Following on from my last post about the passing of Michael Borland, it made me realize how important it is to reach out and connect with people online, and to say how much you appreciate their writing. 

It’s too easy to assume that we will all go on forever.

Very sad to hear just now about the death of Michael Borland. I never met him but have been following his blog for a while now. He came across as a thoroughly nice, upbeat guy despite incredible challenges from cancer, which I’m assuming finally killed him.

It’s always moving when a relative posts onto someone’s blog, not sure who they’re connecting with, but with the desire to let us know what has happened.

As of today, I have been blogging for a quarter of a century. Now there’s a scary thought.

Watched I Swear last night. What a lovely film.  Highly recommended.

(Especially if you are aware of the stoochie at The BAFTA Awards.)

It would appear that you can't teach this old dog new tricks. I let my enthusiasm for the new and shiny get the better of me when I posted about Current the other day.

I've been using it for a week or so now, and I just can't get used to the way it works. It may be me, it may be the app, but I've gone back, yet again, to NetNewsWire.

There are lots of other RSS readers out there, and friends have recommended a couple, so I'll still keep tinkering — but apologies if any of you were swayed by my enthusiasm and bought Current. 

I know I have written about this before, but I’m sitting here in my office listening to the sound of gunfire drifting over from the nearby woods and yet again feeling utterly bewildered at the idea of killing innocent creatures for fun. 

Once you’ve made that step, taking pleasure in the act of killing a living creature, what’s to stop you moving up the evolutionary food chain if you deem your quarry sufficiently lacking in value?

To say that RSS is a big part of my life is obviously an overstatement, but I have been using it since back in the day when people argued about the merits of its different flavours. And since deleting all of my social media accounts, it is principally how I interact with the web.

There are currently about 350 or so feeds in my Feedbin account. Some of them are news sites, although mostly technical and other subject-oriented news. I stay away from anything smacking of mainstream news with their  lists of things to be afraid of that you can do nothing about! But it’s mostly made up of blogs. Some of those blogs don’t get updated very often; some of them may never be updated again. But the great thing about RSS is it doesn’t matter, because I don’t have to go and consciously seek out those sites, but just wait patiently until something happens and it’s delivered to me. They don’t add any noise to my signal, but when they do post, I get to see it.

Although I have tried most of the RSS readers that have come and gone over the years, I’ve pretty much stuck with NetNewsWire since it began. There’s a bit of a backlash at the moment about the original design of NetNewsWire, which adopted the same sort of metaphor as an email inbox. We have a list of incoming posts, which you mark as read or unread, and you’re given a total of the unread, which sits ominously, making you feel guilty for not having got round to reading them. Up until now I’ve been willing to just shoulder that burden because none of the alternatives appealed to me.

But Jason Kottke, one of my all-time favourite bloggers, recently shared Current, which is a new attempt to make reading RSS feeds and ingesting the information they contain a more relaxed and pleasurable process. It’s actually proving really interesting.

Even if you don’t download the app, it’s well worth having a read at the thoughts that are behind it, in terms of user interface design and how we consume information.

And finally, if you’re not using RSS, why not?

Why is it that every police thriller these days has to have what I’m beginning to call “wankers in fancy dress”? Pumped up macho blokes in pseudo-military outfits walking in that strangely stylised way that they have as they burst into houses and search them with all their headgear on and microphones and cameras.

I watched One Battle After Another last night and there were lots of them in it. Wankers in fancy dress as far as the eye could see.

I occasionally, by mistake, catch footage of ICE as they terrorise America. More wankers in fancy dress.

How can they take themselves seriously?

It was on this day in 1945 that Auschwitz was liberated. Visiting that camp was one of the most profound experiences of my life. 

It is just inconceivable that we continue to demonize, dehumanize and persecute entire populations on the basis of perceived difference.

What does it take to learn?

Compelling drama, but I am struggling with the idea of a spy who has the keyboard sounds turned on on his iPhone...

If you are remotely close to anyone who has any power or influence and you see them making crazy decisions, have the courage to stand up and say, are you sure? Are you crazy? Have you lost the plot? 

You never know, asking these questions might make a difference…

The lunatics have always been in charge of the asylum. Anyone who wants to be “in charge” is a lunatic.

I have taken, and shared, dozens of photographs of this tree over the years but each time the tree is different, and so am I.

Most of the time, the two donkeys in the small field behind our house plod slowly, gradually munching their way around the field. But every once in a while, they will grab hold of their plastic hay basket, one handle in each of their mouths, and then run around the field side by side. If that’s not playing, I don’t know what is.

The video below is of my daughter’s cat, Cindy, demanding that Hannah play with her.

We used to watch lambs in the field behind our house when we were growing up. Each year, different lambs would play the same game of forming a line, jumping into a ditch, going back round again, and keeping this going for ages.

We think of play in animals, young animals, as being about learning skills, but they keep playing. The two donkeys must be nearly 30 years old, and they still play. Maybe they’re just young at heart?

I am using an audio transcription tool that's based on Apple’s on machine intelligence. It transcribed this short note (at the bottom of the screen grab) correctly. It is something in the most recent episode of Pluribus that I wanted to ask Mollie about. 

But goodness knows why it found it unacceptable to create a title for it!

Anyone who thinks that AI can write literature can only have seen reading as chewing gum for the soul.

“The decision is already in motion before the self arrives to claim it.” - Robert Salzman

My “self” is still kicking and screaming and refusing to accept this. “I” understand this intellectually, and can cite neuroscience to prove it, but “I” still feel that “I” am in control of my life.

Giving up that sense of control can feel like nihilistic drifting. But that is because I’m still burdened by a sense of there being somewhere else I’m meant to be, or something else I’m meant to be doing, instead of being fascinated by, and in awe of, this.

I am feeling very conflicted about buying a new iPhone. I’ve had iPhones since there were iPhones. I’ve never bought any computer other than a Mac. I have AirPods, an Apple TV, a HomePod, and an Apple Watch Ultra. I love them all and get a great deal of pleasure from using them, especially the way that they work so well together.

However I am feeling increasingly conflicted about using any US based big tech products, even Apple’s.

Back in the day it was easier to side with them as the underdogs, as the rebels. Steve Jobs was a feisty leader who, especially as the son of immigrants himself, would I am sure have told Trump to fuck off.

But Tim Cook, master at supply chain and architect of Apple’s phenomenal financial success, hasn’t. He has joined other tech leaders in arse licking their awful leader. Not only that, but Apple recently decided to cave to government opinion (not even formally expressed or requested) and removed apps that helped people to protect themselves from ICE.

Given the indications that the EU and the UK government are increasingly inclined to meddle in tech with moronic attempts at age verification and demands for back doors etc. I have no real confidence that Apple aren’t going to cave in and, for example, outlaw VPNs as they have in China.

And this is now, with the Swiss wanting very Draconian laws of access and the EU wanting to be able to see chat messages before they get into the end-to-end encryption system! Goodness knows what the political/regulatory/technical environment will be like in the future. I can only see it getting more and more controlling.

I am not mad enough to move to either PCs or Android, both of which are gruesome to use and at least as compromised as Apple. I have always admired Cory Doctorow’s willingness and ability to build an independent tech world for himself and may eventually head in that direction, but it is a daunting prospect.

I may be wrong, and things may change, but for the first time in a long time I’m unsure about my future tech choices.