The first public image from the James Webb telescope was made public today, and it is amazing. From the article:
\n\n\nThousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.
\n
Wow.
\n", "date_published": "2022-07-11T22:04:20-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2022/07/11/the-beautiful-overwhelming.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2022/04/30/annual-reviews-are.html", "title": "Annual Reviews Are a Terrible Way to Evaluate Employees", "content_html": "Of course, on the weekend I have to write my annual self-evaluation essay for work, I read this article in the Wall Street Journal by Marcus Buckhingham. He spells out the problems with the annual review process:
\n\n\nThe failings of the annual performance review fall into three broad buckets:
\nThey are too infrequent. They are dehumanizing. They are irrelevant to real-world performance.
\n
For years I have complained to my “performance advisors” about the absurdity of the annual review process. Part of the problem is that goals—even SMART goals—are often unachievable because priorities, projects, and clients change over time. Another problem is that too much time is spent ranking employees, which leads to an outside focus on areas of improvement. Not enough time is spent highlighting areas of strength. Imagine how empowering a performance review would be if it was focused on what employees are good at and on finding ways to let them do those things even more.
\nI thought this detail, from deep in the article, was especially well-observed:
\n\n\nWorkers want attention, not feedback, and mostly attention on where they’ve shown glimpses of something good, and how they might show more of them.
\n
Over the past two years I have cultivated a much better attitude about performance reviews. I believe that the managers at the various companies I have worked at want to do the right thing with performance reviews, and are doing the best they can with the tools they have available. I think the problem is that the wrong tools are being used—and have been being used, for my whole career, at every place I worked. The reason for that is that how performance reviews are performed has been baked into general workplace culture. It’s pretty much the same everywhere; blame the MBAs and management experts who developed the general processes and the ideas behind them, I guess1. No annual review process I have been a part of tries to break out of that mold and define a new culture.
\nIn general, employers should help their employees develop their strengths and allow them to spend more time on them. It’s true that various weaknesses can and should be improved with training, coaching, and experience. In many cases, however, greater gains can be had in letting employees drop those areas of weakness and concentrate instead on further developing their areas of strength. That approach would develop the kind of employees that companies in my field want to hire: specialists with unique, world-class skills. In the market for workers, that’s what’s valuable. Why strive hard to become average in your areas of weakness when you could spend equal effort to become truly great at something?
\nI’m an MBA with a concentration in management. Maybe I’m part of the problem. ↩︎
\nElizabeth Lopatto’s account of the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami Beach is a rollicking and chilling account of a conference that is supposedly centered on the granddaddy of all cryptocurrencies, but is actually centered on the number one right-wing hobbyhorse: grievance.
\n\n\nI’m at Miami Beach, in weather so hot and humid it feels like being inside a mouth, to try to get a sense of the vibes. I’m uncomfortable because of the heat and also the flashes of antisemitism. Tucked in the back of the expo floor, a painting for sale shows Tintin in a brown shirt with a Bitcoin logo on his sleeve, making a Sieg Heil salute. Another booth sells a T-shirt depicting a group of men sitting at a table with a pile of money in the middle, which is held up by human bodies; behind them, the pyramid found on the back of the dollar bill, with its Eye of Providence, looms. No one appears concerned.
\n
I found it interesting to learn that there are Bitcoin diehards out there—the Bitcoin maxis—who absolutely hate crypto, NFTs, and any other blockchain technologies that are not Bitcoin. Stoking their fire—propping up Bitcoin at the expense of other, competing blockchain-based assets—seems to have been the main point of the conference.
\nI must admit feeling more than a little schadenfreude when reading about how half-assed the conference was, and how off-message some of its high-profile speakers were. We should expect nothing more from a grifters’ convention.
\n", "date_published": "2022-04-29T21:37:26-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2022/04/29/crypto-is-winning.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2022/04/28/henry-winkler-breaks.html", "title": "Henry Winkler Breaks the Curse of Stardom", "content_html": "Yesterday, The New York Times published a very well-written profile of actor Henry Winkler written by Matthew Klam:
\n\n\nWhen the producers of the HBO series “Barry” asked Henry Winkler to audition for the role of Gene Cousineau, they assured him that he was on a short list. Winkler said he was willing, as long as the list didn’t include Dustin Hoffman. “Because he’s a movie star. He’d get it. If Dustin was on the list, I wasn’t going in. They said no. I said OK.”
\nThere was no particular reason to think the two-time Oscar winner would be up for the same part, but Winkler can be forgiven for indulging in a little paranoia. Across the span of his 50-year career, he has had some highs — 1970s pop-culture saturation to rival “Star Wars” and the music from “Jaws” — and lows, including a long stretch where he couldn’t get hired, filled with the sense that he’d been typecast into oblivion.
\n
Years ago I listened to a long interview of Henry Winkler on The Nerdist podcast1 that opened my eyes to how warm, generous, and philosophical Henry Winkler is. This profile provides some insight into those qualities, and also takes a deep dive—deeper than I would normally expect from a newspaper article—into Winkler’s audition for, and his acting in an early scene, in Barry.
\nI think it is gone from the internet now, unfortunately. ↩︎
\nDouglas MacMillan, Faiz Siddiqu, Rachel Lerman, and Taylor Telford reported today in The Washington Post:
\n\n\nElon Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion on Monday, the company announced, giving the world’s richest person command of a highly influential social media site that serves as a platform for political leaders, a sounding board for experts across industries and an information hub for millions of everyday users.
\nThe acquisition followed weeks of evangelizing on the necessity of “free speech,” as the Tesla CEO seized on Twitter’s role as the “de facto town square” and took umbrage with content moderation efforts he views as an escalation toward censorship. He said he sees Twitter as essential to the functioning of democracy and said the economics are not a concern.
\n
There have been only a handful of world’s richest people in my lifetime. Of those, Elon Musk is my least favorite. While he has done some good for the world, I find his public persona exhausting. He acts like a juvenile troll who plays to the cheap seats. His credibility in geek circles as a real-life Tony Stark is almost completely unearned. He just seems irresponsible, childish, and awkward to me—the ultimate dog that caught the car.
\nLast week, I thought that Musk’s hostile takeover offer was mere trolling, or maybe a means to drive a pump-and-dump scam on the sizable share of Twitter stock that he recently purchased. Now that he and his backers have bought the company proves me wrong, at least in the short term. Still, I have no faith in him making Twitter more successful than it is now. It is a company that I think found its level and is destined to stay there. I think that Twitter’s board decided the company’s value would never—at least, within a reasonable timeframe—appreciate to the 20% over its stock price that Musk offered. In that position, I would have taken the buy-out, too.
\nI can’t even remember when I last logged into my Twitter account now, so the change in ownership will not directly affect me, but it will likely indirectly affect all of us in some way. Musk’s championing of “free speech” and openness on the platform sound like right-wing dog whistles to me, which makes me nervous (more nervous) about the future. In general, the best thing we can do collectively is leave Twitter and publish and correspond elsewhere—preferably on platforms that are not owned by amoral billionaires.
\n", "date_published": "2022-04-25T22:23:42-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2022/04/25/elon-musk-acquires.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2022/03/31/bill-hader-created.html", "title": "📺 Bill Hader Created a Killer to Cope", "content_html": "Rebecca Keegan wrote an entertaining and informative profile of Barry star and co-creator Bill Hader in The Hollywood Reporter:
\n\n\nIn Barry, which returns to HBO for its third season April 24, Hader plays a reluctant hitman who wants to be an actor. Barry is just really great at killing. This is not so different, Berg points out, from Hader, who became a star on SNL in his 20s almost in spite of himself, fought crippling anxiety on the live broadcasts, and really just wanted to write and direct.
\n
I am very excited that Barry is returning to HBO soon. It is a daring show on many levels. Plot-wise it flirts with show-ending (or at least show-ruining) disaster several times each season. I have no idea how the cliffhanger at the end of Season 2 will be resolved, but I am confident that the writers came up with something satisfying.
\nI love Bill Hader, too. He is amazing and deserves every bit of success he has had.
\n", "date_published": "2022-03-31T21:20:56-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2022/03/31/bill-hader-created.html", "tags": ["TV","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2022/03/28/will-smith-hits.html", "title": "Will Smith hits Chris Rock over joke about Jada Pinkett Smith at Oscars", "content_html": "I’m super glad my wife and I didn’t bother to watch this nonsense last night. 🙄
\n", "date_published": "2022-03-28T09:28:39-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2022/03/28/will-smith-hits.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2022/03/21/plaintext-sports.html", "title": "Plaintext Sports", "content_html": "I found out about plaintextsports.com from a Daring Fireball post. The site’s Twitter account describes it thusly:
\n\n\nLive sports scores, play-by-play and boxscores, in plain text. No ads, no tracking, no loading.
\n
I love it. It is fast and no-nonsense. Clicking on the box scores loads a page full of stats for each game. There is even a “hidden” page that lets you follow all the teams in certain cities or regions. It is laid out perfectly for smartphones. The only drawback is that you can’t make its tables a little wider on tablet or desktop browsers.
\nI can’t wait for baseball season to start so I can use this site for a sport I follow.
\n", "date_published": "2022-03-21T21:22:08-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2022/03/21/plaintext-sports.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2022/03/18/a-groggy-senate.html", "title": "A Groggy Senate Approves Making Daylight Saving Time Permanent", "content_html": "Luke Broadwater and Amelia Nierenberg report in The New York Times:
\n\n\nAfter losing an hour of sleep over the weekend, members of the United States Senate returned to the Capitol this week a bit groggy and in a mood to put an end to all this frustrating clock-changing.
\nSo on Tuesday, with almost no warning and no debate, the Senate unanimously passed legislation to do away with the biannual springing forward and falling back that most Americans have come to despise, in favor of making daylight saving time permanent. The bill’s fate in the House was not immediately clear, but if the legislation were to pass there and be signed by President Biden, it would take effect in November 2023.
\n
I am trying not to get my hopes up, but I would love it if we stopped changing the clocks twice each year.
\nI never really cared about it until I had kids. I learned the hard way that messing with their sleep schedule makes kids crazy, and the effect can last for weeks. Now changing the clicks is a twice-yearly curse.
\nI would prefer Daylight Saving Time year-round. Having sunlight in the early evening is of far greater value to me than having the sun rise earlier.
\n", "date_published": "2022-03-18T21:19:01-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2022/03/18/a-groggy-senate.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2022/03/14/tom-brady-barely.html", "title": "🏈 Tom Brady Barely Left and Now is Back", "content_html": "Kevin Draper reports for The New York Times that Tom Brady is rescinding his retirement announcement from only eight weeks ago:
\n\n\nBrady, the 44-year-old quarterback who has won the Super Bowl seven times, wrote on his social media accounts Sunday evening that he would return to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to play his 23rd N.F.L. season.
\n
I can only admire Tom Brady’s gumption here. His numbers last season were so good that his retirement seemed unnecessary, despite his age. I wonder if he can win another Super Bowl ring. It he does, I wonder if he would really retire right afterward, or if he would keep pushing forward until he can’t compete at all anymore.
\n", "date_published": "2022-03-14T21:23:55-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2022/03/14/tom-brady-barely.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2022/03/10/apples-big-baseball.html", "title": "⚾️ Apple’s big baseball deal, detailed", "content_html": "Jason Snell, on Six Colors, shared some interesting information about Apple’s Major League Baseball announcement on Tuesday :
\n\n\nThough NBCUniversal’s Peacock is rumored to be picking up ESPN’s old package for Monday and Wednesday night games, what Apple is doing is an entirely new license from Major League Baseball, containing three separate products…
\n
He goes on to provide details about MLB Big Inning, linear and on-demand archival content, and Friday Night Baseball, which run the gamut from normal televised baseball to something akin to the NFL Red Zone.
\nAs a lapsed baseball fan who happens to be an Apple One subscriber—mostly for the iCloud storage—I am excited about this. I bailed on my annual MLB At Bat subscription in 2020, due in large part to not having enough time to watch baseball games. I have been considering subscribing again this year, once the baseball season starts, but I am still not sure it is worth the money if I’m not going to watch a ton of games. Apple’s offerings, which I already pay for, may be just the right amount of baseball for me.
\n", "date_published": "2022-03-10T21:56:22-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2022/03/10/apples-big-baseball.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2022/03/01/mlb-cancels-games.html", "title": "M.L.B. Cancels Games, Delaying Start of Season", "content_html": "James Wagner reports for The New York Times:
\n\n\nMajor League Baseball canceled the first two series of the 2022 regular season on Tuesday after the league and the players’ union failed to reach a new collective bargaining agreement.
\nAfter nearly a year of negotiating, including nine straight days of talks between the league and the union in Florida starting Feb. 21, the sides could not come to a new pact by M.L.B.’s self-imposed deadline of 5 p.m. Tuesday in order to begin the 162-game season on March 31 as scheduled.
\n
I strongly considered getting back into following baseball after two years away from the sport. Watching Spring Training games on MLB.TV has always been my way to get excited for the both the new baseball season and for the upcoming warm spring and summer weather. Now, with no clear idea when baseball season will start and a shortened season to look forward to, I’m not so sure I want to bother.
\n", "date_published": "2022-03-02T00:04:22-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2022/03/01/mlb-cancels-games.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/12/09/maybe-its-just.html", "title": "Maybe It's Just a Product Nobody Wants", "content_html": "I love how Matt Birchler compares crypto to BitTorrent in his latest blog post, “Maybe It’s Just a Product Nobody Wants”:
\n\n\nI don’t think crypto is going to disappear, by the way. I think it will always have a place in the world, but much like bittorrent before it, it was new & exciting, people tried to use it for basically everything, and then it settled into being used for, well, nothing for most people. Blockchains likely have a more prominent future, but there’s a lot of spaghetti being thrown at walls right now, and I think very little of it will stick because it’s not actually making better products.
\n
I’m a crypto skeptic who thinks a lot about blockchain for work-related reasons. I dislike blockchain technologies because I think that, in the real world, they would fail to eliminate trusted intermediaries in financial transactions. Establishing trust without intermediaries is the whole point of blockchain.
\nI believe people and businesses are too risk-averse to do away with intermediaries like governments (who offer useful things like a legal system and deposit insurance) and the technology providers, agents, and brokers who make business work today. If crypto really takes off, and the old intermediaries are pushed out, I think that new intermediaries will pop up to fill in the gaps left behind. That future—blockchain with trusted intermediaries—is no better than what we have now, and is in many ways worse.
\n", "date_published": "2021-12-09T00:20:41-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/12/09/maybe-its-just.html", "tags": ["Thoughts","Tech","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/09/14/i-learned-yet.html", "title": "I learned yet another horrible thing today that I wished weren’t true", "content_html": "According to the superintendent of schools, some parents in my town are sending their children to school wearing “fake” masks that superficially satisfy mask wearing requirements while being completely ineffectual. These masks do not protect the wearer or anybody else from COVID or any other type of disease. They are specifically designed to be as flimsy as possible; some are even see-through. It’s a product for people who want to be assholes, pretend that COVID is not real, and thumb their noses at responsible people. Apparently it is also a product for parents who wish to teach their kids to be assholes, too.
\n", "date_published": "2021-09-14T20:58:42-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/09/14/i-learned-yet.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/09/13/what-i-am.html", "title": "What I am dealing with now that school is back in session", "content_html": "My daughter has been in school three days so far this school year. Every school day, our entire community has received an email from the superintendent of schools stating that there are new COVID cases affecting students and staff at all, or almost all, of the schools in the district.
\nThis is from today’s email:
\n\n\nAs stated previously, I realize that our school community has varying viewpoints on COVID-19 and specifically on mask protocols. We are going to continue to make decisions in the best interest of safety for our students and staff. In only three days of school, we already have had 21 positive student cases and 10 positive staff cases. It is essential that we stay vigilant and monitor for signs and symptoms of COVID-19.
\n
I live in a mid-sized town, and each school is pretty small, and most of the elementary schools have no air conditioning. The kids are being allowed to take off masks for “excessive heat” reasons, due to a loophole in our governor’s COVID masking mandate and due to incredible pressure by a vocal faction of parents. My wife and I believe this attitude about masks is cavalier and dangerous. We hate the idea of sending our daughter into this environment with a vaccine, and also hate the idea of pulling her out of more school because being away so long already has not been good for her mental health. All of us are frustrated and exhausted by all of this, and there does not seem to be an end to the pandemic in sight.
\n", "date_published": "2021-09-13T23:42:19-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/09/13/what-i-am.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/08/24/a-covid-vaccine.html", "content_html": "A COVID vaccine for under-12 kids cannot come soon enough. It looks like Pfizer is a few months ahead of Moderna on this front, but it has been a frustratingly long wait. The Delta variant, which seems to be more virulent in children than o.g. COVID, has made me quite anxious.
\n", "date_published": "2021-08-24T16:08:32-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/08/24/a-covid-vaccine.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/07/25/the-lie.html", "title": "The Lie", "content_html": "I missed David Rothkopf’s article, “We Still Won’t Admit Why So Many People Believe the Big Lie” on The Daily Beast, when it was published a couple weeks ago. He asks why some people believe the “Big Lie” that Donald Trump really won the 2020 presidential election. His answer is an obvious but largely unspoken truth:
\n\n\n…even the most modest amount of analysis and introspection will reveal that buying into the nonsense peddled by the former president and his clown college of cronies is not an aberration, not due to some momentary lapse on the part of the American electorate. We were raised on lies—including many lies that are much, much bigger than the big one that troubles us today.
\n
Society asks us to believe all kinds of lies. We know this. We participate in it. And, with the exception of some period of adolescence when you figure out that the adult world is full of bullshit, we never rail against it or even really think about it. But we all know, in some ways, lies hold together all of human society. Don’t be surprised if people believe them. Don’t be surprised if people know they are lies and still believe them.
\n", "date_published": "2021-07-25T14:06:55-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/07/25/the-lie.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/07/24/apple-to-pull.html", "title": "Apple to Pull 'iDOS 2' DOS Emulator From App Store", "content_html": "I am neither surprised or disappointed by Apple’s impending pull of “iDOS 2” from the App Store. The whole point of buying Apple hardware has always been to buy into a unique ecosystem: the “walled garden.” While the Mac has never been locked down to Apple’s Mac App Store, the iPhone has always been locked down to its App Store. It’s easy to forget now, but the iPhone grew out of Apple’s prior consumer electronics smash hit, the iPod, which was was completely locked down. It didn’t have an App Store. Neither did the iPhone at first, either.
\nI hate to side with one of the world’s biggest companies here, but I totally believe that the iPhone is a console, as Steve Jobs described it. I knew that going into the iPhone ecosystem, and that’s actually what I wanted, and still want, from that ecosystem. I want an apps console that (for the most part) just works, and doesn’t require a lot of my time and effort to work smoothly and securely. I came at this from the other wide: an Android users who jailbroke and hacked his phone into something completely different than what its manufacturer and mobile data provider wanted or intended. The thing is, all that customization led to a system that was unstable, and I had no idea if it was secure at all, because the code (apps and OS) came from a bunch of different places. I just had to trust, blindly, that everything was OK. The iPhone imposed guardrails on my hacking activities—guardrails that I wanted, because what I was doing wasn’t working for me anymore.
\nI think a lot of people chafe at the idea that their most useful device is a console because we reserve that word for entertainment devices like the Nintendo Switch and the PlayStation, or the humble cable set-top box. It doesn’t matter, though, if the iPhone is more useful and more important than a video game system, though. What matters is how it is sold.
\nIt isn’t exactly a secret that normal customers can only download iOS software from Apple’s App Store. Beyond hardware, access to that App Store is the fundamental thing being sold by Apple. Customers should know it when they are choosing a product. I doubt any of the complainers and hand-wringers commenting on this article on MacRumors didn’t know that going into their iPhone purchase.
\nI would love to run Windows games on my Nintendo Switch, but I can’t because it is a console and Nintendo does not allow it. That doesn’t surprise me, or anybody else for that matter. The situation is not really different than the one with the iPhone. If you want to run DOS on your mobile phone, the far-more-open Android universe is there for you—and it’s the most dominant OS platform in the world, too. Vote for it with your wallets and your time.
\n", "date_published": "2021-07-24T09:00:00-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/07/24/apple-to-pull.html", "tags": ["Tech","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/07/24/the-cleveland-guardians.html", "title": "The Cleveland Guardians", "content_html": "I like the new name of Cleveland’s Major League Baseball team. I think the team’s old name, the “Indians,” and especially its already retired Chief Wahoo logo, were problematic and absolutely needed to go. If you find the term “Indians” as applied to a ball club to be inoffensive, know that that merely means you are not among the ones who are offended by it. I am sure that, at best, a lot of negative stereotyping went into the choosing of that appellation.
\nI have heard that some Cleveland fans wanted to the team to go back to one of its old names, the “Spiders.” I think that would have been a mistake. Spiders may be fearsome, but they are not widely loved and are easily squished. (I find them icky, even though they are theoretically fascinating, but that’s just me.)
\nThe best part of the “Cleveland Guardians” name, in my opinion, is its positivity. After all, to guard the city is noble and brave. It is, however, a generic word that concretely identifies nothing in particular, so it is understandable that some of their fans may be disappointed.
\nThe team needs a memorable mascot and logo to make whatever a “guardian” is seem strong and cool. After all, what is a “guardian?” I have most often heard the word used in the phrase “parent or guardian” which is a lot less exciting than, say, “guardians of the galaxy.” (I have tremendous respect for people who are guardians—those who take care of, and look out for the best interests of, children. That really is heroic.)
\nWhile I like the name “Guardians,” I will admit it is not the best name for a baseball team. The best baseball team name is the Hartford Yard Goats, but that name was already taken.
\n", "date_published": "2021-07-24T00:34:42-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/07/24/the-cleveland-guardians.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/07/23/playdate.html", "title": "Playdate", "content_html": "Panic’s bright yellow pocket game system, the Playdate, looks cheerful and cute. I want one, plus the blocky stereo dock, just to put on my desk like other people place toys and figurines. Ars Technica published a review of the hardware and a preview of some of the games yesterday, which whet my interest. I don’t know if it is worth the money for me to have a geeky object d’art for my workspace, though.
\n", "date_published": "2021-07-23T14:56:06-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/07/23/playdate.html", "tags": ["Tech","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/07/22/what-lies-beneath.html", "title": "What Lies Beneath Ted Lasso", "content_html": "Elizabeth Nelson wrote the best, most accurate take on Ted Lasso (the character) that I have ever read:
\n\n\nUnceasing optimism defines Ted Lasso. But roller-coaster mood storms, manic reveries, and seemingly deliberate head games also define Ted Lasso, the players’ coach, and make him one of the best and most-layered characters of the peak TV era. He’s a man who presents himself as two-dimensional, but who might actually be playing three-dimensional chess. We delight in his antics, marinate in his charm offensive, and celebrate his offbeat approach to winning the whole fucking thing. But at all times, there’s a slight worry, one that crops up in the back of our minds, about what he might be willing to do to make it happen.
\n
People love the show’s positivity, but it also has a dark side that actually makes it good. There’s something just a little off about Ted Lasso, and that’s what makes him interesting.
\nWhile Ted wins over a bunch of potential enemies in England, his wife back in Iowa can’t stand his relentless positivity. Maybe you couldn’t either, if you were married to him.
\nTed excels at darts because he spent every Sunday in a sports bar with his dad between the ages of ten and sixteen, when his father passed away. I don’t think it is normal to bring your underage son to a bar every single week. That isn’t exactly a normal childhood. Furthermore, losing a father at sixteen may have caused some emotional trauma that Ted buries deep, causing him to overcompensate with cheery paternalism in almost every interaction.
\nMost importantly, Ted fails. He failed at his marriage, he is trying and largely failing to be a good father, and he failed to produce a winning record for his team, or even keep them in the Premier League. As appealing as Ted is to the TV audience, what he is doing is not working—or not working yet—in the world of his story.
\nWhat made Season 1 great was the surprising complexity of what appeared to be a dumb, one-joke sitcom based on a commercial that hardly anybody remembered. Season 2 starts to air tomorrow. I hope the writers didn’t forget about the dark undercurrents that made their show about a nice guy work so well.
\n", "date_published": "2021-07-22T11:43:23-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/07/22/what-lies-beneath.html", "tags": ["TV","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/07/09/pfizer-says-its.html", "title": "Pfizer says it's time for a Covid booster; FDA and CDC say not so fast", "content_html": "\n\n\nHours after Pfizer issued its statement, the FDA and Centers for Disease and Control issued a joint statement saying Americans do not need booster shots yet.
\n“Americans who have been fully vaccinated do not need a booster shot at this time,” they said.
\nIn a statement to CNN on Friday, the World Health Organization said, “We don’t know whether booster vaccines will be needed to maintain protection against COVID-19 until additional data is collected,” adding, “limited data available on how long the protection from current doses lasts and whether an additional booster dose would be beneficial and for whom.”
\n
How you think about this comes all down to trust.
\nWho do you trust? The companies that developed the vaccines which appear to be far more effective against COVID-19 than we could have hoped? Or the government agencies that failed to provide the correct advice about COVID-19 prevention for months.
\nWho do you trust? The companies that are seeking to profit off a pandemic by pushing possibly unneeded booster shots, using scare tactics that are familiar from their marketing of other drugs? Or the government agencies who failed to coerce a huge chunk of the adult population to get vaccinated, due to a failure in messaging, incentives and coordination of rollout?
\nIt may seem like I am arguing against the FDA, CDC, and WHO here. I don’t think I am, and I certainly have no data or expertise to refute either side’s claims. I am simply observing that these institutions are deservedly suffering from an erosion in public trust, and that is going to make any decision making based on what they say, or based on what pharmaceutical companies or health care providers say, more difficult.
\n", "date_published": "2021-07-09T11:42:13-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/07/09/pfizer-says-its.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/06/15/pipeline-investigation-upends.html", "title": "Pipeline Investigation Upends Idea That Bitcoin Is Untraceable", "content_html": "\n\n\nBitcoin is also traceable. While the digital currency can be created, moved and stored outside the purview of any government or financial institution, each payment is recorded in a permanent fixed ledger, called the blockchain.
\nThat means all Bitcoin transactions are out in the open. The Bitcoin ledger can be viewed by anyone who is plugged into the blockchain.
\n
Bitcoin was never really anonymous. It is pseudonymous, so it makes sense that transactions can be traced to some extent and tied to a unique owner or wallet.
\nWhat is interesting is not just that law enforcement can identify which Bitcoin wallet was involved in the fraud, but also that law enforcement could also crack the wallet’s password and retrieve/steal the money out of it. I wonder how. Was it a weak password? Was it social engineering? Was it a brute-force password crack? If so, was it cracked by a normal computer or by a quantum computer that no one else knows about?
\nBitcoin seems fundamentally broken to me. I won’t touch it.
\n", "date_published": "2021-06-15T09:38:05-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/06/15/pipeline-investigation-upends.html", "tags": ["Tech","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/06/10/i-cant-get.html", "content_html": "🎬 I can’t get enough articles about the In the Heights movie. Vulture has a fascinating one about how the “96,000” pool scene was filmed.
\n", "date_published": "2021-06-10T10:32:59-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/06/10/i-cant-get.html", "tags": ["Movies","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/06/09/many-people-have.html", "title": "Many People Have a Vivid ‘Mind’s Eye,’ While Others Have None at All", "content_html": "I have been following stories about aphantasia with interest because I am 99% sure I have it. Carl Zimmer reports in The New York Times:
\n\n\nDr. Adam Zeman didn’t give much thought to the mind’s eye until he met someone who didn’t have one. In 2005, the British neurologist saw a patient who said that a minor surgical procedure had taken away his ability to conjure images.
\nOver the 16 years since that first patient, Dr. Zeman and his colleagues have heard from more than 12,000 people who say they don’t have any such mental camera. The scientists estimate that tens of millions of people share the condition, which they’ve named aphantasia, and millions more experience extraordinarily strong mental imagery, called hyperphantasia.
\n
When I read a book, I never think about what the characters look like, or what the scenery is.
\nWhen I think, it’s all words. Torrents and torrent of words.
\nI don’t have the best visual memory for people or places, though I have good spatial awareness.
\nI think I can form mental images, or at least simulacra of them (wireframes, maybe). I mean, I did pretty well in organic chemistry in college, which is a subject that is, in part, about visualizing the rotation of irregularly shaped molecules. I don’t think I saw them in my mind’s eye, though. Not really. It was long ago, so I can’t remember reliably, but I probably figured out a different way to do it.
\nTo me, it is interesting to learn that some people “see” mental images easily and think in an incredibly visual manner, because that is not the way I experience anything.
\n", "date_published": "2021-06-09T15:51:48-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/06/09/many-people-have.html", "tags": ["Thoughts","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/06/01/boycott-all-the.html", "title": "Boycott all the sports press conferences!", "content_html": "I am sympathetic to Naomi Osaka’s mental health-based arguments for skipping press events during the French Open. I am also sympathetic to the French Open’s argument that participation in these press events is a mandatory part of her contract. While I am more sympathetic to Osaka’s position, I think we should all end the charade of bringing up an athlete in front of a media panel to answer for her poor performance or to gloat about her good performance in a match. It is frivolous and adds no value. Didn’t Bill Belichick expose the futility of the sports press conference twenty years ago or more?
\n", "date_published": "2021-06-01T10:02:55-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/06/01/boycott-all-the.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/05/29/burnout-modern-affliction.html", "title": "Burnout: Modern Affliction or Human Condition?", "content_html": "I enjoyed Jill Lepore’s recent article on burnout in The New Yorker:
\n\n\nBurnout is a combat metaphor. In the conditions of late capitalism, from the Reagan era forward, work, for many people, has come to feel like a battlefield, and daily life, including politics and life online, like yet more slaughter. People across all walks of life—rich and poor, young and old, caretakers and the cared for, the faithful and the faithless—really are worn down, wiped out, threadbare, on edge, battered, and battle-scarred. Lockdowns, too, are features of war, as if each one of us, amid not only the pandemic but also acts of terrorism and mass shootings and armed insurrections, were now engaged in a Hobbesian battle for existence, civil life having become a war zone.
\n
Lepore argues for cultural and economic origins for burnout, which make for a useful lens through which to study the phenomenon. Personally, I think the burnout really is a manifestation of depression, specifically of high-functioning depression coupled with exhaustion. Lepore touches on this, too.
\nBurnout still feels like its own thing to me, because I experience the feeling at my desk during the work day. Fortunately, I have learned (or am still learning) to slow down and demand less of myself, and of those around me, when I am feeling burnt out.
\n", "date_published": "2021-05-29T11:20:42-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/05/29/burnout-modern-affliction.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/05/28/republicans-block-independent.html", "content_html": "Republicans Block Independent Commission on Jan. 6 Riot. It’s shameful. I don’t think we need an independent commission to know and understand what happened, though. It is no secret what happened. It is no secret what went wrong. Everybody knows who is responsible.
\n", "date_published": "2021-05-28T16:57:14-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/05/28/republicans-block-independent.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/05/19/google-wants-to.html", "content_html": "Google wants to build a useful quantum computer by 2029. If it does, I’m sure it will cancel the project by 2030.
\n", "date_published": "2021-05-19T09:46:49-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/05/19/google-wants-to.html", "tags": ["Tech","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/05/01/is-a-higherquality.html", "title": "Is a higher-quality Apple Music tier on the way?", "content_html": "I hope so. I am a sucker for lossless codecs, even though I probably can’t hear the difference between them and AAC-256.
\n", "date_published": "2021-05-01T15:46:15-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/05/01/is-a-higherquality.html", "tags": ["Audiophile","Apple","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/04/29/report-apples-m.html", "title": "Report: Apple’s M2 chips may launch as soon as July 2021", "content_html": "Napier Lopez reports in The Next Web:
\n\n\nApple only just released its new iMacs featuring the acclaimed M1 ARM-based processor, but according to a report from Nikkei, the company plans to launch M2 as soon as July.
\n
I don’t know anything in particular about Apple’s plans, but it seems crazy to me to expect a faster chip at this time. What I would expect is more I/O, driven by more cores and supported by more RAM. Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe Apple can overvolt the M1 to get more speed out of it, and will call it by another name.
\n", "date_published": "2021-04-29T10:03:57-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/04/29/report-apples-m.html", "tags": ["Apple","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/04/29/i-am-very.html", "content_html": "I am very conservative about cities re-opening too soon, considering the pandemic has not ended. But NYC reopening on July 1 almost seems reasonable to me. Time will tell.
\n", "date_published": "2021-04-29T09:42:59-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/04/29/i-am-very.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/04/28/microsoft-is-changing.html", "title": "Microsoft is changing the default Office font and wants your help to pick a new one", "content_html": "\n\n\nMicrosoft is changing its default Office font next year and wants everyone to help pick the new default. While there are more than 700 font options in Word, Microsoft has commissioned five new custom fonts for Office, in a move away from the Calibri font that has been the default in Microsoft Office for nearly 15 years.
\n
I am unusually attached to Calibri so I am not looking forward to this change. Then again, at work I often have to publish using Arial Narrow, which I think is objectively awful in terms of aesthetics and legibility, so it probably won’t affect me too much.
\n", "date_published": "2021-04-28T12:34:28-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/04/28/microsoft-is-changing.html", "tags": ["Tech","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/04/16/the-shooting-likely.html", "title": "The shooting likely lasted one or two minutes.", "content_html": "I am unsettled today by yet another mass shooting in my country. It seems like not a day goes by without a New York Times news alert about it. (I plan to turn those alerts off after I finish writing this.) This time, a gunman killed seven people, then himself. This detail about the story jumped out at me: “The shooting likely lasted one or two minutes.”
\nI think the news media covers mass shootings like they are exciting, like some kind of action movie where bad outcomes only happen to the extras, and the rest of us get to watch. But “one or two minutes” isn’t an action movie. It isn’t something exciting. It’s actually, really, really stupid. That such a thing is even possible, outside a war, is embarrassing and shameful to all of us. I wish it were more widely considered to be.
\n", "date_published": "2021-04-16T10:48:56-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/04/16/the-shooting-likely.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/04/13/microsoft-announces-surface.html", "title": "Microsoft announces Surface Laptop 4 with choice of Intel or AMD processors", "content_html": "Tom Warren’s article on The Verge caught my eye:
\n\n\nMicrosoft is refreshing its Surface lineup with the Surface Laptop 4 today, which now offers the choice between AMD or Intel processors across both the 13.5- and 15-inch models. Both sizes will ship with Intel’s latest 11th Gen processors or AMD’s Ryzen 4000 series processors. Microsoft is shipping its Surface Laptop 4 on April 15th in the US, Canada, and Japan, starting at $999 for the AMD model and $1,299 for the Intel version — a $300 price gap between the pair.
\n
If I was more of a Windows guy I would probably buy only Microsoft-brand laptops at this point. They don’t always have the best specs, but I like their designs a lot.
\nI spend most of my computing time using Windows for work. I try to forget that I have a Lenovo laptop by putting it behind a giant monitor and using an external keyboard and trackball to operate it. Lenovo laptops are good, I guess, as long as I don’t have to touch them. I don’t like their keyboards (both in terms of layout and feel) or the pointing devices (the trackpad is too small, and I’m done with using the trackpoint/eraserhead thing). The Surface Laptops keyboards and trackpads have always seemed a lot more sensible to me in how they are designed.
\n", "date_published": "2021-04-13T11:21:36-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/04/13/microsoft-announces-surface.html", "tags": ["Tech","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/04/02/fully-vaccinated-people.html", "title": "Fully vaccinated people may travel, CDC says", "content_html": "As reported by Lena H. Sun and Lori Aratani in The Washington Post:
\n\n\nFederal health officials gave the green light Friday for fully vaccinated people to resume travel as an estimated 100 million Americans have had at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine, and evidence mounts of the shots’ effectiveness.
\n
That’s good news, but it doesn’t make me want to go out and travel by plane or train anytime soon.
\nI am fully vaccinated, but my kids are not (because, of course, there is no approved vaccine for children yet), and that dramatically limits my desire to travel, eat in indoor restaurants, or do any indoor activities in public unless they are absolutely necessary. I understand that it is probably quite safe for me to do some of these activities (provided I wear a mask, etc.), but it seems to me that doing so would still be (even more) uncomfortable and unpleasant (than it was before).
\nMy wife and I have been talking every day about what is OK or not OK for us to do now that we are vaccinated. Despite both being vaccinated, we are still not comfortable dining in restaurants or staying in hotels (don’t even talk about flying!), but we have realized that we are way behind our friends and acquaintances in terms of risk taking. We remain concerned about our children being explored to the virus, and about the rising and “extremely high” (per The New York Times) COVID-19 risk level our county is currently at. It just doesn’t make sense for us to change our behavior that much yet—at least not until the local COVID infection numbers go down quite a bit, which won’t happen until after a lot more people get vaccinated.
\n", "date_published": "2021-04-02T13:51:55-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/04/02/fully-vaccinated-people.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/03/29/openais-textgenerating-system.html", "title": "OpenAI’s text-generating system GPT-3 is now spewing out 4.5 billion words a day", "content_html": "James Vincent reports in The Verge:
\n\n\nThe best-known AI text-generator is OpenAI’s GPT-3, which the company recently announced is now being used in more than 300 different apps, by “tens of thousands” of developers, and producing 4.5 billion words per day. That’s a lot of robot verbiage. This may be an arbitrary milestone for OpenAI to celebrate, but it’s also a useful indicator of the growing scale, impact, and commercial potential of AI text generation.
\n
The obvious industry target for auto-text is journalism. It is already being used there for sports reporting, and could probably be used for local government reporting too. There are other areas it will encroach on that are news-adjacent (think financial news or business book digest services like Blinkist), like education and entertainment.
\nI’m an auditor, and I think that, eventually, auto-text is going to destroy about 50% of our billable hours. Auditors spend a ton of time writing. We document our procedures. We record our work. We summarize our findings. We write reports for our clients. Making sense of all the work, both for our own understanding and for our client’s, for the sake of writing it down, takes a lot of time. Moreover, the simple act of typing it out and, especially, hyperlinking everything together so we support our conclusions, requires a lot of manual work. Some of this work is communicative, but a lot of it (like the hyperlinking part) is mechanical. Consequently, much of it is ripe for automation.
\nI think, though, that transforming this laborious and time-consuming writing process into something auto-generated by a bot would produce a lot more information but a lot less knowledge than we had before. You gain a lot more understanding how a company, business process, or control works by writing about it than by reading about it. Why? Because writing is thinking. To write well is mentally strenuous. It requires you to think how you would communicate an idea to someone else, notably someone else with a different perspective and different knowledge than you have. At the end of the writing process, you should understand your subject backwards and forwards and from all sides; you could probably describe it in a number of different ways; and you will likely remember the gist of it, and specific nuances about it, for far longer than you would if you had just read about it in a report.
\nThe world won’t end, and few will shed tears, when AI writes audit reports and work papers. Audits cost money, and businesses mostly don’t think they benefit from them. If it makes the auditors less knowledgeable, however, side effects will develop, and those will be long-lasting. Knowledgable auditors help make good control environments possible, which leads to more stable and more solvent companies. Decreasing the understanding of auditors could make systems and processes more unstable and less trustworthy over time. Additionally, knowledgable auditors often move to the business side and go on to manage well-controlled organizations. While the auditor-to-manager career path will likely continue, such moves would not result in the same level of management quality if the auditors don’t have to think as deeply about what they are auditing as they did before the AI text-bots took over. Neither of these side effects bodes particularly well for the people the auditors and the audited companies (and their fancy AI) serve.
\n", "date_published": "2021-03-29T17:27:08-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/03/29/openais-textgenerating-system.html", "tags": ["Tech","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/03/23/intel-invests-billion.html", "title": "Intel invests $20 billion into new factories, will produce chips for other companies", "content_html": "Chiam Gartenberg reports in The Verge:
\n\n\nAt the company’s “Engineering the Future” announcement today, Gelsinger announced plans to outsource more of Intel’s chip production to third-party foundries; a $20 billion investment into two new fabs in Arizona; and a new branch of the company called Intel Foundry Services, which will see Intel’s foundries produce chips for other companies.
\n
Intel has had an awful decade, having missed out on smartphone chips and having stalled out at their 14nm process for years. Still, it is a strategically important company for my country, and I have to ill will toward it, even if I don’t prefer their products right now. I would love to see them become competitive again.
\nThe idea of Intel fabbing chips for other companies is a big deal. Intel has never done that before. It seems to me like it could be the first step of spinning off that part of the business into its own company, and focusing on process shrinks in ways that the fully integrated Intel could not before.
\n", "date_published": "2021-03-23T18:33:12-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/03/23/intel-invests-billion.html", "tags": ["Tech","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/03/23/seven-mass-shootings.html", "title": "Seven mass shootings in seven days", "content_html": "Josh Berlinger of CNN reports today that the Colorado attack is the 7th mass shooting in 7 days in the US.
\nIt seemed like there were periods in recent years in which we had a deadly mass shooting in the national news at least every week, if not several times each week. There has been something of a pause due to COVID, for understandable reasons. Unfortunately, we seem to be un-pausing now. Sadly, mass shooting rates in the U.S. seem to be getting back to normal.
\nBut what is “normal?” It is actually hard to know what is normal for gun violence in the U.S. Here’s an interesting factoid from the article about my country’s gun problem:
\n\n\nIt’s unclear how this number of mass shootings compares to an average week in the US.
\nThough some official gun violence data is available, the US federal government does not have a centralized system or database to track firearm incidents and mass shootings nationwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tracks some gun violence data, nearly 40,000 people were killed in incidents involving firearms in 2019.
\n
The article omits the reason for this: There are actually laws against government agencies, such as the CDC, accurately tracking gun violence. That’s just stupid and self-defeating. While dying due to gun violence is incredibly unlikely, statistically speaking, it is also completely unnecessary. We should treat all gun deaths as preventable and unacceptable. Only then can we have the mental and moral clarity to do something about it.
\n", "date_published": "2021-03-23T12:19:59-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/03/23/seven-mass-shootings.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/03/19/cdc-says-schools.html", "title": "CDC Says Schools Can Now Space Students 3 Feet Apart, Rather Than 6", "content_html": "As Anya Kamenetz, Cory Turner, and Allison Aubrey report on the NPR website today:
\n\n\nThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its guidance for schools. On Friday, the agency announced it “now recommends that, with universal masking, students should maintain a distance of at least 3 feet in classroom settings.”
\nPreviously the guidance stated, “Physical distancing (at least 6 feet) should be maximized to the greatest extent possible.” The new guidelines still call for 6 feet of distance between adults and students as well as in common areas, such as auditoriums, and when masks are off, such as while eating. And the 6-foot distancing rule still applies for the general public in settings such as grocery stores.
\n
This news is causing a good deal of consternation in my family. COVID cases are going up in our local schools right now. There has been an extremely high risk level in the community for several weeks, and in-person instruction is expanding anyway. Our school systems have been flatly stating that they will open even though they cannot conform with some of the requirements. This change in CDC requirements makes it easier for them to comply.
\nI think the changing of, and complexity in, the distancing rules makes them seem suspect and less likely to be followed at all. This concern is counterbalanced, however, by my belief that distancing helps very little in the classroom, because every classroom I have seen has poor ventilation. My wife and I are keeping our kids remote until the end of the school year. We are still hopeful enough to consider September as the right time to send them back to in-person learning.
\n", "date_published": "2021-03-19T16:17:52-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/03/19/cdc-says-schools.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/03/18/apples-new-ipad.html", "title": "Apple's new iPad Pro leaks ahead of rumored event", "content_html": "Corinne Reichert and Stephen Shankland report in CNET:
\n\n\nApple will launch a series of new iPads in April, a report Wednesday said. The new iPad Pros will come with Apple’s homemade M1 chips, a Thunderbolt port, and better cameras and screens, according to Bloomberg. They will reportedly come in 11- and 12.9-inch display sizes.
\n
That’s cool. Maybe I’m not a “Pro” but the iPad Air 4 is just about perfect for me. From my layman’s perspective, the A14-based chip in the iPad Air 4 is very similar to the M1, minus some of the cores. The 2020 iPad Pro’s chip (an A12Z) is a generation or two behind that, though it has more cores than the A14 does. Apple obviously needs to remedy that to help justify the iPad Pro’s greater price.
\nI am thinking that the “Thunderbolt” port is merely following the direction that everything with a USB-C connector is going in: USB 4 compatibility. That, plus more processor cores, sounds good for videographers, podcasters, photographers, and (I guess) gamers. Unfortunately, if Apple doesn’t fix some problems with the Files app (just try transferring a gigabyte-sized file off your iPad to a network share—I’ll wait…for it to fail), these performance boosts will be hamstrung.
\n", "date_published": "2021-03-18T11:26:08-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/03/18/apples-new-ipad.html", "tags": ["Apple","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/03/16/apple-discontinues-original.html", "title": "Apple discontinues original HomePod, will focus on mini", "content_html": "Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch reports:
\n\n\nApple has discontinued its original HomePod after four years. It says that it will continue to produce and focus on the HomePod mini, introduced last year.
\n
I, like many audiophiles, passed on the original HomePod due to its high price and lack of connectivity. I’m sure I would have enjoyed how it sounded, and its size is just right for me, but I would likely have had to buy two of them to be fully satisfied (stereo separation is important to me). At $349 each, that was too expensive.
\nThe smaller, cheaper HomePod mini holds little appeal to me, and seems to be a far less interesting product for the audio engineers at Apple to work on. For all I know, though, it sells in huge numbers, which makes it interesting in and of itself. Maybe a HomePod mini max (ha!) will be released someday, at around $150, which will hit the price/performance sweet spot I am looking for.
\n", "date_published": "2021-03-16T11:18:31-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/03/16/apple-discontinues-original.html", "tags": ["Apple","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/03/15/the-covidversary.html", "title": "The COVID-versary", "content_html": "I guess, based on the occurrence of a President Biden speech, that this week marks the one-year anniversary of COVID-19 in the United States. To me, the baleful presence of COVID-19 has been around for what feels like much, much longer—so long that I can’t even remember it clearly.
\nMy COVID panic started in early January, when we thought the disease was only in Wuhan. In America, for a couple weeks at least, it still seemed likely that the disease would never leave China, much like H1N1 and SARS never made a big impact here. For almost three months my mental state caromed between what I think of now as irrational fear and rational fear. I could see the whole year of 2020 play out in my imagination, way before my friends and family could see what was coming, but I could do nothing to stop it, and I could do almost nothing to protect my family from it. All those feelings felt very real and very debilitating, even when almost no one else around me was feeling them.
\nI had about two months of angst about COVID before it actually hit around here. The last time I went out with friends and family was, I think, on March 14, 2020. We went to see a musical and when out to eat at a crowded restaurant afterward. It was really hard for me to feel comfortable the entire time, but I didn’t want to let everybody down because I was concerned about a pandemic that hadn’t hit our area yet. Less than a week later, my entire family was on lockdown.
\nBack in January, February, and early March 2020, it didn’t help me at all to have known about the scope and length and shape of prior pandemics, like the Spanish Flu, which I know, from reading family letters, killed a bunch of people in my extended family about a hundred years ago. It didn’t help me at all to know what I should do and buy to prepare for it. It didn’t help me at all that I am smart enough to think for myself and to scrutinize, with a pretty good understanding of the relevant science and statistics, the information and advice experts were providing to us. All of these things just made me feel more uncertain and more cynical about what was going on.
\nA year later, I am feeling more hopeful. I have the vaccine after all, and am probably (but not definitely) immune to COVID 18. But my county is still at extremely high risk level. The numbers are still higher than they were last year when all of us were in a panic. Despite that, all the states, even blue states like mine, are reopening rapidly and throwing caution to the wind, when it would be more prudent to do so more gradually. It makes me nervous that we are giving the virus a chance to circulate long enough to adapt resistance to our vaccines.
\nI was early in being scared of COVID, and I may be late in getting over that fear. I just hope that, when I look forward from today, whatever fear I feel is merely anxiety over things that will not play out, rather than the accurate foresight into the future that I had late last winter.
\n", "date_published": "2021-03-15T22:31:10-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/03/15/the-covidversary.html", "tags": ["Thoughts","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/03/15/there-was-a.html", "content_html": "There was a brush fire yesterday not too far from where I live. Brush fires are incredibly rare where I live, so this is a curiosity to me. We have had dry, windy weather for about two weeks now, which makes wildfire conditions rife. My family was outside yesterday but fortunately we didn’t notice it; we must have been upwind.
\n", "date_published": "2021-03-15T11:45:26-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/03/15/there-was-a.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/03/06/this-is-the.html", "title": "'This Is The Reality Of Black Girls': Inauguration Poet Says She Was Tailed By Guard", "content_html": "Matthew S. Schwartz reports for NPR:
\n\n\nTo millions of people around the world, the young poet Amanda Gorman represents hope, change and the promise of a better America.
\nBut to a security guard on Friday night, the young African American woman represented a potential threat to public safety.
\n
This is a sad story. My first thought was that Amanda Gorman could legitimately have been harmed in a situation like this. Then I thought, she should have a bodyguard or an entourage with her at all times for protection. Then I thought, she should not need to! That could ruin her life.
\nAmanda Gorman is a strong and bold speaker, and deserves the last word on the matter:
\n\n\n", "date_published": "2021-03-06T12:21:25-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/03/06/this-is-the.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/03/04/jayz-sells-majority.html", "title": "Jay-Z sells majority stake in Tidal music streaming service to Jack Dorsey's Square", "content_html": "“In a sense, he was right,” the former National Youth Poet Laureate added. “I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be.”
\n
Per Mark Sweeney in The Guardian:
\n\n\n“Why would a music streaming company and a financial services company join forces?!,” Dorsey posted on Twitter, posing the obvious question as he announced the news. “It comes down to a simple idea: finding new ways for artists to support their work. New ideas are found at intersections, and we believe there is a compelling one between music and the economy.”
\n
This is great news if you’re Jay-Z. He will cash out cash out with a tidy profit for his also-ran music service. I was surprised to learn that Tidal’s value appreciated so much since he bought it.
\nIt sure seems like a bad deal for Square, though, who accepts a ton of business risk without much benefit. I probably don’t know what Tidal’s cultural cache is—I had assumed that most people had never heard of it—so I can’t appreciate its value. Still, even if the acquisition sounds like a bad idea, $300 million is play money to the Jay-Zs and Jack Dorseys of the world, so who cares?
\n", "date_published": "2021-03-04T17:31:14-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/03/04/jayz-sells-majority.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/03/03/google-to-stop.html", "title": "Google to Stop Selling Ads Based on Your Specific Web Browsing", "content_html": "Sam Schechner and Keach Hagey report in The Wall Street Journal:
\n\n\nGoogle plans to stop selling ads based on individuals’ browsing across multiple websites, a change that could hasten upheaval in the digital advertising industry.
\n
I don’t even know what to make of this, unless it is a flex of Google’s monopoly power in search, maps, and video (YouTube). Who needs to track users across websites when every browser tab starts at or ends at a Google-owned website?
\n", "date_published": "2021-03-03T10:48:32-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/03/03/google-to-stop.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/03/02/neera-tanden-is.html", "title": "Neera Tanden is Biden’s first Cabinet-level nominee to withdraw", "content_html": "Ella Nilson at vox.com reports:
\n\n\nBut much of Tanden’s résumé was overshadowed by her proliferous online posting — at least 1,000 tweets raking both Republicans and leftist Democrats over the coals — that Tanden quietly started deleting in November 2020.
\n
I haven’t been following this story, but my interest was piqued when I learned that Neera Tanden’s nomination chances were in jeopardy because of her tweets from the past. People keep getting in trouble for what they post to Twitter. (“Social media” in these cases always is Twitter, too. That is probably just because it is public facing, though it is also a popular place for broadcasting, calling out, and grandstanding.)
\nIt will soon be the conventional wisdom that those who seek high offices—in public service or in private industry—should have no public social media presence, no blog—certainly no Twitter account—maybe no public online presence at all. That bothers me because I think there is value in publishing one’s thoughts to the world, in a blog, vlog, podcast, or whatever other medium I can’t even conceive of yet. People have an urge to share and should not feel that they will be punished for it, especially years after they tap the “post” button.
\nI understand that some people are deliberately awful on social media, and that is a problem, but isn’t it also a problem that “the Internet never forgets?” The right to be forgotten is at both ridiculous to ask for and essential for people to get along with each other after a certain point. How should we evaluate a person based on what she posted online? Does it matter how long ago a thought was posted? What is fair? I think we are at a cultural crossroads regarding these questions, and may be stuck at that crossroads for a long, long time.
\n", "date_published": "2021-03-03T00:15:49-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/03/02/neera-tanden-is.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/02/02/boston-red-soxs.html", "title": "Boston Red Sox's Dustin Pedroia announces retirement from MLB", "content_html": "\n\n\nBoston Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia, who hasn’t played since 2019 because of a knee injury suffered two seasons earlier, announced his retirement Monday.
\n“Could it have ended better and I finished my career the right way? Yeah of course,” Pedroia said on a Zoom call with the media. “But there was a reason I was the first one dressed at 5:30 for a 7 o’clock game. I always tell my teammates that you never know if the game is going to start early. My biggest thing in my mind was that this could be my last game and you don’t know. That’s the best way I approached it from Little League on. I had the best time playing.”
\n
As a Red Sox fan, Pedroia’s retirement is no surprise. He hasn’t been physically able to play for years, since he got injured by a Manny Machado slide at second base. It is sad nonetheless. In his prime, he was fun and exciting to watch, and embodied the quality I enjoy seeing the most as a fan: “the love of the game.”
\n", "date_published": "2021-02-02T11:42:14-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/02/02/boston-red-soxs.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/02/01/nyu-researchers-find.html", "title": "NYU researchers find no evidence of anti-conservative bias on social media", "content_html": "Kim Lyons reports in The Verge:
\n\n\n“The contention that social media as an industry censors conservatives is now, as we speak, becoming part of an even broader disinformation campaign from the right, that conservatives are being silenced all across American society,” the report’s lead researcher Paul Barrett said in an interview with The Verge. “This is the obvious post-Trump theme, we’re seeing it on Fox News, hearing it from Trump lieutenants, and I think it will continue indefinitely. Rather than any of this going away with Trump leaving Washington, it’s only getting more intense.”
\n
This is one of those studies that may help future historians sort through the mess we are living through now. It is pretty obvious to me that there is a conservative bias on social media rather than a liberal one. The shocking election in 2016 of a mendacious “conservative” social media gasbag is enough proof. That he wasn’t deplatformed until he lost the 2020 election, despite sowing devision and inciting violence on social media platforms, is further proof of it.
\nI bristle now at hearing or seeing the word “conservative” describe the people running a disinformation campaign against their fellow citizens. There’s nothing “conservative” about this influential and dangerous wing of the Republican Party, which is undermining the basic traditions and institutions of society. I identify strongly as a political progressive, but I am also quite conservative in how I think that people should behave publicly and how ethically and transparently political institutions should be run.
\n", "date_published": "2021-02-01T18:42:40-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/02/01/nyu-researchers-find.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/01/27/the-business-of.html", "title": "The Business of Influenece with MKBHD", "content_html": "I found this fairly long interview on The Verge with Marques Brownlee (MKBHD on YouTube) to be very interesting:
\n\n\nBut what looks effortless and fun to the viewer is often the result of careful planning and investment. YouTubers are entrepreneurs, and Brownlee — my guest on today’s episode of Decoder — talks that talk with the best of them.
\n
Marques Brownlee could be described as “tech reviewer” or a “social media influencer” or a “YouTuber.” I don’t watch all his videos, but I have checked in with his YouTube channel periodically since I first saw him (as a college student!) on an episode of TWiT. While he is telegenic and charismatic, he also presents himself as someone with a strong sense of ethics who is very smart and thoughtful about he approaches his business. This interview gives a pretty long look into Marques Brownlee’s professional world.
\nMy wife, who is a high school teacher, recently reported to me that one of the top “professions” that teens want to go into is “social media influencer.” That is kind of eyeroll-inducing to me, but I suppose it is as realistic and as meaningful an aspiration as “famous writer” was to me. It is important to know how much work goes into that sort of job, and how much time, investment, and infrastructure goes into keeping up with the competition.
\n", "date_published": "2021-01-27T13:03:19-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/01/27/the-business-of.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/01/11/record-low-flu.html", "title": "Record low flu cases show how COVID-19 is more contagious and 'less forgiving,' experts say", "content_html": "This article in USA Today confirms my suspicions that all the anti-COVID measures would drastically reduce the prevalence of seasonal flu in the U.S.:
\n\n\nDuring the 2019 flu season from Sept. 29 to Dec. 28, the CDC reported more than 65,000 cases of influenza nationwide. During the same period last year, the agency reported 1,016 cases.
\n
I get a vaccine every year for the flu—and luckily have not caught it since I was in elementary school—but other than that, I never think about it. My dream right now is that the COVID vaccine be the same kind of thing: a prick on the arm once a year, and otherwise nothing much to think about.
\n", "date_published": "2021-01-11T14:57:58-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/01/11/record-low-flu.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/01/07/pelosi-schumer-join.html", "content_html": "Pelosi, Schumer Join Chorus Of Calls For Invocation Of 25th Amendment Against Trump. I cosign. Swear in President Pence and swear him out in about two weeks when Biden is inaugurated.
\n", "date_published": "2021-01-07T16:29:46-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/01/07/pelosi-schumer-join.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/01/07/when-american-carnage.html", "title": "When “American Carnage” is the Tone at the Top", "content_html": "I was having a pretty good day yesterday, full of minor but meaningful personal and professional accomplishments, and then all hell broke loose in Washington, DC. I pushed the news of it away as best I could, so I am less informed than I otherwise would be, but I am sad, angry, and ashamed nonetheless.
\nPer Philip Rucker in The Washington Post:
\n\n\nThe “American carnage” that Donald Trump vowed to end at the dawn of his presidency was revived in terrifying, treacherous form at its sunset Wednesday, as Trump made a fiery last stand and incited his supporters to storm and sack the U.S. Capitol as part of an attempted coup.
\n
I don’t even know how to comment on this event without seeming glib, but I feel compelled to say something anyway.
\nI am, by trade, an auditor. One thing auditors are trained to investigate is called “tone at the top,” which represents the values expressed by the top management of a company which are expected from everyone who reports up to them.
\nAfter auditing for years, I have discovered that “tone at the top” is almost everything you need to know about an organization to get an idea how well and how ethically it is operated. Ethics and decency from the top of an organization really do trickle down all the way to the bottom and permeate it entirely. Moreover, they are strongly indicative of the organization’s solvency—its ability to hold together as a going concern over time.
\nWhen the “tone at the top” is selfish, vain, petty, petulant, aggrieved, unethical, amoral, and violent—as Trump’s has been—that tone trickles down to the whole organization, and pollutes the thoughts and corrupts the actions of the people within it. Unfortunately in this case, the “organization” is not just the Executive Branch, not just the federal government, and not just the Republican Party: it is the entire United States of America. What’s more, because the U.S. is a vastly influential country, the corruption and willful deceit at the head of it spills over into the rest of the world.
\nI feel like I have known this from the beginning—before the slow-moving coup even started—because I understood what the “tone at the top” was, and knew that it was vitally important. Knowing this, sadly, is not enough, because in a democracy a majority of people need to know this for things to turn out better. Being able to know this, like being able to discern the “tone at the top” as a new auditor, is a rare gift. It requires a trait that is not easily acquired, but is so difficult to teach and to learn that it is often considered to be innate: shrewdness.
\nThat’s because “tone at the top” isn’t always as blatantly obvious as Trump’s vitriolic tweets and shambolic rally speeches. Understanding what the “tone at the top” really is, it requires a combination of healthy skepticism, decent powers of observation, and the knowledge of how things are supposed to work. You have to understand both context and subtext; subtext is much harder to grasp than context, but is often the more important to the two. You have to interpret people’s words and actions, and compare them to each other to see if the actions follow the words. You also have to have some kind of ethical foundation—which may be laws of the state, societal norms, or virtue ethics— on which to base your conclusions.
\nThe human mind has evolved to do a lot of this analysis automatically. Consider that establishing whether you trust another person is, and always has been, an essential part of human interaction. But, like a lot of thought processes that are largely automatic, many times mental shortcuts are taken and the wrong choice is made. To be able to second-guess these automatic thought processes takes intellect, some degree of guidance, and a willingness to think a little harder.
\nI would not be surprised to learn that many of the people trying to unlawfully overturn the election—not counting the elected officials who are operating out of cynical self-interest—really do think they are making an ethical decision, and really do think they are doing the right thing. They just trusted the wrong person, or made the wrong decision about voting for or supporting, because they lack the shrewdness and imagination to discern that the “tone at the top” really does matter, and that bad words from a lazy president really will lead to riots in the streets.
\n", "date_published": "2021-01-07T15:50:56-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/01/07/when-american-carnage.html", "tags": ["Thoughts","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/01/06/neil-young-and.html", "content_html": "Neil Young and Jimmy Iovine sold part or all of their music catalog publishing rights to Hipgnosis. This closely follows Bob Dylan’s catalog sale to Universal Music Group. Strange things may be afoot in the music industry.
\n", "date_published": "2021-01-06T11:20:53-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/01/06/neil-young-and.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2021/01/04/chipotle-launches-cauliflower.html", "content_html": "Chipotle launches cauliflower rice nationwide as consumers cut grains from their diets. This is a good idea. Cauliflower rice can be very good, at least when it is not overcooked. Still, it probably won’t get me to go back to Chipotle ever again. 😅
\n", "date_published": "2021-01-04T10:36:01-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2021/01/04/chipotle-launches-cauliflower.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/12/21/netflix-and-arthur.html", "title": "Netflix and Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate agree to dismiss lawsuit over Sherlock Holmes’ emotions", "content_html": "From Adi Robertson in The Verge:
\n\n\nThe Enola Holmes case hinged on Sherlock Holmes’ complicated copyright status. Most Holmes stories sit in the public domain, and stories like Enola Holmes — which reimagines Holmes (played by Henry Cavill) having a younger sister — can freely repurpose their elements. But 10 of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories are still protected by copyright, and the Doyle estate argued that they depict a meaningfully different version of the character. (He’s more caring, less overtly contemptuous of women and friendship, and generally less of a jerk.)
\n
I don’t believe Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate should have any rights over Sherlock Holmes at all. Conan Doyle died in 1930. It’s completely outrageous.
\n", "date_published": "2020-12-21T13:53:10-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/12/21/netflix-and-arthur.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/12/15/a-robotic-kitchen.html", "content_html": "A robotic kitchen for rich people is kind of a cool idea, I guess, but the setup looks pretty scary. If robots can cook, where will that leave restaurant cooks in 20 years or so, when the technology gets cheaper?
\n", "date_published": "2020-12-15T10:59:07-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/12/15/a-robotic-kitchen.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/12/14/live-here-are.html", "content_html": "Live: Here Are the Electoral College Results, By State. Why on earth would I want to track this live?
\n", "date_published": "2020-12-14T12:49:09-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/12/14/live-here-are.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/12/09/democrats-want-to.html", "title": "Democrats Want To Bring Earmarks Back As Way To Break Gridlock In Congress", "content_html": "\n\n\nWhen earmarks were a regular feature of congressional business, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., said Democrats and Republicans were able to cut more deals and pass more bills with bipartisan support.
\n
This sounds like a bad idea at first, but it probably is actually a good one. Congress can’t pass meaningful legislation anymore, in part because there is almost no bipartisan agreement on important bills. Maybe allowing earmarks will make it easier to gain votes “across the aisle”—you know, like it used to.
\n", "date_published": "2020-12-09T14:45:27-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/12/09/democrats-want-to.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/12/08/apple-announces-airpods.html", "title": "Apple announces $549 AirPods Max noise-canceling headphones, coming December 15th. ", "content_html": "Wow. Apple’s “December surprise” actually happened:
\n\n\nBy moving into the premium headphones space, Apple will directly compete with brands like Bose, Sony, Sennheiser, AKG, Bowers and Wilkins, and others that have years of experience and a long list of products between them. Apple is going higher than just about all of them on price, but the company is riding the momentum of the AirPods and AirPods Pro, which have dominated the true wireless earbuds market.
\n
I shouldn’t be surprised that Apple’s headphones cost more than any in my collection—and I have some pretty impressive headphones.
\nThe headband design looks a little odd at the top. I hope the engineers sacrificed looks for comfort there.
\nAnd it’s a shame they charge via Lightning
\n", "date_published": "2020-12-08T11:43:26-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/12/08/apple-announces-airpods.html", "tags": ["Apple","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/11/20/ijustines-m-macs.html", "content_html": "iJustine’s M1 Macs review video is absolutely hilarious.
\n", "date_published": "2020-11-20T11:00:34-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/11/20/ijustines-m-macs.html", "tags": ["Apple","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/11/19/reach-out-to.html", "title": "‘Reach Out to Trump Supporters,’ They Said. I Tried.", "content_html": "Wajahat Ali, writing an op-ed in the New York Times, has given up on Trump supporters:
\n\n\nWe cannot help people who refuse to help themselves.
\n
I get it. It was shocking that Trump actually gained in the vote count after four years of doing everything he could to diminish American standing and influence in the world, and the rights and lives of people within his own borders. It is worse to have lived through an era in which the Republican Party went from a political movement with some bad ideas about taxation and social services to a full-on fascist personality cult.
\nIt’s easy to blame Trump. He is a problem. But he is not the only problem. Ali hits at this deep into the article (my emphasis added in bold), stating something that is vital to understanding the predicament we are in:
\n\n\nTrump is an extension of their id, their culture, their values, their greed. He is their defender and savior. He is their blunt instrument. He is their destructive drug of choice.
\n
The thing we should not forget about the Trump supporters is that they empower him—it’s not the other way around. If Trump is a lightning rod, his supporters are the lightning.
\nYou can’t turn your back on those people because they are still here and are not going anywhere. Changing their minds might be a generation’s worth of work, but it is work that has to be done because social institutions are breaking down, and not by accident. The Republican Party transformed itself over the past fifty years into what it is now, through planning, determination, and lots and lots of money. There is no reason that the Democratic Party can’t do the same. It takes a lot of things, but most of all will.
\n", "date_published": "2020-11-19T20:29:56-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/11/19/reach-out-to.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/11/18/the-rise-and.html", "title": "The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done", "content_html": "I very much enjoyed Cal Newport’s rumination on Getting Things Done (GTD), and Merlyn Mann’s contributions to personal productivity culture, in The New Yorker.
\nFinding Getting Things Done, through Merlyn Mann’s 43 Folders, was transformative for me. It supercharged my productivity, for a while at least, numerous times in my life.
\nGTD techniques and processes have not fixed the root problems with knowledge work, which Newport points out in the article:
\n\n\nIn this context, the shortcomings of personal-productivity systems like G.T.D. become clear. They don’t directly address the fundamental problem: the insidiously haphazard way that work unfolds at the organizational level. They only help individuals cope with its effects. A highly optimized implementation of G.T.D. might have helped Mann organize the hundreds of tasks that arrived haphazardly in his in-box daily, but it could do nothing to reduce the quantity of these requests.
\n
We have a workaholic culture that puts a lot of pressure on the individual worker to be responsible for many, many things that are outside the worker’s control. GTD is both a means of dealing with this pressure, and a personal methodology that prolongs one’s exposure to all this pressure. It increases the number of balls you can keep in the air, but doesn’t address the problem that others keep throwing more and more balls at you that they expect you to juggle.
\n", "date_published": "2020-11-18T10:51:55-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/11/18/the-rise-and.html", "tags": ["Productivity","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/11/15/this-is-pretty.html", "content_html": "This is pretty great, isn’t it?
\n", "date_published": "2020-11-15T21:15:16-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/11/15/this-is-pretty.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/11/08/alex-trebek-has.html", "content_html": "Alex Trebek has died. It certainly is the end of an era.
\n", "date_published": "2020-11-08T14:51:24-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/11/08/alex-trebek-has.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/11/07/my-wife-and.html", "content_html": "My wife and I watched the Biden-Harris acceptance speeches with our daughter, who has never seen anything like it before. We are feeling excited and hopeful. I am especially eager to follow Kamala Harris’s work as Vice President in the hopes that she will be a transformative figure in the office.
\n", "date_published": "2020-11-07T22:17:00-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/11/07/my-wife-and.html", "tags": ["Journal","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/09/24/i-didnt-realize.html", "content_html": "I didn’t realize that Amazon was having a hardware event today. Am I the only one who has been hoping for updated e-ink Kindles?
\n", "date_published": "2020-09-24T14:12:05-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/09/24/i-didnt-realize.html", "tags": ["Tech","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/08/21/kamala-harris-goes.html", "title": "Kamala Harris Goes Beyond the White Pantsuit", "content_html": "Come on, New York Times. This type of article is sexist and demeaning. What is Joe Biden wearing? What does it mean?
\n", "date_published": "2020-08-21T10:15:57-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/08/21/kamala-harris-goes.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/08/19/coronavirus-is-in.html", "title": "Coronavirus is in the air. Here’s how to get it out.", "content_html": "Brian Resnick’s article on Vox summarizes some of the issues we are all facing in the back-to-school period. Coronavirus is in the air, and being indoors with an infected person for a prolonged time increases the viral load that one is exposed to. This is critical to understand.
\n\n\nAs Derek Thompson observes in the Atlantic, a lot of places have put on a big show about cleaning surfaces — what he calls “hygiene theater” — though surface contamination is not thought to be a large source of Covid-19 transmission.
\nMaking places safer, instead, should mean improving air quality. But “have you ever heard a restaurant reopening announce they’ve improved ventilation or increased ventilation?” Lidia Morawska, an engineer and the director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at Queensland University of Technology, recently told me. “No.”
\n
The “hygiene theater” of surface cleaning is already entrenched in mask wearing. Mask wearing is critical to reducing disease transmission from a public health perspective, but masks aren’t magical COVID-19 blockers, especially when people are wearing them around their chins or taking them off before they sneeze (seriously, I have seen this in the grocery store). I think that a lot of people believe lots of activities, like sitting in a classroom all day, are OK as long as everyone wears masks, at least most of the time. I don’t believe that—at least not at a time in which Covid cases are climbing, and outbreaks have been traced to gatherings of people indoors or families sharing a home.
\nI am concerned that in schools, restaurants, and other public places, “ventilation theater” will soon run rampant. We will be promised that “ventilation system improvements” will protect us, our children, and our grandparents, even when most buildings can’t be redesigned to circulate or scrub the air with any real effectiveness. The article points this out, too:
\n\n\nRemember: Hygiene theater is possible when it comes to air quality as well. If a school or any indoor space says it has improved ventilation, ask how. Marr suggests asking building operators what the air exchange rate is (if they don’t know it, maybe be wary about the space). Ask about what filters have been put in place. Ask if their HVAC systems have been routinely maintained.
\n
I do wonder when things will go back to pre-Covid normal. I am advocating opening windows and using window fans to exchange inside- and outside air, to the extent that is possible, in public buildings. Most places I can think of aren’t really designed for that, unfortunately.
\n", "date_published": "2020-08-19T10:10:25-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/08/19/coronavirus-is-in.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/08/18/apple-music-is.html", "content_html": "“Apple Music 1” is not nearly as fun to say as Beats 1.
\n", "date_published": "2020-08-18T09:30:49-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/08/18/apple-music-is.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/07/14/podcast-mentorship.html", "title": "Podcast Mentorship", "content_html": "Myke Hurley’s Podcast Mentorship program is a really good idea:
\n\n\nTL;DR: I want to mentor people who are under-represented in the tech-focussed podcast world. If you are starting out and need some help, please read on.
\n
The mentees that Myke selected appear to be promising new voices who can enrich the tech podcasting space.
\nI hope that other seasoned podcasters will join Myke as mentors in the future.
\n", "date_published": "2020-07-14T13:27:34-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/07/14/podcast-mentorship.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/04/07/this-story-about.html", "content_html": "This story about Wisconsin’s primary election is very upsetting. It is yet another symptom of a larger problem: American democracy is in deep, deep trouble, now that Republicans, who need low voter turnout to win elections, have taken over the Judiciary.
\n", "date_published": "2020-04-07T13:46:19-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/04/07/this-story-about.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/04/05/corona-beer-halts.html", "content_html": "Corona beer halts production during coronavirus pandemic. This is so stupid, but I get it.
\n", "date_published": "2020-04-05T10:14:22-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/04/05/corona-beer-halts.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/04/01/adam-schlesinger-dies.html", "content_html": "Adam Schlesinger Dies of Coronavirus Complications at 52. This sucks. Fountains of Wayne is one of my favorite bands, and Schlesinger’s more recent work on “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” was really entertaining, too.
\n", "date_published": "2020-04-01T18:47:52-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/04/01/adam-schlesinger-dies.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/02/19/andrew-yang-joins.html", "content_html": "Andrew Yang joins CNN as a political commentator. Is that the best he could do?
\n", "date_published": "2020-02-19T16:58:49-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/02/19/andrew-yang-joins.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/02/12/the-french-connection.html", "content_html": "“The French Dispatch” appears, from its initial trailer, to be the most “Wes Anderson” Wes Anderson movie ever.
\n", "date_published": "2020-02-12T13:52:31-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/02/12/the-french-connection.html", "tags": ["Movies","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/02/11/andrew-yang-ends.html", "title": "Andrew Yang Ends His Presidential Campaign", "content_html": "Andrew Yang dropped out of the presidential race tonight. He certainly stayed on brand when announcing it: > “I am the math guy, and it’s clear from the numbers we’re not going to win this campaign,” he said. “So tonight I’m announcing that I am suspending my campaign.” I hope he does something good with his newfound fame.
\n", "date_published": "2020-02-11T23:36:01-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/02/11/andrew-yang-ends.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2020/01/20/star-wars-the.html", "title": "‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ Is Now the Worst-Reviewed ‘Star Wars’ Movie", "content_html": "Per Matt Golderberg at Collider:
\n\n\nNow, the final Rotten Tomatoes tally has come in, and it looks like The Rise of Skywalker is the worst-reviewed Star Wars movie ever, sitting at 52%, one percent lower than Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
\n
I actually enjoyed Rise of Skywalker. The Last Jedi was the film that ruined the Star Wars franchise for me—it wasn’t really bad, like The Phantom Menace, but it both added and threw out so much of the Star Wars canon that it made the phone thing seem silly and unimportant.
\nNow that I have seen all all three “sequel trilogy” movies, the whole “Star Wars” franchise seems silly and unimportant. Creatively, the sequel trilogy was completely bankrupt, amounting mostly to remakes of the prior (good) films, and repeats and amplifications of prior plot points. I don’t hate it now, though. I think of it as enjoyable cinematic fluff: entertaining diversions, like really high-budget B-movies. It just isn’t important and it clearly doesn’t make any sense. Accepting that, I can enjoy them when I want to escape to “a time long ago, in a galaxy far away,” and otherwise not think about them at all.
\n", "date_published": "2020-01-20T18:30:21-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2020/01/20/star-wars-the.html", "tags": ["Movies","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2019/08/01/after-decades-of.html", "title": "After Decades of Music, Tanglewood Talks", "content_html": "Seeing this article, by Michael Cooper, today, a couple days before I leave on vacation, made me really miss visiting the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts:
\n\n\nFor more than 80 years, Tanglewood, the bucolic summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has made the Berkshires a vital destination for classical music.
\nNow it is getting into the talk business, too.
\n
Listening to classical music, at and after sunset, on Tanglewood’s great lawn is one of my fondest memories. Going to see a lecture there would be fun, too, I guess.
\n", "date_published": "2019-08-01T08:25:45-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2019/08/01/after-decades-of.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2019/07/31/a-giant-of.html", "content_html": "A giant of Broadway theatre has died:
\n\n\n", "date_published": "2019-07-31T14:26:09-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2019/07/31/a-giant-of.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2019/07/16/in-democratic-fundraising.html", "title": "In 2020 Democratic Fund-Raising, Five Candidates Stand Out ", "content_html": "Hal Prince, Giant of Broadway and Reaper of Tonys, Dies at 91 - The New York Times
\n
I think that every bit of this article from the New York Times illustrates what is wrong with the way we pick presidents in the US.
\n\n\nFive Democratic presidential candidates raised a combined $96 million from individual donors in the last three months — about three-quarters of the total fund-raising by the entire Democratic field, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday.
\n
I have to admit that I am annoyed because my favorite candidate is not at the top of the fundraising list. That is a small worry, though. Overall, I am annoyed that all this money is spread out so widely amongst candidates,\nmany of whom should gracefully drop out and run for lower, but still very important, offices.
\nMeanwhile, Trump looms over everything like Calamity Ganon over Hyrule Castle in “Breath of the Wild”:
\n\n\nTrump has more than twice as much cash as the best-funded Democrats.
\nPresident Trump has a big head start on the Democratic field in raising money for the 2020 election. He ended the second quarter with far more cash on hand than even the best-funded Democratic candidate.
\n
I don’t think the Democratic candidates and campaign strategists have a real plan to win. I know there is still a good amount of time to make such a plan, but I’m not sure if there is enough time. I am already tired of the primary process, and it has barely even begun.
\n![\"\"](\"https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/2098/2019/5807bb1b3e.jpg\")
\n",
"date_published": "2019-07-16T09:59:14-04:00",
"url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2019/07/16/in-democratic-fundraising.html",
"tags": ["News"]
},
{
"id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2019/02/11/amazon-acquires-eero.html",
"title": "Amazon Acquires Eero",
"content_html": "John Gruber’s take is dead on. For privacy reasons, there is no way I’ll buy an Eero now.
\n", "date_published": "2019-02-11T20:48:54-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2019/02/11/amazon-acquires-eero.html", "tags": ["Tech","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2019/01/15/after-her-brexit.html", "title": "After Her Brexit Deal Is Crushed in Parliament, Theresa May Faces a No-Confidence Vote ", "content_html": "The bad Brexit news continues. The whole situation is baffling, like so much else that has happened since 2016. I knew the moment that Brexit passed that Donald Trump would be the next U.S. president, and the pace of insanity in world events has only accelerated.
\n", "date_published": "2019-01-15T16:49:18-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2019/01/15/after-her-brexit.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2018/12/19/i-am-not.html", "title": "I am not optimistic about Elon Musk's latest boring publicity stunt", "content_html": "If Elon Musk’s Boring Company can somehow bring down the costs of digging tunnels, that would be fantastic. However, I am skeptical (emphasis is mine):
\n\n\nOn Tuesday, Musk put the total price tag for the finished segment at about $10 million, including the cost of excavation, internal infrastructure, lighting, ventilation, safety systems, communications and a track.
\nBy comparison, he said, digging a mile of tunnel by “traditional” engineering methods costs up to $1 billion and takes three to six months to complete. Musk boasted of several cost-cutting innovations, including higher-power boring machines, digging narrower tunnels, speeding up dirt removal, and simultaneous excavation and reinforcement.
\nHowever, the process he describes is how modern tunnel boring machines work. And he rented his Canadian-built boring machine from a Wisconsin tunneling company. He’s using the Wisconsin company, Super Excavators, as consultants.
\n
Is Musk just selling a wish and a dream here? I really hope not. I share his dream of solving traffic problems with underground mass-transit and personal-transit systems. We need more tunnels to route traffic away from (or at least beneath) city centers, and to open additional arteries into cities like New York City that are largely surrounded by, or bordered by, water.
\nI lived through all the cost overruns in The Big Dig in Boston. There were major deficiencies in planning, lots of cutting corners in terms of materials, design, and engineering that came back to bite them, and simple graft and stupidity at play. I am not sure that The Boring Company can really put a huge dent into all those things. A lot of them are not technical problems that engineers can solve.
\nThe Big Dig was a huge mess that was on our minds in Boston for years. The end result of that mess of a project, though, was a much nicer and more cohesive downtown Boston. This came about mostly by reclaiming land that had been used for highway overpasses, not because traffic and commute times were substantially reduced.
\nI think that if Elon Musk and his Boring Company could somehow decrease the costs of building tunnels, it would be far more important than building a new, sci-fi method of transportation. I just don’t think that he is actually doing it, even though he is telling everyone he is.
\n", "date_published": "2018-12-19T17:49:53-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2018/12/19/i-am-not.html", "tags": ["News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2018/10/04/how-is-the.html", "content_html": "“How is The Good Place so Good?" This is relevant to my interests.
\n", "date_published": "2018-10-04T10:40:42-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2018/10/04/how-is-the.html", "tags": ["TV","News"] }, { "id": "http://mjdescy.micro.blog/2018/04/28/i-miss-caesar.html", "title": "I miss Caesar salad", "content_html": "It seems to me that massive outbreaks of food borne illness are becoming more and more common. That our current, worsening outbreak is the second E. Coli outbreak tied to my favorite type of lettuce in the past six months or so, and it is so virulent, is making me feel worried about our food system, and pessimistic about my country’s will to improve it.
\n\n\nAn outbreak of E. coli food poisoning linked to romaine lettuce has widened and has now made at least 98 people sick, federal health officials said Friday.
\nMore than half have had to be hospitalized because the strain of E. coli causing this outbreak is an especially nasty one, the officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration said.
\nPeople in 22 states have reported E. coli infections linked to the outbreak, the CDC and FDA said.
\n
I’m no expert in this, but I feel like we have several problems in our food system that have, in the past few decades, started to compound in dangerous ways that we should have seen coming. Some of these problems include overcrowding of animals, overuse of antibiotics in livestock, and over-concentration in production and processing. When bad hygiene infects food, it’s worse now than it used to be. The bacteria are more resistant to antibiotics, and the food, and food borne illness, is distributed all across the country.
\nAnother annoyance to me, as a someone who has eaten some raw eggs (usually in cookie dough or homemade eggnog) and rare meat over the years, is that I have never gotten a food borne illness from those activities. I have, however, gotten terribly ill several times from eating restaurant salads, probably due to unwashed hands or vegetables. There are menu warnings about undercooked meat in every restaurant I go to, but none about the danger of eating unwashed vegetables.
\nI am impatiently awaiting the day I can eat Caesar salads again.
\n", "date_published": "2018-04-27T21:35:39-04:00", "url": "https://micro.mjdescy.me/2018/04/27/i-miss-caesar.html", "tags": ["News"] } ] }