Month: May 2025

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Apple has a new Pride Watchband. Ughh!

It’s well renown that Apple has always been a company that embraced the LGB community. There’s a reason, that back in the day, going into a gay bar was almost like going into an iPhone store display.

Over the years, I’ve looked with amusement and occasional interest at the Apple “Pride” Wallpapers. When the Apple Watch became available, I took interest in  their watch faces and matching bands. I think I may own one of their so called “Pride” bands.

That being said, there were very few of these bands that I liked.

If the photos do it justice, this year’s offering is abysmal. It really looks like someone just “Phoned it in.” There’s no grace, charm, or elegance.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Apple claims it was based on whatever vomitious iteration of the so called “Pride Flag” is in vogue now. 

Gay flag 2662347892.I’ve come to see the current banner of the LGBTQIA+xyz not as a “Pride Flag” but as a “Shame” flag.

A flag with which, I want no association, and feel no kinship. Today’s flag represents the commandeering of an entire community and the bastardization of what was once something that brightened the fronts of establishments.

The old flag was a simple rainbow, bright happy colors that made folks smile because they echoed the beauty of an actual rainbow. Some religious fundamentalists (primarily those who hated gay people for existing at all,) were offended, but generally, folks could look at a rainbow flag and smile despite their personal beliefs.

The flag of today appears as conflicted as the LGBTQIA+xyz community it represents. There is one mathematical view that the new flag accurately represents the TQIA+xyz agenda. If you look at the black stripe as the mathematical symbol “Greater Than” what you see is

TQIA+xyz > LGB

With each additional group that is added on the left side of the black stripe, more of the original rainbow representing the LGB part of the community is occluded.

3edef965 b1a6 4ecd 8407 99ca1ae8cf52 shutterstock 1106302064 15481563.Fully 1/3 of the rainbow is now occupied by the TQIA+xyz representation. If this progression continues, the rainbow itself will be gone entirely in another few years.

I can’t help but see this when I look as today’s so-called “Pride” flag. I see it as a warning, a “We’re coming for you,” message.

Even the color palette is discordant. Pastels overlaid on primary colors simply don’t look right.

In that, perhaps the new “Pride” flag is honest in its representation of the TQIA+xyz agenda, and what is being done to the community at large. What’s left of the old community, that is.

The other problem with the new flag is how nationalistic it appears. It reminds me of flags which in the past have symbolized oppression. There’s perhaps some truth to that as well, given the manner in which more conservative LGB folks are treated by the vocal “Inclusive” TQIA+xyz elements these days.

MFFP4ref AV1.I’d have hated to be the poor schmuck that was called upon to design Apple’s new watchband and wallpapers. 

Going into it they had to know that if they applied real artistic values, the design would be rejected. Had they used the flag’s color palette to make something interesting and beautiful, they’d probably have been accused of not “Properly” representing all the groups equally.

So I suppose they had no choice but to “Phone it in”. Their design constraints probably demanded equal volume of colors and thereby equal representation.

What they came up with, just looks too “busy” and very distracting.

I am grateful to Apple for trying. I’m also grateful for the reminder that June “Pride” will soon be upon us. For me this means that If I want to have dinner & drinks with any LGB friends in Palm Springs, I’d better do it soon. Otherwise we’ll be into July with the blistering heat pounding down on us. As more moderate, bordering on conservative gay men, we’re tolerated. But during Pride Month in Palm Springs it’s simply not a pleasant place to be.

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First yard work of the season.

Yes, it’s spring, and has been for a while, but up here, one day it’s freezing, the next you’re in shorts.

I typically leave the plants alone, even those we think of as weeds during this time of the year. My run of thumb is, “If it blooms, I’ll leave it so the bees have something to eat.”

The down side is that next season, there might be more weeds. The up side is that I’ve found a lot more native plants in this area have some of the nicest little blooms. Many are short lived, but they’re really neat. The bees like them, and that makes me smile.

It’s no skin off my nose to leave things be, until after the blooms are done. This year because of the wild variations in temp the normal Spring progression has been very weird.

For example, the mountain lilac is in full bloom and fragrant but there are definitely not the normal number of bees. Normally there would be a constant hum within the lilacs but not this year. I think the cold snaps may have harmed some of the local bee colonies. 

Then there’s the other possibility. Someone in the neighborhood poisoned the hell out of their yard which killed off the colonies. I hope the latter isn’t true but it’s an unfortunate likelihood.

Nonetheless, I’ll continue to provide a safe place where there are no pesticides.

That being said, yesterday, I was outside with the weed whacker and cut down the taller native plants whose flowering cycle was done. Most of the work was in the back yard. There are some plants that get tall and provide cover for snakes.

That is a problem because the dog has the run of the back yard and the last thing I need, is him scaring or harassing a rattlesnake. The dog is fast and agile, but I don’t know if he’d be able to avoid the strike much less understand the danger. Sometimes, he’s not the brightest bulb in the pack.

Case in point, here’s a picture of a poor snake we encountered on our walk a couple of days ago. This snake is in “Stick Mode”, because Jesse came round a corner on the trail and completely missed that it was there. Jesse never broke stride and walked right over the poor thing. Exposed like it was, the snake decided to be a “stick”.  This guy was maybe 2 feet long and isn’t poisonous but could just as easily been a rattler.

Today, my arms are rubber, and my shoulders, chest and back are a bit sore.

I could use a massage!

I have a love / hate relationship with the yard work, I mostly enjoy doing it but as I’m getting older, it takes more out of me and longer to fully recover.

I did the yard stuff after our usual walk. So I got my steps in, and was outside for a few hours. It wasn’t until after I came in that I remembered I’d been outside without my hat. On the plus side I remembered to put my gloves and eye protection on before I started working in the yard.

Often the first few times I work outside in the Spring, I’ll forget gloves or eye protection and only remember after something has been kicked up in my face, or I look down and notice I’m dripping blood from a cut on my hand or something. 

This time, I just ended up with a bunch of plant debris in my hair and down my shirt.

When I was done in the front yard. I was just about to go inside and let the breeze carry the clippings away. (There wasn’t much to speak of.) Then I remembered the neighbor across the street who loses his mind if anyone uses a leaf blower in their yard.

I still had 25% charge in the battery. So, for the sake of being a bastard, I pulled the battery from the weed whacker & put it in the leaf blower. That gave me 30 satisfying minutes of driveway and step cleaning, with the neighbor screaming about this not being a parking lot and how it disturbs his sleep, and the usual staccato of obscenities.

I was vaguely aware of his complaints, but I couldn’t quite hear him over the music I was listening to via my AirPods. 

The two huskies across the street had been quiet throughout my working in the yard. They watched quietly and didn’t make a peep even while I began running the leaf blower. When the idiot started shouting and complaining from behind his screen door. They trotted over to their fence facing him, and began to howl as only two huskies can do.

When the battery on the blower died, I went inside for a nice glass of tea.

The huskies continued howling in his general direction for another 5 minutes or so. I must remember to take them some treats!

Have a lovely Sunday.

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I miss wearing my nice automatic watch…

There are a couple of reasons I don’t wear it.

I fought switching to a smart watch. I like my analog self winding watch a lot.

I like the simplicity, not having to charge it, and knowing that when I kick off, my Brother will probably be wearing it at my memorial service and it will serve him well. 

That being said, I finally caved on the smart watch thing, because I became concerned about getting mugged for it, after several incidents with people who couldn’t keep their eyes or hands to themselves. 

Once I made the switch, I liked a lot of the features that my Apple Watch put on my wrist. Now, I’m used to the health data being collected and while I have turned off a lot of the intrusive, and incessant messages, I feel like I’m missing something when that data isn’t being collected.

Damn you Apple!

Apple Watch Ultra lifestyle endurance 220907 1108200464.However, after Apple’s nothing event last year regarding the Apple Watch Ultra (Really? A color change, for $799,) and the loss of Blood O2 due to their patent dispute with Massimo, I started reconsidering the smart watch entirely.

I’ve hung onto my Apple Watch Ultra series 1 because the Ultra 2 didn’t really move the bar, and Blood O2 was turned off. My Ultra includes the blood O2 monitoring because I purchased it before the Apple / Massimo spat.

The color change last year was a nothing burger. This year’s watch should technically be Generation 4 of the Apple Ultra. They’ll probably call it the 3.

From a practical perspective, I’m running a 3 year old smart watch. It will be 4 come September and the battery is starting to show signs of wear.

So, I find myself at a crossroads. Replacement of my smart watch will become necessary in the next year or two at the outside.

If Apple doesn’t significantly improve the Apple Ultra, I’m thinking maybe I’ll find an alternative.

For half the cost of an Ultra, I could go with an Oura 4th generation ring. 7 day battery life, no dings boops or notifications, in fact, no communication features at all.

So that might be a plus! Then I could go back to wearing a simple analog watch again, and still have all the health features.

Alternatively, going without the health features might not be a bad thing either.

I find that I’m looking at simple “real” watches more often. There are a couple of Luminox models that are beautiful. There’s the Omega I’ve been jonesing over for years. Then there are a couple of Bulova watches that are really nice.

Maybe I’m done with the fad of smart watches. Maybe I’m really just heading toward more simplicity in my life. Wearing a ring embedded with sensors is a way for me to have my cake and eat it too.

My Ultra, has pressure sensors, and can be used as a dive computer. The problem with that is, you have to pay for a subscription to Oceanic to use it. I haven’t enabled that function for a couple of reasons. 

1) I’ve had a go around with Oceanic. I had a number of dives that I’d entered on their site. In theory, Those dive records were supposed to be maintained as long as I had just a basic account. Oceanic was purchased by another company and these records were flushed.

2) I’d be willing to purchase their software as a One Time charge, as long as I could upload or download the data from their site, (see point 1). It looks like I can download from their site but that’s pointless if I can’t upload my existing data. I don’t want to have to maintain 2 independent record keeping systems.

I think the Mares or Suunto wrist computers are a better solution for diving computers. Both of them, talk directly to the dive log software I already own, without subscription BS.

 

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Rep. Shri Thanedar just learned a lesson… As did PBS and NPR.

The hard way!

I almost feel sorry for him.

His impeachment paperwork met with a significant backlash and guess what?

His fellow signatories bailed on him.

Democrats being Democrats!

More fairly, it’s Politicians, being Politicians.

He may actually think that he’s justified, (who knows, he might be,) but he just found out that he’s nothing but a pawn. They had him float impeachment to see how it would play in the court of public opinion, and when the wind changed, they tossed him aside like he was nothing.

I’d say it’s 50/50 that he survives his next election.

He was obscure before the impeachment paperwork. After this, he’ll return to obscurity. Without allies or usefulness he’s toast.

Politics is tough.

What concerns me, is that now that he’s popped his head up with this impeachment stuff, suddenly there’s dirt on him in some corners of the media.

The Republican and Democrat parties are both full of politicians. You can count on politicians to be scum 98% of the time. So suddenly “Finding” that Thanedar left lab animals to starve in a lab he owned suggests to me that either this is a bogus story, or that there’s more to it. (He may have owned the lab, but did he run it?)

More worrisome is why now? Surely, someone had dirt on him for a while. How is this just coming to light, and why is the timing so convenient?

No matter what you think about Trump, or his administration. We should all be watching this stuff like a hawk. Otherwise we run the risk of replacing one shitty way of governing with another.

I have mixed feelings about Trump’s EO to cut funding for NPR and PBS. I don’t listen to either of them precisely because I find them to be so biased & liberal all they do is piss me off.

Even Jerry, who was very liberal, gave up on them. He subscribed to PBS for a year or two so that he could catch concerts, symphonies, and a couple of musical history shows. He’d turn them off the minute there was something “News” related.

For me, I used to listen to NPR sometimes while I was driving to work. Sometime in the Obama administration, NPR began to sound like propaganda, especially when there was anything controversial about the Obama Presidency.

I was looking toward them for balance, what I heard, was minimization of the issue and chronic blaming of Republicans for raising the issue. Hence my feeling they were nothing more than a propaganda outlet. In many regards, they sounded as radically left, as Patriot XM is to the right, (I also, as a rule, don’t listen to them).

I suppose I was looking for reasoned, balanced analysis of both sides of current issues. I wonder why we can’t seem to have that these days. 

When you get to it, all radio is public. As is all network television. So that begs the question for me, “Why does NPR get public funding?”

If NPR presented both sides of every issue in a thoughtful and well researched way… In other words if they didn’t view issues through the lens of political party at all, and reported just the facts, then discussed the pros and cons of a policy dispassionately, I’d be very in favor of funding them.

I’ve recently noticed that I really tune out if hosts and guests on any show start talking over each other, or raising their voices. This is particularly true if the hosts are women. There’s some indefinable point where two or more women talking over each other and raising voices to be heard, just sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard. (Not that young people really know what that actually means these days.)

I’d like to see a show with a format that took an issue like Tariffs, then explained what they are, why they exist, how they work, why some countries have them, and others don’t.

Then I’d like to see/hear a dispassionate pro/con debate. Neither side of the debate should have to “Win”, but they should be able to defend their position with logic and fact.

I’d listen to two hours of that because I’d learn something.

That’s what I think of about tax dollars funding something like NPR or PBS. They should be educational and informative, without attempting to sway the listener in any particular direction. It should be the listener’s responsibility to make up their own mind about the information presented.

That’s the up side, the optimal outcome.

Further, I think when that balance and education is lost, we shouldn’t be paying for it.

That brings to mind another thought. 

Perhaps it would be better for NPR and PBS to be completely decoupled from government funding so that they never fear government control. Obviously, if these organizations receive tax dollars, then can we really say they’re unbiased in their reporting? Might the apparent extreme left lean, be the inevitable outcome of funding sources?

How can you have unbiased reporting when you know if you offend someone on “The Hill”, it could affect your budget next year?

I sincerely hope that Trump cutting NPR / PBS funding & The sudden “Dirt” on Thanedar aren’t about retribution or revenge from the White House.

I’m a pretty vengeful person, I’m petty, and easily annoyed. I don’t want that in government from either party. 

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Ya know, there was a time I’d never have thought like this. Much less wrote it.

Since President Trump took office I’ve been seeing more jobs posted.

I look at this as a good thing. Well, a good thing for me, anyway. I’m not above a purely mercenary, possibly even a Nietzschean view, when it comes to jobs.

After all I’ve been on the receiving end for a while now. If some idiot self deports because they’re scared mean old Trump is gonna pull their H1B1 or Green card I’m totally fine with that.

From a more Nietzschean perspective: In the pursuit of my own interest and survival. There is absolutely nothing wrong with terrorizing H1B1 or Green card holders into believing that “ICE is gonna get ‘em”, so they quit their jobs and self deport. Especially if I need a job, and they’re in my way.

I guess in a way I’m trying to move beyond the constraints that have held me back. I was, live & let live, I wanted to be liked, I wanted to be fair, I fell for the absolute bullshit that suggested it was in our best interests to train our replacements. Or that if we were nice, we’d get ahead too.

I was a moron. On its face, training our replacements, (and I’ve done my fair share of that stupid shit,) is the epitome of insanity. 

Pretty much throughout my career I stood quietly by, while incompetent coworkers were promoted due to race, gender, or sexual preference, over me, then I had to do their work too. (The irony of the sexual preference promotion isn’t lost on me either.)

Somewhere along the line I bought into the insanity this was somehow good, because… “It’s more fair!”

Well, those days are over.

These days, I’m asking, “Fair for who?”

Oh, make no mistake, I accept full responsibility for my mistakes. I should have fought tooth and nail against the bullshit. I even accept my part in the overall fuck up, that has reduced efficiency, quality, and superiority, of American businesses.

Online, I’m no longer saying, “You don’t have to worry about ICE arresting you in your place of business even if you have a Green Card.”

In some online forums I’m agreeing with them. “Yes, Trump and ICE will absolutely deport you! They’re going business to business and just putting Green Card holders on planes to totally random places, then leaving them there with no money, no passport, and they even take their phones!!! Oh my god, it’s just terrible!” 

If someone is so stupid that they self deport out of fear, we don’t need them. If they can be terrorized into panic then, “See Ya!”

Yes, there are actually a surprising number of people that are claiming they’re leaving before ICE comes to get them. It’s hysterically funny. I’m not feeling any remorse in feeding their paranoid delusions.

It just creates more job opportunities for me and other Americans who have been fucked over for decades, displaced by the Kumbaya one world crap.

The funniest are the extreme leftists who think Trump will deport them over their political views, even though they’re citizens. Oddly these people all look very similar. Wild eyes, goofy hair colors, weirdly painted nails, tattoos that look like the tattoo artist vomited, enough metal in their faces that they’d be a hazard during an MRI, and they screech during their all too frequent TikTok rants.

Maybe revoking their citizenship & deporting them, would be good for the country. Lots of them are saying they’re going to Canada. 

Hasn’t poor Canada suffered enough??? “Apparently not, if their recent election is any indicator.“

Well, I’m off to sow more chaos and terror.

Hey, I’ve gotta find fun where I can, and who knows? It might be patriotic to boot!

😘