, namely Shortcuts and Textastic. I like to bend and roll, I'm flexible and enjoy the mental exercise of learning new features and creating new workflows. Now I'll add the toolset available on Linux. It may be that I'll blend my iPad blogging/publishing workflow with Linux. The iPad is ready to be used in a stand next to the screen I'm using now. With a flick of a switch on the keyboard I can switch over to carry on the process from the iPad workflow.

Long-term Goal

The long-term goal is to eventually drop all Apple devices and services but that is a long way off. As I mentioned in the post a couple days ago I'll be using an iPad Pro and Affinity apps for at least another 5 years, perhaps longer if the world has not collapsed (only half joking). Other proprietary file formats I'm invested in include Numbers and Pages, both made by Apple.

My immediate goal is to move everything else I do to a more open, crossplatform process which will let me work on any device without encountering too much friction. And going forward I'll seek to use file formats that are either cross platform or are easily transferrable. I'm thinking here about Libre Office and how well that works with both Apple and Microsoft files.

I've been spoiled by remaining in the Apple ecosystem where everything works so well together. No doubt that going forward there will be bumps and required work arounds. I'm okay with that because my priority has shifted away from that convenience and towards flexibility and openess.

Progress on migrating away from the Apple ecosystem

A couple days ago I posted about my decision to stop using Apple products and services. Shortly after posting I came across Eric's post on Schwartztech highlighting a couple of other folks having very similar thoughts. First, he links to this post by Matt Massiocotte:

Apple is supporting a regime that is not just destroying democracy in the United States, but is actively working to do so globally. Not to mention attacking my own country of Canada.

And, now, Apple have also resumed using X, a platform whose sole purpose is to further these goals.

Yep.

Eric also pointed to a post by Konstantin, an Apple developer in the EU:

The time has come to make a choice... Unfortunately, this is not an inspirational post. The time has come to realize that Apple as an organization is actively supporting the authoritarian regime in the USA through their various donations and continued posting of ads and content on the X platform.

This is not a case of a local bipartisan misunderstanding one could dismiss with the #uspol hashtag. This is a global effort of misinformation and eradication of decades of human rights, economic and environmental progress.

As a European citizen, I find it impossible to continue.

Eric concludes his post: "Apparently having all the money in the world (at least by market cap) doesn’t buy you a spine."

Agreed. In the two days since I made my decision to begin the process of migrating away I've taken significant first steps. I've retrieved my 2012 MacMini from storage on a shelf and have installed Mint Linux and the apps I need to do my website work. That's about half of my freelance income. That's a big chunk and it's done. I do have some kinks to work out but I can now do that work from that Linux Mac today.

I've created a migration plan. To be clear, I'm stuck for awhile because I have Apple hardware that will last for at least 6 years, likely longer. Half of my income is based on using the Affinity apps on the iPad Pro. I'll need to continue that for the foreseeable future. But that's okay, I'm not adding to Apple's bottom line by continuing with hardware and apps I already own. The exception here being that I may choose to replace a couple of device batteries to prolong their use. That makes more sense than replacing them so that's the plan.

The basics outline of the larger plan

I'll continue using the M1 MacMini as the base of my local cloud. This will allow me to downgrade my iCloud plan from the current $2.99/month to $.99. At some point after I'll go back to the free plan.

Moving files to my local network will be fairly easy to accomplish. Then it' just changing my workflows and shortcuts to rely on my local cloud files.

More difficult will be pulling all my photos out of iCloud. More than anything this is the iCloud storage I use and the app that has most spoiled me. At the latest I'd like to have this done by the end of the year, before if possible.

Then it falls to lots of other bits that I should be able to migrate out in coming months.

• I'll scale back use of Apple's default apps like Apple Notes. That won't be too difficult as I prefer markdown and plain text anyway.
• I rely on Reminders for a handful of regularly scheduled tasks so I'll need to address that.
• Safari works pretty well for me on the iPad but going forward I'll likely switch to Firefox as it sees to be the browser preferred in Linux and will synch data.
• I've relied heavily on my iCloud email account. Going forward I'll use my domains and gradually switch to those. Should have been doing it that way all along.
• I'll stop using the App store and other services. When it comes to paid apps I'm generally pretty reserved anyway. In the past I've bought the occasional month of AppleTV+ and that may continue. I binge everything I want to watch in a month then cancel.
• I've been happily using Apple's password system for years. Moving away from that is going to suck. I'm in no hurry on this one part of the process.
• Over the past few years I've used AppleCash with family and that may continue to a limited extent. I have an Apple Card that I almost never use, I'll likely cancel that. All the credit card options are pretty terrible. I already have a very minimal footprint but will further reduce across the board.

Apple and tech culture

I'm a nerd. I enjoy writing about this stuff and have for at least 25 years. Going forward there will be a tone shift in what and where I write as well as in what I consume in the way of podcasts or videos. Any further mention of Apple will likely be connected in some way to my process of migration. I doubt I have more than a handful of readers but I write for enjoyment as well. It helps to clarify. Writing this post is helping me clarify my process and details. So, I'm looking forward to writing up details about what is working for me and what's not. Honestly, I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

In terms of consumption, I'd already cut way back on podcasts that discuss the Apple ecosystem as there's little diversity. With few exceptions it's upper middleclass, privileged white dudes talking about their overconsumption and the latest Apple rumors. I have no idea yet what exists in the way of Linux oriented podcasts though I've been watching quite a few YouTubes in that area and enjoying them. Will likely continue enjoying those especially if they're offering practical how-to content. Same for written content.

I'm glad to have begun this journey and looking forward to learning and experimenting again.

A final, semi-related side-note. As I write all this I am not unaware of the shitstorm raging in the US. I'm fully aware of the violence capitalism, neoliberalism and now, a fledgling dictatorship. And in the background the climate crisis growing worse by the month. Without getting too personal, I'll just say that since late 2022 I've had a persistent labyrithitis which basically means I've got vertigo 24-7. It fully sucks. While my brain has adapted to this and I'm able to mostly function it's sorta like having my head floating in a fish-bowl instead of being attached to a body. In other words, while I can drive short distances to our town 5 miles away I wouldn't feel safe or comfortable driving long distances.

As much as I love living in a tiny house in the woods I've always been an activist. I should be in the streets. I should be doing more. I know I'm not doing my part. And it fully sucks ass. For now I'll donate what I can afford. And as I am able to write I'll share my efforts (past, present and future) to disentangle from capitalism and the state. Right now this is taking the form of my further reducing my personal contribution to the fucked up machine of capitalism. I know, it's tiny, perhaps just symbolic. But it's what I can do in this moment.

I hope folks are staying safe and finding the ways they can help one another as they increase their resistance to this shit storm.

When computing and tech are turned against us

"Here's to the fascist ones.
The boot lickers.
The sycophants.
The toadies.
The people who roll the fuck over.
The ones that have no spine…

They're not fond of integrity
And they have no respect for human decency…"
-Source

I was deeply disgusted when I woke up a few days ago to the news that Apple has chosen to return to advertising on what many now view as a Nazi social media platform. I'm not surprised. Any social justice ethics put forth by multinational capitalists can only ever be a pretense. As a capitalist seeking to maximize profits Apple will often make decisions I don't like. Given the role of its owner in current events, Apple's choice to advertise on X is something I will not ignore.

I've been an Apple user since around 1993 when I bought a Mac Color Classic for school. In the years after I delved further into the role of geek in my little activist community. By 1998 I was building our various websites and doing the design and layout for flyers, pamphlets and newsletters. I was the nerd that kept the network going in our housing co-op or otherwise did tech support for the few fellow activist folk that had started using computers. I'd moved past just using the computer as a tool and had begun to enjoy it as a device. I went from being a bicycle mechanic to managing a computer lab at our local adult literacy council where I also rebuilt our volunteer-student database system. In those days Apple was the scrappy underdog of computer manufactures and it was easier to root for them.

In the years since I've mostly made my living sitting in front of a Mac or, more recently, an iPad. It's both work and entertainment. I never doubted that Apple was just another multinational corporation doing capitalism. Nevertheless, I let myself get comfortable in their ecosystem because I enjoyed using the devices and the software. Add to that their persistent messaging that they valued social justice, diversity and were willing to make a meaningful attempt at responsible resource use and climate-related accounting. Still capitalism but seemingly better than most others in these regards. But it's obvious that Apple is no different than any other multinational corporation. It may still wear the costume of social progressivism and multiculturalism but that's just marketing makeup.

Moving beyond the Apple ecosystem

The conundrum in trying to make ethical choices is that all hardware is made by capitalists. But for the first time in years I'll be looking for alternative options when I next need to purchase new hardware which won't be for a long while because I don't buy tech unless I really have to. My current devices should last another 6-10 years if I replace the batteries once per device. The only exception might be the iPhone 13 which only has 3 years of use on it. With another battery I'd guess I can get another 3-4 years out of it. I'll evaluate where things are then. Same for my iPad further down the line. I was going to replace my 6 year old AppleWatch this fall but no, I'll just skip it. I like having the watch for fitness tracking but I now have a pretty good idea of how my daily activity translates into in terms of calories and balance with my diet. I don't actually need the watch anymore.

But there's also a larger question beyond my personal consumption of Apple products (and computer tech generally). I'm also questioning what and how I contribute to the internet. For years I've enjoyed writing about my use of apps and hardware on my website/blog as well as on forums, most recently the Mac Power Users forum and Mastodon. Though my voice and contribution is tiny, many such voices add up to a much larger online culture and "community". There's a whole cottage industry of tech culture, websites, podcasts and YouTube for Apple enthusiasts and we all contribute our time and energy via posts, views, etc. While I know my personal contribution is minuscule I'm not sure not sure I want to add to this anymore.

At this point it's not just about Apple so much as it is about the tech industry as a whole. I grew up loving science fiction and shows like Star Trek. I wanted to view computer tech as tools to be used by humans to better learn and communicate. I wanted to believe that computers would help us get along better by deepening our understanding of our world and one another. That they, in conjunction with the internet, would bring us together and increase the potential for, and likelihood of, cooperation.

And yes, certainly, some of that has happened. For example, Wikipedia! But it would seem the trend is for computers and the internet to be used in more harmful ways, increasing social insecurity, competition and a persistent, general state of anxiety for many. Perhaps most notable is our use of "social media" which, for many people, may be the primary use of the internet. I may be projecting but it would seem to me that when the most popular terms to describe online activity are terms such as doomscrolling and enshitification, perhaps that's an indicator that we've taken a wrong turn.

A strange dynamic of social media is that it both comforts and agitates us. In any given moment of scrolling a timeline we'll likely find ourselves swinging wildly between anger to laughter, frustration to momentary contentment. It seems to create a never-satisfied seeking for a fulfillment that never comes. Never satisfied, always scrolling for more. I quit Facebook 10 years ago, Twitter 3 years ago and finally quit Instagram a few months ago. But so many others are still trapped in it.

And now the most recent developments would seem to be the rise of an increasingly brazen tech oligarchy in the US that accompanies the rise of AI, a questionable technology that pumps out misinformation and requires even more energy resulting in even more carbon emissions being dumped into the atmosphere. Taken as a whole, the tech industry under capitalism seems to have become yet another crisis in the larger polycrisis.

It didn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be this way. I suppose I'm stubborn and I want to cling to my vision of a more idealistic version of both humanity and computer technology. For the foreseeable future I expect to continue to use computers daily but I have no illusions about Apple or the industry as a whole. The shining lights of the internet and computer technology are personal websites and projects like Wikipedia and Linux. Perhaps ActivityPub and the Fediverse will have a place in a healthier, non-capitalist web but its use of the timeline seems somewhat problematic in that it reinforces a tendency to habitual doomscrolling pioneered by capitalist social media products.

Minimizing my use of Apple Services

I can't afford to just switch to Linux. But I've begun a process of reducing my use of Apple services. I cut my Music subscription 5 months ago. My only subscription is iCloud so I'll begin experimenting with a transition to a mix of on-device storage and local-network storage for all my file needs. I don't purchase media or apps unless I really want or need them. Going forward I'll seek to draw this down to near zero. I'll have to really think on how to manage my photos as I currently have that in iCloud Photos. I'll begin looking at alternatives.

I'm not in a rush as I expect to be using the iPhone and iPads for several years. My plan for the moment is to begin the transition. I see enough chatter about this to know I'm not alone in thinking about this. I'm hoping and expecting to see more people sharing similar thoughts and solutions. Apple has made their hardware and services ecosystem safe and easy to use. My elder relatives all use Apple devices with almost no need for support and that will likely continue for the foreseeable future.

I have my 2012 Mac Mini as a back-up device. It's shut down on a shelf. I may go ahead and start experimenting with Linux on that. The iPad has spoiled me. A part of why I prefer it over the Mac is simply that it is so easy and low maintenance. In terms of computing I've come to value spending less time mucking about with configuring hardware. The Mac, while more complex than an iPad is still very easy to use. But Linux would be new to me and it would be a step towards complexity that I'm hesitant to embrace. I'll think on it a bit but it does seem like the only ethical option at this point.

Becoming an Activist Part 2: The Memphis Social Ecology Project

This is part 2 in a series. Part 1, Becoming an activist. This post is meant to serve as an overview of the development and history of 10 years of our active community building efforts in Memphis from 1992-2002. My hope is to provide enough of a description that the reader might get an idea of what they themselves might take on in their own community. Anyone can do this.

When I moved to Memphis in the fall of 1992 I was deep into my exploration of Murray Bookchin's Social Ecology. I won't try to explain that here other than to describe it simply as green communitarianism or anarchism. You can read more here. But the framework and philosophy excited me and was the foundation of my organizing effort.

The little garden in the courtyard. Too few corn plants with too much space between them. Whoops!

My first step in Memphis beginning in late winter 1993 was hanging a flyer at the mailboxes of our apartment complex seeking anyone interested in putting a community garden in the grass courtyard. I'd gotten permission from the apartment manager months before and was eager to get started. I only got a response from two neighbors but was thrilled to have any interest. It's been 30 years so I don't recall many details other than three or four of us put in a small garden starting with peas, lettuce and broccoli in the early spring. Then later we added corn, squash, peppers and sunflowers. It was far from a wild success but it was a start. I spent the first couple of years just getting to know the neighborhood. In an effort to be helpful and get to know local activists I'd found and begun volunteering at the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center which was located just a mile away.

By the third year I was beginning to feel at home in the neighborhood. I was a regular at the two coffee shops down the street and meeting a nice mix of folks between the two. One was run by a small community of Russian Orthodox Christians and an acquaintance/friend that ran coffee shop at night there had expressed an interest in putting a community garden in at the little church they ran in the neighborhood. I put in a hand to help get it started.

The other was more of a college hangout and I'd had enough conversations with a handful of people there that I felt it was time to get started with the next project which would be a weekly study group oriented towards exploring Social Ecology and more generally green anarchism, libertarian municipalism, radical feminism and social-environmental justice. Over the course of months the topics of the study group ranged from understanding NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) to the then emerging indigenous Zapatista movement in the state of Chiapas Mexico to local labor issues to the status of US political prisoners including Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal among others.

From the outset we wanted to explore the ideas but also wanted to engage in direct action in the neighborhood. We wanted to put the ideas to work. A handful of folks that had expressed interest in conversations started meeting in the little meeting room in the back of the shop and within a few weeks we were packing the room full. I was organizing everything under the name Memphis Social Ecology Project.

A few months later the coffee shop owner agreed to let us use the shop attic as a space to run a little info shop. We cleaned it up, built some shelving and started gathering a mix of zines, magazines and books. It was a bigger space so we moved our study group to the attic and our little collective was born. We ran the "Liberated Existence Resource Center" and study group out of the attic for the first couple of years. Our next big project was a shared house rented by seven of us. The idea was that we'd be able to learn and do more from a shared house as well as save money which could be directed to projects.

We called it Douglass House simply because that was the street the house was located on but I'd assumed/hoped that the street may have been named after Frederick Douglass. As hoped and planned Douglass house became a beehive of activity. The first iteration of Memphis Food-not-bombs was based out of our house and kitchen. We continued to run the study group and resource center at the coffee shop.

The group of us living at Douglass House published a variety of zines, brochures and a mix of hand goods that we sold at local punk rock shows to raise funds to buy books to sell at those shows or loan out at the resource center. Our collective also networked with other activists around the country and we regularly traveled to protests and conferences. We traveled to the Nevada to protest the proposed storage of nuclear waste on Shoshone lands and to Chattanooga to protest the Watts Bar Nuclear Reactor. We attended organizing conferences in New Orleans, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.

In 1998 we joined the young and blossoming movement to create microradio stations around the country. We ordered a low-power fm broadcasting kit and Free Radio Memphis was born and would be managed by a new collective dedicated to this one project. The Constructive Interference Collective met weekly to manage the station which broadcast out of Douglass House. It was exhilarating.

The station was on the air for a year in that location expanding from several hours, several days a week to several hours every day to 24-7 by the end of the year. There was a lot of interest and before long we had a waiting list of volunteers, proposed shows and hosts. You can read more in this article published by the local weekly newspaper, The Memphis Flyer currently archived on the Internet Way Back Machine. During that first year we co-organized Memphis Against Racism, a fairly large counter protest to a KKK rally on MLK day and Free Radio Memphis was in the middle of the planning and promoting the counter protest as well as covering the day and the fallout in the days after. Video clip of the day YouTube.

It was around this time that we got notice from the FCC that they had been notified by an employee of the Memphis NPR affiliate that we were broadcasting. They ordered us to shut down. Our cat and mouse game had begun. We did shut down the station but not because of the FCC order. After several years in Douglass House we formed a housing co-op in 1998 and purchased a large neighboring house which we dubbed the deCleyre Co-op. And here's a video just before we moved in.

Before proceeding I'll pause to point out that all of these folks building projects with one another and others in the community were simply self-managing. There was no hierarchy, no boss, no income generated from the projects. Not only was our work all volunteer but was often at cost to ourselves which we paid for with our day jobs. There was no special training involved. We were just people interested in a vision of social ecological justice and were willing to spend our free time working to create projects that we thought would help bring that vision to life.

It's also important to note here that a part of this life that may not be apparent in describing the projects was that while our activism was the priority we were also had to pay all the normal bills so everyone had at least a part time job. But because we were a communal household costs were shared and so were less. This is key in allowing for work, activism and also FUN.

Julie and I in the deCleyre garden in the second summer.

We settled into deCleyre in the Spring of 1998. One of our first projects was to begin digging up the outsized front lawn and put in a garden. We were also making plans to get the radio station back on the air. We were also turning the larger ground-floor room into the new space for the Infoshop/resource center. Put up book shelves and on all of the walls and used the large hall closet as the zine library.

Our radio station set-up

By mid-summer everything was ticking along. The garden was well under way and the radio station was back on the air. Two new projects were the establishment of a local of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) as well as a new almost-monthly practice of hosting community potlucks.

FCC agent Doug in the process of confiscating our equipment.

On Wednesday, September 23, 1998 an agent of the FCC showed up with US Marshals and the Memphis Fire Department (to help remove the antenna from the roof). Our broadcast equipment was confiscated and we were shut down. We posted the update on our website and not long after another station that had shut down before having equipment seized offered to send us theirs.

Me broadcasting from the parking lot of a punk rock show

On October 31, 1998 we went mobile and came back online as Black Cat Radio. We broadcast from various locations out of the trunk of a car. We did a broadcast from several local punk rock shows including one that required we attach the antenna to the fire escape of a building. In hindsight it was kinda crazy. After several broadcasts from the top floor of a car garage we were caught again on November 18th and the three collective members broadcasting were arrested and charged with theft of services as we had "stolen" electricity. Uh huh. Unfortunately that marked the end of our micro radio broadcasting.

But deCleyre was just getting started. Part 3 is coming soon.

Becoming an "activist"

In these early days of the new Trump administration we've experienced something entirely new: The early days of fascism or an attempt at fascism and we seem largely unprepared and confused about how to respond. I don't have the answers and I currently live in the woods in a very rural area of Missouri. I'm somewhat isolated so I don't feel like I'm in a position to be actively organizing in a way that I can see would be useful. But I can write and something about my early efforts as an activist learning about organizing in Missouri and later neighborhood/community organizing in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1990s. Americans need to rediscover what it means to be active citizens or what we often refer to without much thought as simply activists. Perhaps stories such as this might provide folks with some ideas about how to move forward.

Ask yourself, what do I think an activist is? Ask yourself, am I an activist? If you don't think of yourself as an activist, perhaps it's time to change that or at least begin to think about why you don't and also why you think you should be exempt from that responsibility. I've always thought of activism as simply being an active citizen, which is to say, taking the responsibility of citizenship, seriously, and engaging with it. I've long argued that most of our problems in the United States become worse or exist in the first place because citizens do not take their responsibilities seriously. My own upbringing is the perfect example. I grew up in a family that was apolitical. I don't remember politics being discussed at all. Civic responsibility was not something I ever thought about until I went off to college in 1987.

As a part of my college orientation, I was assigned a book to read, and it happened to be a biography of Gandhi who I knew nothing about, but I believe it was the reading of that book that began a shift in my perception of my responsibilities as a human being and a citizen. At some point during the first couple of years of college, I began learning about organizations like Amnesty International and I began attending the meetings of the college "World Peace Group" which was basically a small group of anti-war progressive activists. My understanding was still pretty basic, but these were all new ideas to me and it set me on a path of thinking differently and it was the beginning of my political education. It was also the very beginning of my thinking of myself as an activist.

At some point in my third year of college I came across a brochure about the Greens that was being distributed at another college campus I was visiting. I had never heard of what seemed to be a generic term, but I was becoming interested in environmental activism, and so it caught my eye. As it turns out picking up that brochure prove to be a pivotal moment for me personally. The brochure presented a vision of a different kind of society, one that appeal to me immediately, and so I went searching for more information and it led me down a rabbit hole that I've been in ever since. Within a few weeks I had decided of picking up the brochure I decided I would start a local Greens group. I'd never done such a thing. I was not comfortable speaking in front of people and had never made any attempt to organize a group of any kind. At that point, I was just winging it. This was 1989 and there wasn't an Internet as we know it today so I was scrounging around for information. I used that first brochure to make a few phone calls and gather up more printed materials which I copied and distributed. I set up a meeting date.

To my great surprise and horror, the first meeting was very well attended with a room that was full of people and overflowing. I was terrified. I've been reading the literature for several weeks at this point and was confident enough to stumble through some sort of rudimentary presentation and answer questions afterward. I passed around a clipboard together names and phone numbers and I believe that after a brief conversation, a second meeting date was set for those that wanted to come back. I spent the next few weeks putting out more flyers and brochures. I and a couple others used a large sheet to paint a banner that simply read "Be Green" with a sunflower (the logo used by the Greens at that time) between the two words and hung it on the walking bridge that organizations used to advertise events. I kept reading. The second meeting was again well attended, and we continued on from there with meetings every month. With a single decision and a few weeks of effort I'd become an "activist".

We began setting up a table at our student union where we would sit with our brochures and talk to folks who expressed interest. We joined in a larger effort to organize Earth Day 1990 (this was the renewal of the original 1970 Earth Day and it became a regular event nationally in the years since). Over the next couple of years our new group organized protests of the first Gulf War, attended a regional environmental conference, tabled, put in a community garden and organized workshops and teach-ins. When I graduated I left behind a group that continued on for several years. I moved on to Memphis, Tennessee, where I would begin again.

Coming soon, part two will explore building community gardens, pirate radio, a housing co-op and a good bit more!

Divided, we fall

I gave up on the two party system decades ago when I realized that any pretense that the US was democratic was just that, pretense. That the underlying system was, in fact, stacked for capitalism against people. The crisis we see today is the continued unfolding of that reality but it's gotten far worse. But this was the logic of the system, the design of the system. It was predictable and should have been foreseen.

This morning I forced myself to listen to the current episode of Jon Stewart's podcast which I normally don't listen to. This interview with Hakeem Jeffries, representative for Brooklyn seems to affirm just how broken the current political process is, but also, just how broken the Democratic Party is. They still think they are in the game. They still think "reaching across the aisle" has meaning. They're still playing by a rulebook from 10 years ago. They're still trying to use the legal framework of history to control fascists. Trump and his fascists do not bother with the law. Isn't this obvious by now?

In all of this interview I heard nothing to indicate that the Democrats understand the immediate crisis or the deeper institutional, systemic crisis.

The Republican Party is now fascist, the Democratic Party is now a pointless sideshow. Grassroots Democratic activists will dislike hearing that kind of thing and they'll continue to resist. In the short term elected Democratic Senators and Representatives will do their press conferences and protestors will gather in support and they might get injunctions and a few small legal stalls. If street protests gather steam with numbers and frequency, if real resistance is show in support of elected Democrats then things will get interesting. If a real mass movement comes out I'd expect Trump to come down hard. Will it get to that point?

That's all in reference to the current moment.

There's also the question of longer-term resistance. Under the umbrella of the Democratic Party as it currently exists it will flail and fail because the current party resists the Left. The current crisis is not just Trump and the Fascist Party transferring power to oligarchs, it's also the decades long failure of the status quo which the Democratic Party is seen to defend. They view their role as defending the Constitution, the rule of law and the long-standing institutions of government. This last bit, the institutions and bureaucracy, are what so many view as fundamental to the problem. Why?

From the new MAGA right the messaging is that these institutions are inefficient, wasteful and that in many cases they should not exist in the first place. This is especially true when the institutions are a part of the domestic social safety net, foreign aid or regulation. That's why they're trying to tear it all down. Does this solve deeper problems, the crises we face? Of course not. But this is a fundamental disagreement between the two parties that has existed for many decades. It's not resolvable. It would seem that the Right has recognized this and has decided it's no longer interested in maintaining that status quo. The plan seems to stop pretending and to just go for IT, which is to say, no more pretense of democracy.

CHANGE is now happening. I don't see how the old institutions hold. Fascism is here and it has momentum and motivation that's been building for years. In the short term I'm not sure the Left will rise to the occasion. I'm outside the loop looking in but from my tiny house in the woods it seems like the framework of the resistance is the side that just lost the election. That's a real indicator. The side that lost was (and is) in conflict with itself.

Simplified: younger progressives beat down by older white middle class moderates that have dominated the Democratic Party. It's nothing new. We've seen glimpses of the potential energy of the progressives with the anti-Zionist campus activism last year but it was beat down. It didn't get the broad support it needed and should have got. That's the energy that's needed now.

Frankly, I don't think the comfortable, moderate white middle class base of the Democratic Party has the stamina or commitment to resist on its own. And the progressives can't do it on their own.

I hope I'm wrong but I don't expect the resistance to last long. One day protests won't cut it. This is a crisis that requires all day every day protests. Other countries do it. But the US?

I didn't expect to be importing CDs in 2025

If you had told me 4 years ago that I'd be importing cds in 2025 I would have scoffed but here I am, importing CDs. I cancelled Apple Music several months ago because I'd gotten in the habit of just playing a lot of lofi videos on YouTube. I'd go weeks hardly listening to anything in Apple Music. I've not really missed it. That said, I realized that bits of my library seemed to be missing. Albums I knew I had imported years ago were missing songs. While I was out in the storage shed today I saw my old boxes of CDs and brought them inside. Really enjoying the process of revisiting CDs I've not looked at or played in years.

Look at this gem!

The flip side of crisis is opportunity

Remember: they want us to be afraid. The way to resist is build community and solidarity by coming together in our neighborhoods. It is feeding each other at potlucks. It is organizing neighborhood defense and mutual aid care. It is making the focus of our lives building solidarity with neighbors. Organize. Talk. Organize. Celebrate with each other.

We build resistance by building community SOLIDARITY.

And it doesn't hurt to fuel it with some righteous fucking anger. A favorite of mine from the 1990s was Rage Against the Machine.

And it doesn't hurt to study the history of people's resistance in the US. In my time in Memphis we ran a small info shop library out of the deCleyre co-op and it was stocked full of such books. At various points we also created newsletters, study groups, action campaigns and a couple of mini-conferences that mixed our effort to explore the people's history of resistance with our day-to-day actions in Memphis.

As we explored the history of indigenous resistance we also campaigned for the release of American Indian Movement political prisoner Leonard Peltier with marches and multi-day campouts at the Federal building in downtown Memphis. As we studied the history of early radical, direct action labor movement of the late 1800s and the Wobblies in the early 1900s we actively supported local labor organizing.

The US was built on genocide, slavery and white supremacy but along with that was a constant resistance to break down the systems put in place by the white patriarchy. Knowing the rich tapestry of that resistance can feed our struggle today.

Yesterday a friend shared this video of neighbors in Tennessee coming to the defense of a family whom was being targeted by ICE agents. I shared with a family messages thread and young relative replied that he was terrified of what was coming in the next four years. As I read his reply I was reminded of the likelihood that he and many other Americans are not aware of the deep history of freedom struggles in the US. Of course I can't know what he and others know or don't know. It's been a long time since I was in school but I don't recall the people's history being taught. And with good reason.

The history of people's struggles can serve as the building blocks for a foundation of resistance. That history is our cultural heritage and it serves to inspire as well as to inform us what has been done before. It is a glimpse of what is possible when we work together. Most of what we face now is just a repeat of the old and never ending repression and system to maintain the power structures of privilege. And our resistance has been there the whole time.

Perhaps, perhaps, in the long trail of time, everything we go through in the next few years will prove to be the cultural kickstart, a vaccination that was needed to reboot that part of our cultural story that his been forgotten in recent decades. It would be quite a thing to see us rediscover the joy and beauty of deep solidarity and direct action. This is as much a part of our cultural heritage as white supremacy and genocide.

Nothing we do going forward is going to be easy. It's going to be a huge, painful mess to work through. Only time will tell how we do.

Micro.blog is a business not a community

Rather than get into the details of the recent (and ongoing) dust-up between Manton, Vincent and Adam it occured to me that it might be more helpful to write about something no-one (that I've seen) has mentioned. Stepping back and viewing it from a distance it looks like a problem of CIS white men building businesses that purport to create "communities". Frame it up in that context and the idea starts to seem absurd. There are now several of these blog services-as-communities that have been created over the past few years. Each purports to offer a friendly, safe "community" that is also a part of the open web. It's meant to be an alternative to the silos of corporate microblogging services that are subject to the rule of more powerful CIS white men.

You can probably see where I'm going with this.

I've been using micro.blog since 2018 and I became a paying customer a couple years ago when I became frustrated with hosting on WordPress. But I knew right-off that online spaces owned and ruled by individuals cannot be communities. But more to the point, they would be reflective of the stated values and unstated priorities of the owner. At the end of the day, it is a space subject to rules created by a business owner selling a service. They might have the best of intentions or they might not. We can only see what we see from the outside. But make no mistake, it's theirs not ours. We may own our words in our blogs but they own the social network that differentiates the space from standard blog hosting.

I appreciate the time and effort Manton has put into building Micro.blog. Countless hours and commitment, I would never want such a responsibility. But ultimately it is a for-profit business, it's not a community. The same could be said of the other new blog services that offer easy-to-get started blog hosting with variations of community timelines and blog discovery. They're all (to my knowledge) businesses owned by CIS white men.

I see a few people who host on micro.blog currently casting about for alternatives. Some have mentioned Pika and Bear, both of which look like great blog hosting services. But at the end of the day, unless you are hosting your blog on a computer in your actual home that you can see with your eyes, you're going to be paying a for-profit company to host for you. They may or may not have values or engage in practices that you don't agree with.

The real messy bit is when we tie our blogs into services that try to offer additional features of discovery, timelines and proprietary commenting. That's when the business owner and HIS priorities and HIS value system begin to shape our human social experience. When we invest our time and communication in the neighborhood infrastructure that is solely owned by one CIS white guy we should expect that it will be an experience mediated by his design and values. And though we've all been calling these spaces communities I think we would be better served to re-contextualize them. Real community spaces cannot be owned and defined by one person. These are social networks and that's all.

What to do? Over the past year I began to reckon with the fact that I wasn't connecting with people at Micro.blog. This was not a space I fit into and while I admire Manton's commitment to helping people publish on the open web, I also recognized that I had some reservations about the affect of publishing in the context of a social network only he defines so I began the process of moving my blog back to my original host and have mostly transitioned my conversations to Mastodon. Mastodon can also be a messy place but it feels more open and more reflective of humanity while also not being a free-for-all. I have an account on social.coop which runs as a democratic co-op and, importantly, the parameters of who I can find and interact with are not defined by one person. At the moment it seems to me that the Fediverse and specifically Mastodon, seems like the most open, self definable non-corporate, decentralized option for engaging with people online.

A final note, of the various posts I've read about the specific situation I mentioned at the beginning of this post I'd suggest reading what Holly and Annie wrote. Both are excellent and dig in to what's going on.

Why Aren't You In The Hague!: Journalists Dragged Out Of Blinken Press Conference]]> https://beardystarstuff.net/posts/2024-01-15.html https://beardystarstuff.net/posts/2024-01-15.html Wed, 15 Jan 2025 09:05:05 CST 2024-01-15

Days of ice and snow

An ice storm rolled through here 10 days ago and then a few days later, snow. Beautiful and destructive with quite a few trees breaking under the weight of it all. We were without power for the first 2.5 days. My cabin was 28 the morning of the third day but it was an interesting and welcome break from the norm of assumed comfort. I generally keep my cabin around 55 during the winter and enjoyed the challenge of greater discomfort for a couple of days. I like to be reminded that our current era of convenient comfort is a blip in the overall arc of human history and not something that should be assumed to be a given in the future.

Wildfires in California explain the recent climate-art protests

Remember the outrage and confusion when climate protesters threw soup on works of art by Van Gogh and others? A better framing of those protests is this: All of human culture, human heritage is on the line. All of it. In the medium to long-term human civilization as we have known it will end. It cannot survive as it has because the scale of it, as it has been thus far, is too much to be sustained in a future of drastically destabilized climate.

These wildfires are just a first glimpse of the early days of the climate emergency. The destruction of art, culture and our heritage is already happening around the planet where it is not protected by hardened infrastructure such as the Getty Villa museum. The alarms are all around us now and have been for some time. We have ensured the worst case scenarios.

Grounds of Getty Museum in LA Catch Fire

"IN THE LINE OF FIRE. The grounds of the Getty Villa museum caught fire Tuesday as a fast-moving blaze continues to engulf the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in western Los Angeles, forcing thousands to evacuate as many lost their homes, reports Alex Greenberger for ARTnews. The museum building and staff were not harmed, and it helped that it was closed to the public on Tuesday. "Irrigation was immediately deployed throughout the grounds Tuesday morning," a museum statement said, and its "galleries and library archives were sealed off from smoke by state-of-the-art air handling systems. The double-walled construction of the galleries also provides significant protection for the collections." The museum houses over 44,000 objects, including Roman, Greek, and Etruscan antiquities dating from 6,500 BC to 400 AD, and it's one of two Getty venues in the city"

Winter Fungi

Oak Mazegill, Fomitopsis quercina

Found this interesting little fungi, perhaps Dacrymyces spathularia Fan-shaped Jelly Fungus

"In November, over a year into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, a report by the Gaza-based Community Training Center for Crisis Management produced a grim statistic: “Nearly all children in the embattled Palestinian enclave believe their death is imminent — and nearly half of them want to die.”

That's interesting.

“Violence has no place in politics.” Politicians say this any time political violence is used by or on behalf of the victims of this violent system, and they’re saying it again after Luigi Mangione has been charged with the assassination of the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson. This video is a vehement response to that statement)

Dylan Roof killed 9 Black people with the motivation to incite a race war—NOT charged with terrorism.

Luigi Mangione killed 1 CEO with the motivation to rebuke healthcare injustice—charged with terrorism.

Class warfare is when wealthy CEOs are a protected class but working Black people are not.

Note: This was originally written as a comment in a thread at the Mac Power Users forum which is, as the name would indicate,a community of Apple nerds.
Federico Viticci is back on the iPad and wants everyone to know. Le sigh. I've mostly stopped reading MacStories in recent years because it started to feel too centered on his back and forth between Mac and iPad. Sort of a weird "I built my content creator brand on using the iPad but now I have doubts" which actually worked out well for him as he played to the conflict and drama as a sort of story arc. At least, that's the way it's felt to me for a few years. And good for him as it seems he's mostly made that work.

But as a reader I wasn't there for that. I'm interested in useful explorations about using the iPad. It's experiments with iPad modularity, useful iPad apps and discussion of workflows and use cases that keep my attention. But his current article is one that digs into what it means to use the iPad as a tool in a larger toolbox and I enjoyed it.

The weird thing about te debate about the iPad as a computer and tool for working is the ridiculous idea that we only have one device, one tool. It's just silly and always has been. In 2024 there are billions of humans using billions of computing devices. Phone, tablet, laptop, desktop or something else, chances are, most here use a mix of devices for different tasks, different workflows. If your brain can only handle managing or learning one device, well, okay. I know plenty of folks that just get by with an iPhone or other smart phone. There are some that get everything done in a browser on a Chromebook.

I've complained many times that tech conversation and coverage is lopsided in that it's dominated by the voices of a handful of podcaster/YouTuber pundits and techfluencers. And in the case of the iPad that has meant that certain use cases get talked to death while many are never discussed at all. It leads to an incomplete understanding of what's possible and what's useful and this has certainly been true of the iPad discussion.

If you're a Mac user and you need to scan documents you don't freak out that the Mac does not have a built in document scanner. You use a separate scanner or an iPhone with a scanner app. Need to print? You use a printer. If you're using a Mac Mini you'll need a keyboard, mouse, screen and maybe a web cam. Oh, and let's not forget, if you're using a Mac and want to get on the internet, you'll need to tether to an iPhone or use an internet service with an external modem.

You see where this is going. The Mac also needs additional hardware to be a complete and useful solution. And that's okay, we don't need to dwell on it. We just accept it and move on to finding the additional hardware needed. No need for debate. In the real world most of use use a mix of tools depending on our jobs, tasks, etc.

Even podcasters don't just use a Mac! They use external microphones and likely quite a few other devices attached to their Mac. I'm not a podcaster but I've been interviewed for a few and in those cases I just used my iPad for the call and (gasp!) my iPhone to record my local audio. A simple version of what Federico outlined in his article as his podcasting solution. It's okay to use secondary devices and tools to get the job done. I thought this all along and wondered why it was an issue for him. I used an iPhone, he's using a microphone with a USB box that records the audio onto an SD card. I'm glad he got it sorted.

He goes on to explain a variety of other things he's doing such as capturing video for YouTube versions of his podcasts. In all of this he's using various improvements and features of iPadOs that have been added in recent years. For example, he has no problem using the Files app for transferring large files from external drives to his iPad for uploading. I appreciate that Federico highlights the improved Files app and support for UVC.

It's a given that previous versions of iPadOS were more limited just as previous versions of the iPad hardware were more limited. An M1, M2 or M4 iPad Pro with iPadOS 18 is far more capable than a 2018 iPad Pro with iPadOS 15. After several years of near constant complaint, it's refreshing to see him acknowledging, even celebrating, the improvements introduced to the iPad. Watching him explore new options and solutions makes for a far more interesting and empowering conversations. He's obviously having a lot of fun sharing his rediscovery of the delight in using the iPad.

Welcome back Federico.

Split gill mushrooms and other woodland treasures

My daily outdoor work in past weeks is the removal of invasive honeysuckle and autumn olives. Ugh, it's everywhere. Then there is eastern red cedar, Juniper virginiana, which is not a cedar at all. While it is native to our region, due to fire suppression it has become somewhat invasive, often taking over disturbed areas that would otherwise be populated by a greater diversity of species. We have patches of thick cedar that I'm thinning out a bit. In some cases the cedars are so densely packed together that many of them have already died due to lack of light. I'm going to cut quite a few of the still surviving smaller trees as they are so close together that they're not healthy and are not allowing the growth of other species in the understory.

The area I've been working on was a campground 40 years ago and I've found various remnants of those days. This little sign was mostly buried at the base of a tree overgrown with honeysuckle.

When viewed from the top Split gill mushrooms, Schizophyllum commune might seem a bit plain. But a photo from below reveals a very different view!

The area I've been working on was a campground 40 years ago and I've found various remnants of those days. This little sign was mostly buried at the base of a tree overgrown with honeysuckle.

Sycamore Seed Pod

A furry, soft little Sycamore seed pod, so beautiful when viewed up close. I've really come to love and appreciate Sycamore trees. They can grow to be quite large and recover well from wind damage when other trees don't. Their bark is thin, shallow etched and often flakes off to reveal a smooth-skinned inner bark that varies in patches of color from white to gray to gray green. Beautiful. And they often grow near water with really interesting trunk and root formations. Such an interesting tree! In our woods they are usually the largest trees. The bark is medicinal and they can be tapped for their sap! Read more at Wikipedia!

There is a use case for Apple's Image Generation

I'm sure the tech pundit meme regarding Apple's AI image generation being broken and useless will continue. It's easier to repeat the meme than it is to think about how others might use the tech so I'll continue to pushback and suggest that normal users will actually find it very useful. It's not that hard, imagine for a moment you're a student doing a report or presentation or a neighborhood resident or non-profit employee doing a newsletter in Pages. You can use the clip art in Pages or you can use the new image generation. What's better?

The use case is better clip art or even photo substitution. Not everyone can afford to hire a professional illustrator or take a great photo. For each of these I opened Apple Notes, made a crude drawing, described how I wanted it to look and waited 10 seconds. Then I chose from a few images. In each case I found something that would make a newsletter or presentation far more interesting than clip art or no art at all.

See? See? That's the use case. That's it.

It seems ridiculous that supposed professional "content creators" and "tech journalists" make so little effort to understand a use case beyond themselves. It's just lazy cynicism because apparently cynicism (especially when it involves Apple) gets clicks.

# On the question of violence as a solution to our problems, I'm generally agreed with the Liberal Redneck's take that fits with many others: "You can only push people so far before they push back with the barrel of a gun, in broad daylight, to near universal acclaim."

Update on using the OBTF and Textastic for publishing from the iPad

I've been using the OBTF (One Big Text File) for about eight months now and I'm still finding it very useful as a daily starting point and home base for all note taking, journaling and writing. All my blog posts are written here too. Currently the file is 794 KB in size and Textastic has no problems handling that.

When I migrated my website away from micro.blog and over to my own hosting a couple months ago, I also moved the OBTF over to the root folder of the website so it sits along side of index.html and other pages for easy access via the file sidebar in Textastic.

When a post is ready to publish I share it to the appropriate Shortcut which creates a ready-to-upload new post file for stand alone full posts and also copies excerpts into the PastePal clipboard app and then sends me back to Textastic where I paste in the ready to use code to the appropriate files.

Textastic has a built-in FTP client which makes for easy upload of blog/html edits. The whole process is about as easy as any CMS I've used in the past. It's actually much easier than WordPress.

Of the apps I rely on the most Textastic remains a long-time favorite. I probably spend about half of my computing time in this app. Rather than rehash the details in yet another mini-review I'll refer to a few notes I made in a previous post.

]]> https://beardystarstuff.net/posts.html#2024-11-30-02 https://beardystarstuff.net/posts.html#2024-11-30-02 Sat, 30 Nov 2024 10:30:25 CST Hachures.]]> https://beardystarstuff.net/posts.html#2024-11-30-01 https://beardystarstuff.net/posts.html#2024-11-30-01 Sat, 30 Nov 2024 08:39:26 CST Wind the clock and want to recommend it. She gets it. ]]> https://beardystarstuff.net/posts.html#2024-11-29-03 https://beardystarstuff.net/posts.html#2024-11-29-03 Fri, 29 Nov 2024 20:11:50 CST I deleted my Facebook account nine years ago. I'd stopped using my Instagram account couple years ago, deleted it tonight. Done and done.

• NDN Collective
• Red Nation Podcast

Living in the early days of the collapse.

I go through life, for better or for worse, with myself at the center of it.

I don't know how any of us can break out of that perspective, the individual perspective, the individual will, the separation of me and not you, of I and not us.

Perhaps that lesson—unity—is the lesson all of humanity must learn before we can move on to anything better than what we have now. I think we must.