Tag: Musings

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I’m just not that into it…

There was a time in the recent past when I, like many other Apple users waited on pins & needles for the next iOS, iPhone, iPad, MacOS or MacBook computer.

This last iPhone event left me feeling sort of meh.

iOS 15 is somewhat interesting but I’m in no great hurry to update. This is very unlike previous years.

The iPhone 13 Pro is nice, but not dazzling. I sorta like the pale ice blue color but since I use a case that isn’t really all that compelling. My iPhone 12 Pro is still quite serviceable and does what I want it to do.

I’ve currently got an Apple Watch series 5.

I thought that I’d upgrade to the watch 7. I originally got an Apple Watch Series 3, then upgraded to the 5 and thought a 2 year upgrade cycle would probably be reasonable. Looking at the Series 7, I see no compelling reason to upgrade. Okay, it’s got a bigger screen and what else does it get me?

Apple’s presentation was even Ho Hum, it was almost like Apple themselves was “phoning it in“. Every Apple event they’re gushing about how impressed they are with their own technology. How each product, “…is the most advanced Technology Apple has created…”

Every time they say that now, I fight not to say, “Duh” out loud.

I’m always way more interested when they compare their technology to the competition.

I find myself wondering why I wasn’t excited, or even disappointed with Apple this year. I’d have expected to feel something one way or the other, I just don’t.

Early iOS adoption statistics might be indicating that I may not be alone. I caught an article last week, (which I can’t find now,) that said the one week adoption rate for iOS 15 was substantially lower than for iOS 14 in the same period last year.

Why have I not updated? That’s simple, I dealt with bugs that messed my phone up on both iOS 13 & iOS 14. I decided that this time around I’d wait. But when you add the whole issue of the CSAM scanning and privacy issues that honestly feel like an about face for Apple…

Well, I guess it feels a bit like betrayal.

It’s akin to that feeling you have finding out your spouse is sleeping with someone else. When you find something like that out, you tend to get angry, then when you calm down, you start evaluating the choices available to you.

Divorce is messy and ends up hurting you as much as your spouse. That’s kind of the nuclear option.

Ignoring it and hoping it doesn’t happen again, is another option. Sometimes that works, but can you ever really trust them again? Do you find yourself questioning everything they say or do for the rest of your life?

Couples counseling is another option. But that only works if both parties are willing to realize that a) they’re in trouble, b) the relationship still means something, c) are willing to give it a go and mend fences.

To some extent, Apple has behaved like the spouse that was caught screwing around. They’ve quietly admitted that CSAM requires more work. Their decision to hold off on rolling it out feels like, “I’m sorry I got caught. I promise I won’t do that again.“

No spouse, ever totally believes that. The one saying it, knows that there will be an opportunity in the future that simply can’t be ignored. The one hearing it, knows this too.

(I’m specifically being gender neutral above, because I’ve seen women cheating on their husbands and men cheating on their wives. Interestingly, I’ve been the third wheel in both equations. Not really proud of that, it’s life, it just happens sometimes.)

I think right now, I’m personally at the “Ignoring it phase,” with Apple. I would consider the “Couples counseling,” phase. But I’m wondering if divorce from Apple is in the cards.

I have to wonder if this is the way a lot of Apple users are feeling. The article I mentioned, was trying to cover the lower adoption numbers by highlighting that unlike previous years Apple is going to be supporting iOS 14 and iOS 15 bug fixes concurrently. In the past when Apple released a new iOS they stopped development on the previous version.

This meant that there were no security patches or bug fixes for the older version and if you wanted to close those security holes, you had no choice but to upgrade the OS. This year is different. Apple has said they’ll continue the security patches indefinitely.

I’m sure that some of the upgrade hesitancy is due to this, but I seriously doubt that all of it can be explained away. This feels more like “coming home from somewhere you never should have been,” (Thank you Garth Brooks) and finding your pillow and some ratty blanket on the couch.

I’ll admit that pillow on the couch is way better than a confrontation in the driveway and a gun shot under cover of thunder in the distance. But it’s just as much a statement. (Yeah, I’ve gotten the pillow once or twice too.)

Right now, I’m giving Apple the pillow. We’ll have to see just how contrite they are, and how willing they are to keep my business going forward.

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Now this is a weird series of thoughts…

The following is the kind of shit I think about when I’m doing boring stuff like sanding the old paint off the trim of the house and prepping to caulk, prime & paint.

I was contemplating the latest news about the vaccine mandates. I was just randomly wondering what the difference between the vaccine hesitant and those folks who were all in with the mandates.

BTW, These mandate folks are coming awfully close to violating the terms of the Nuremberg code.

Growing up in the ‘60s & ‘70s there was always the threat of nuclear annihilation. This was courtesy of the cold war and the “bastard communists” in the old soviet union.

Every day we got up, we had our cereal, kissed our moms goodbye and we went to school. We started our day with the pledge of allegiance, had fire drills (actually hoped for those to get us out of pop quizzes), and nuclear bomb drills.

Little did we know that those nuclear bomb drills were almost completely pointless. We all knew what a civil defense logo looked like and where the nearest fallout shelter was. In the cases of the schools I attended, the bomb shelters were onsite. 

I can remember hearing the air raid sirens and wondering if this time we were going to feel the ground rumble like we’d seen in the civil defense films. It never occurred to me in elementary school,  that I might not ever see my parents again if the bombs actually fell, after all mommy and daddy both were wise and they would know where the bomb shelters were. After the dust settled they’d come to pick me up at school and we’d go home to watch TV.

Later in junior high school, my knowledge and wisdom increased, I realized that the bomb shelters weren’t going to be useful since by that time I’d read about the survivors of Hiroshima and seen the pictures. I was also learning about things like the half life of various nuclear material and how irradiated materials could retain dangerously high levels of radiation for decades.

Mutation, horrible death, and fear of a nuclear holocaust became elements of my daily life. The possibility was always lurking in the back of my mind. The thing is, it became commonplace, eventually it was just another stupid thing in my world. I ranked It up there with a curfew, or tardiness to school, or the school project that I didn’t want to do and was putting off till the last minute.

Nuclear destruction became ho hum, boring, just another part of living. It was like cancer or chickenpox, or the daily bully as I walked home from school.

As I became a young adult, I got busy with trying to make my way in the world. The threat of nuclear destruction took a back seat to the more immediate things like eating, living, loving, paying my bills, and being happy.

I lived through the HIV/AIDS years, and looking back I wasn’t particularly afraid of that any more than I was of nuclear bombs falling. In the case of HIV/AIDS I was pissed off about it because that hit just as I was figuring out, and getting experience with sex. All of which came to a screeching halt just when I was getting good at it. 

HIV/AIDS Poster

Don’t take that the wrong way. HIV/AIDS was a threat, it was scary, I lost a lot of good friends, including the one who said, “Dude, we medical folks don’t really know what this is, but looking at the spread pattern I think it’s somehow sexually transmitted. So just remember, no glove, no love.” He saved my life, unfortunately he didn’t take his own advice. 

Flash forward 50 or so years from my childhood, and we’re dealing with a virus that has a breathtaking mutation rate. We have misinformation and what I only think of as fear porn 24/7. Oddly, it’s reminiscent of the “Dirty Bastard Communist nukes,” news I remember pretty clearly.

Maybe it’s a fatalism that I’ve carried with me all my life that leaves me somewhat less concerned about this virus, than the younger crowd. 

I suppose I adopted a  “Live the day, you may be dead tomorrow,” kind of thing.

Then there was the first SARS which was again sort of a meh moment. No-one panicked about it, hell no-one much noticed. Although I do recall the media banging the be terrified angle pretty hard. Nobody paid much attention. We didn’t shut down anything.

SARS

In a nuclear exchange, it’s gotta be over 90% that you’re going to die. With the COVID-19 virus, there’s a better than 90% chance you’ll survive.

It’s not political, it’s not racist, it’s just another damn thing in my life.

With a better than 90% survival rate this whole virus thing doesn’t come close to freaking me out like the concept of being atomized in a millisecond.  This isn’t even in my top 10 worries.

I wonder if the “Unclean” vaccine hesitant folks in America are around my age?

Give or take 20 years. Those who are 40 something might still remember talk at the dinner table about the nuclear threat. They may have incorporated their parents lassie faire attitude. They’re quite possibly doing the math and thinking, “Eh whatever. It’s not like a fusion bomb.”

COVID-19

(While changing a sanding pad, I had this thought…)

Sonofabitch! I should thank the USSR for the cold war and the lessons of mutually assured destruction (MAD)

Were it not for my growing up under that sword I would be huddled in my darkened house with a hoard of food, ammo, and guns, muttering to my favorite knife, and twitching at every single noise I heard outside. But I’d be afraid of looking out the window to see what it was.

Instead, I’m standing here in the sun, on a beautiful autumn day, doing something that while it’s work I don’t really want to do, I’m enjoying anyway.

So thank you to all the comrades of the former USSR. Had it not been for your saber rattling I’d be quaking in my boots, in fear of everything.

The next thought that crossed through my mind was that people of my age don’t appreciate being badgered. President Biden at one point in his life had to know that. It speaks volumes about him personally and the youth of his staff that he is badgering Americans.

Most of the young probably haven’t see and certainly wouldn’t remember Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe like a hammer at the UN screaming, “We will bury you…”

Nikita Khrushchev Speaking at the UN

We all know how that ended for the old USSR.

I am still very amused that the folks who prior to COVID were against vaccinations of their children for childhood diseases, are often the same folks screaming today loudly for mandatory vaccinations for everyone.

My amusement at their hypocrisy is that they don’t see it as hypocrisy. Some them have gone so far as to use the line, “Its for the children…”

Original AntiVaxers

I get that everyone has the capacity to change their mind or opinion. That’s totally cool, it means folks are learning.

What I don’t get is some folks ability to hold diametrically opposed thoughts in their heads at the same time and claim that all are true.

Call me binary. (Yeah, that’s a no no today, isn’t it?)

Where ever you come down on the vaccination issue, please at least have thought it through.

Do your own research, make an informed choice.

But under no circumstances should you just bow to the whims of the mob. You are and should always be in inviolate control of your own body and that includes what you allow to be put into it.

Hmm. Another weird thought is this one. How can the European Union which has so very publicly, over the past decade been against GMO foods and grains be so draconian about vaccine enforcement now?

Yeah, I know that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines aren’t technically GMO organisms. But given that the spike protein in question is a direct result of genetic modification doesn’t the EU stance seem just a bit odd?

It was at this point that the second battery died on the power sander, and my knee started killing me.

I came inside and other things beside random thoughts occupied my attention.

Now you know where some of this blog comes from. Sometimes it’s just the product of me having something boring to do.

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Ever feel like you’re waiting…

…for the other shoe to drop?

I’ve been feeling like that for months.

It feels like being a kid waiting for your Father to get home to beat your ass for doing something you shouldn’t have done.

I suppose a more polite way of saying that would be a reference to the sword of Damocles. (If you don’t get that one look it up.) Perhaps a reference to Poe’s Pit & Pendulum would work better?

To be sure, this summer has been a pain in my ass personally. But it’s also been a mess nationally and internationally.

Hurricanes, Floods, Continuing and mutating pandemic, The show trials over the Jan 6th (mostly peaceful protests, hey they didn’t burn the capital down. Just sayin.), Afghanistan (Now we know why Biden has kids, he didn’t know how to withdraw… I couldn’t resist,) Poor economy, Rising Prices, etc. etc. etc.

Tuesday morning there was a report in Breitbart where an epidemiologist reviewed grants associated with St Fauci of the mask, and concluded that in fact some 600K did fund “Gain of function” research in Wuhan. The material was released under the FOIA.

Technically, this information is a smoking gun. Fauci broke the law. Federally, gain of function research is forbidden.

It’s possible, Fauci may have skirted the law, by approving grant money. Then Fauci lied to Congress about it, denying that any funding went to Wuhan for such research. He’d have been better off simply admitting that without his knowledge, the funds were misused and that the grant had been terminated.

Fauci has always been about gain of function research throughout his career.

On the one hand I can kinda see it from the standpoint of learning what may happen, and then doing the research to have countermeasures in place. On the other hand, I think I agree more with folks who say that gain of function is simply too dangerous. If COVID-19 is any indicator, I’d say that we have proof of the latter point.

I hate like hell that I believe Fauci will skate on all of this. I no longer have faith that our Justice system is remotely impartial. It’s been made very clear if you’re a darling of the administration (or a family member) there are no consequences. If, on the other hand you’ve demonstrated any opposition to the administration you’re going to be hunted down like a rabid dog.

Yet, with all this, it still feels like I’m in the corner of my bedroom waiting for Dad to come home. “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you son…” I knew that was bullshit at 8 years old, it’s no less bullshit now.

In fact my Dad and I had a good healthy laugh over that particular comment as adults sipping scotch. I told him I called bullshit, and he just laughed.

“Yep Son, it was bullshit, but your ass was such a small moving target I’d end up with strap marks on my legs too. You’ve got to nonetheless, concede that you’re the man I’m proud of today in part because of me busting your butt.“

He was right. I admitted it to him right then and there. We poured another drink and talked about all kinds of things as Men, not father and son.

God, how I’d enjoy talking with him now! If only to hear his take on why I’m feeling like I’m waiting for doom.

Thinking about that conversation though, still puts a smile on my face. The hangover the next day was even worth it.

I just wish I could get past this feeling…

As we come up on the 20th anniversary of September 11, I find myself wondering if that’s the thing. Perhaps it’s just that it’s been 20 years.

I’m sure Biden will attempt to make some speech. Sadly, no matter how well written that speech will be, if he goes off the rails, or if some jackasses shoot up a crowd or set off a bomb to mark the date, I wonder if that could simply be the flashpoint of what’s bugging me.

There are just so many division points between so many groups in America today. Those points are in my mind metaphorical powder kegs. Half the country seems to be violently opposed to the other half of the country for one reason or another. Is what I’m feeling a subconscious recognition of how angry, stressed, and ready to blow, we as a people are?

Or is this feeling simply a sign of my frustration at the job search and my worry over paying my bills?

I’ll admit I think we should flatten Afghanistan with carpet bombing.

I’d love to see this administration and much of Congress on trial for corruption and wrongdoing. But I’m not ready to join a militia, white supremacist group, or do anything that is outside of the laws that we’re all supposed to abide by. I keep hearing my Mother, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.“

I keep hearing in the back of my mind, “Everybody Knows” by Leonard Cohen. Although I like the rendition by Sigrid better than the original.

"Everybody Knows"

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded 
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed 
Everybody knows that the war is over 
Everybody knows the good guys lost 
Everybody knows the fight was fixed 
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich 
That's how it goes 
Everybody knows 
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking 
Everybody knows that the captain lied 
Everybody got this broken feeling 
Like their father or their dog just died 

Everybody talking to their pockets 
Everybody wants a box of chocolates 
And a long stem rose 
Everybody knows 

Everybody knows that you love me baby 
Everybody knows that you really do 
Everybody knows that you've been faithful 
Ah give or take a night or two 
Everybody knows you've been discreet 
But there were so many people you just had to meet 
Without your clothes 
And everybody knows 

Everybody knows, everybody knows 
That's how it goes 
Everybody knows 

Everybody knows, everybody knows 
That's how it goes 
Everybody knows 

And everybody knows that it's now or never 
Everybody knows that it's me or you 
And everybody knows that you live forever 
Ah when you've done a line or two 
Everybody knows the deal is rotten 
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton 
For your ribbons and bows 
And everybody knows 

And everybody knows that the Plague is coming 
Everybody knows that it's moving fast 
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman 
Are just a shining artifact of the past 
Everybody knows the scene is dead 
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed 
That will disclose 
What everybody knows 

And everybody knows that you're in trouble 
Everybody knows what you've been through 
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary 
To the beach of Malibu 
Everybody knows it's coming apart 
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart 
Before it blows 
And everybody knows 

Everybody knows, everybody knows 
That's how it goes 
Everybody knows 

Oh everybody knows, everybody knows 
That's how it goes 
Everybody knows 

Everybody knows

Written By
Sharon Robinson & Leonard Cohen

The weird thing is that I haven’t heard that song in a while. Let’s face it, it’s dark and not something that anyone who’s the least bit depressed should listen to. It is however, a good song.

I guess I’ll go back to banging my head against the employment wall and just wait & see what happens next.

When the wheels come off this bus, it will be spectacular.

I am curious to see what happens in the Newsom recall. I have no doubt that he’ll retain office. I’m absolutely sure that we’ll never know if he retains office legally or by nefarious means.

I say that, because these days who do you trust?

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Like tears in the rain.

I don’t know if that phrase is from an older work, or if it originated in the script of Blade Runner.

Nonetheless, it’s a great visualization.

Afghanistan has fallen. Apparently President Biden was shocked, according to some reports. This, less than a month after he told America and the world that the Afghanistan Military could handle the country’s defense.

Uh huh.

There are tons of articles all over the net with various takes on this situation.

The most poignant was one I read on Apple News. It’s actually an article that appears in The Guardian here .

We’ve spent 20 years in Afghanistan. In that time we’ve lost troops, had others maimed, still others remain profoundly affected by what they saw and endured in that country. Those men and women did an outstanding job and their duty, of that there is no question.

I’m less certain that we should have remained in Afghanistan after we’d broken the Taliban. But that wasn’t really an option now was it?

The beliefs that allow the Taliban can’t be changed overnight, and apparently they can’t be changed in 20 years. I suspect that even 100 years wouldn’t change the underlying belief structure that creates monstrous ruling bodies like the Taliban.

You’d have to systematically destroy every mosque, kill every Imam, burn every copy of the Quran, wipe all memory of Islam from the internet, and destroy all of that religion’s adherents everywhere.

US soldiers take up their positions as they secure the airport in Kabul on August 16, 2021, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan’s 20-year war, as thousands of people mobbed the city’s airport trying to flee the group’s feared hardline brand of Islamist rule. (Photo by SHAKIB RAHMANI / AFP)

First of all we don’t have the stomach for that kind of bloodshed. Second of all, it would be wrong for us to try. Third of all, it would be doomed to fail right from the start.

We have historical examples of failure to eliminate beliefs. Rome tried it with the Christians. Hitler wasn’t successful with Jews. Even the Ottoman Empire couldn’t eradicate the Jews in Spain, nor could the Inquisition. The kind of oppression required to attempt something like eliminating a religion would simply drive it underground.

You have to kill not only the practitioners of a religion, you have to kill all memory of it entirely. Which is something that the Taliban understands all too clearly. That is why no world heritage site, or non-islamic archeological dig is safe in Taliban territory. They understand how to destroy “false beliefs”. Their brutality in this is unmatched.

Which brings me to the point I want to make.

We as a nation must enact a non-interference policy. It is not our job to free anyone from their dogma, or give them a democracy by force. Our military is ours. It exists to defend us and our interests from invaders, or conquerors. That’s it. Our allies are by definition in our best interests and they too deserve our protections just as they offer their armies under treaty to our protection.

Taliban fighters sit on a vehicle along the street in Jalalabad province on August 15, 2021. (Photo by – / AFP)

That being said, when we’ve done the job, we should leave. To do anything else leads to decades of misery and unintended consequences.

Think of the misery the young woman in The Guardian article has to endure now. Had the Taliban remained in force for the past 20 years, she’d still have lived the misery to be sure. But now she knows there’s another way, she knows what she’s lost, she’ll feast on that bitterness for the rest of her life.

Were I in her position…

I’d develop a pretty healthy hatred of the US and all Americans for abandoning her to her fate after showing her how things could be different. I’d be teaching all my children to hate Americans, America is a lie, America cannot be trusted, America deserves to be destroyed.

That’s how the cycle of violence continues.

We MAKE our enemies, and frankly, we do it very well. How many more generations will spring from this one woman and all the others like her, enlightened and abandoned by our actions?

We shouldn’t have long term student visas for any country outside our allies. Short term upper division students perhaps, but not long term college educations.

Long term students simply become contaminated, then return to their countries with knowledge of a very different life. How can one of those folks ever be content returning to cooking over a fire pit or defecating in a hole in the ground, when they’ve lived the convenience and ease that Western civilization enjoys?

I know what I’m saying sounds cruel. But I think it far more cruel to “give” someone 21st century knowledge and then send them back to the 6th century.

President Biden’s legacy will be his Baghdad Bob moment a month ago. But the legacy of hatred and terrorist activities to come, belongs to our government from Bush through Biden, perhaps even further back than that.

I think it is time for us to exit the role of “good guys”, it’s time for us to stop trying to remake the world in our image. It’s time for Americans to be mythical beings in undeveloped parts of the world. Something whispered of, but never seen.

It is well past time for us to stop feeding our enemies, or pumping trillions of dollars, material, and American lives, into a hole that will never never be filled.

People make war on each other, and people die every day, disease and natural disasters happen all the time, these are facts of life. We need to get past our messiah complex and focus on our own problems.

There is no shame or guilt in recognizing that we can’t help everyone. The shame is in telling those people we will help, then breaking that promise.

Close our borders, allow visitors from allied countries only. That way we don’t contaminate and destroy primitive cultures.

We have historical examples of cultural contamination starting with the European conquest of North and South America. (Damage done. There’s no going back) We have examples of other indigenous people having their lives turned upside down in the South Pacific during World War II. (See Cargo Cults.) We even have contemporary examples of possible cultural contamination with all the hubbub surrounding UFOs and Alien contact.

Just the rumors of Aliens causes shockwaves and distractions in our “enlightened” culture. If they actually exist, it would make sense for them to be circumspect. Especially if they’re doing some kind of anthropology study.

We’re advanced compared to some of the folks on our planet, but we’re not superior.

We certainly don’t have enough positive outcomes to be dictating how any one else should be living.

It’s time for us to come to grips with our limitations and recognize that;

“Sometime you have to be cruel to be kind.”