The week that Apple releases new devices and new operating systems used to be exciting. Now it’s exhausting. ¹

Another year, another event, another set of posts about Steve Jobs. Another set of people furious some bug they face isn’t fixed or some feature they want doesn’t seem to be on Apple’s radar. Another set of people mad that a new feature they don’t have to use even exists. Another set of people mad that a feature came out that is only 85% of what they wanted. Another set of people talking about how Apple is great because they can use ancient hardware. Another set of people lamenting that Apple is terrible, because they love their ancient hardware and software and will never upgrade to the new bad thing.

Has the vibe shifted?² I don’t know. I don’t care. What’s boring is not devices or software but the conversation.

I have been reading various parts of the web in various ecstatic states and I just feel tired. I wasn’t talking about tech, or at least not tech alone, but I can see why I wrote about the perfect thing or being burnt out on contrarians, or maybe just takes that are contrary to my own. It’s all downstream of “You think it’s cool to hate things, but it’s not. It’s boring.”³ I love critique and there are times I love a deep dive. I just can’t sustain a fanatical enthusiast fervor about all things.

This is a few parts getting older. This is a few parts new things becoming important to me. This is a few parts overexposure of certain kinds of writing and ideas that get attention online.

And to be honest, I also think this is a few parts, “people’s opinions feel grossly distorted by the attention bubble and some misplaced reverence for what things were like whenever they liked themselves the most”. I think there’s something going on with me besides just disagreeing with a lot of these takes, but I can’t quite express it, hence the rambling post.

I find myself too old to say it, but deeply resonating with the idea that y’all need to go touch grass.

My computer has been really good for a while. So has my phone. So has my watch. The apps I use are really good. I’m glad they’re still around still being really good. Sometimes they add things that are nice. Mostly they add things that I end up not using or caring about. Sometimes they change in ways that are less nice. Often when that happens, within a few weeks, I forget how things were before. It’s fine.

Almost everyone talking or writing about tech these days feels like the people who spend their time on Threads in 2024 complaining about The Last Jedi.

Because not everyone has Bluesky, I’m going to recreate the content of a post there here.

In a quote post, Gillian Branstetter hits the nail right on the head. She quoted Phil Lewis, who posted a clip of JD Vance on CNN.

Phil wrote:

JD Vance attempts to justify spreading lies about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio:

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Branstetter posts an image in response, quoting Hannah Arendt on The Origins of Totalitarianism:

Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.

This is the state of America. This is what the GOP has become. Just listen to so-called undecided voters. They express exasperation at their inability to sort out truth. They are convinced only that everything they are told is a lie. The media lies and politicians lie. And you see them immediately allow in the most sensationalist ideas as plausible as a result. Because everyone is lying all the time, only the craziest lies might be true because who could come up with that stuff? And when they are shown that the mass pedophile ring of the Democratic Party isn’t true, they move on to Haitians eating pets, and then move on to voter fraud and election stealing, and then move on to Central American insane asylum releasing patients in the US, and then move on to American cities being overrun by violent Black people, and then move on and move on and move on.

When we compare the GOP to Nazis, when we call them fascists, it’s not simply due to their beliefs, as horrific as many of those are. We make this comparison because they are adopting the means and methods of totalitarian and fascist regimes.

When it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck…

I have less patience for takes that are negative and contrary to some of my own these days. Does that mean I’m getting old? Does that mean I’m in favor of toxic positivity?

Mostly I feel that very few of these people cause me to reconsider my beliefs and just rile up my emotions.

I take this as a bad sign for our ability to convince people of our view points, something which is too important to give up on. I am fighting my instinct to stop reading just because I disagree, but I also can’t tell anymore who is being the cranky, stubborn one.

Probably me.

The BSRI Magawa sounds great on it’s own, but it’s a bit noisy in my setup and may not be quite right as my main dirt.

I’m really curious about some of the dual overdrives out there for a bit more stacking and maybe using the built in boost in the Maz as more of a solo boost (right now, it’s setup basically as great overdrive– pushes the amp where I’d set the gain on my own to just use amp gain which is actually my favorite tone).

Maybe, given how much I love the gain on the Maz, I actually want something that’s more of a flat boost out in front of the amp. I play a G&L Legacy – basically a strat– with a really hot Fralin SP43 in the bridge ¹. I’ve got plenty of honk, and I also tend to play my amp with a lot of mids. I don’t think I want a Tubescreamer style mid hump for my gain/overdrive.

I don’t know– I’m a bit lost on what I’m really looking for in my gain stacking at the moment.

Meanwhile, I know I want a new fuzz (buy my current fuzz please!). I probably should just get the orange OP Amp Big Muff – I love the Pumpkins. But I’m a little paralyzed– I know at the moment I’m looking for that shoegaze wall-of-sound style.

Of course, the real thing I should be buying is probably a Tele, 335, or LP. But… you know. GAS².

Am I wrong to assume that when Amazon has a package out for delivery that suddenly becomes “delayed in transit” and will come a few days later either:

1. The delivery person forgot to drop off that box and has no time to come back;
2. The delivery person stole the package; or
3. The delivery person damaged the package?

Anyway, Amazon delivered roughly half my Sonos order.

I can’t believe I haven’t updated this since March.

When I look back at that post though, I know at least partially why. I opened with, “Gracie is still with us.” April 30th was her last day with us. It’s still painful.

But there have been quite a few important updates since I last wrote.

Music

I am now playing in a band seriously for the first time basically since high school. I’m having a ton of fun writing music again, and I think we’re going to be ready to perform live soon. Once we have some more demos recorded, I might post some of the music. This has meant I’ve spent a lot more time thinking about guitar gear and music again and it’s bringing me a lot of joy.

Newish stuff I’m listening to

Health

After my weight crept up again, not nearly to its high, but enough, I started Wegovy. After years of concerns, I had my cholesterol close to under control. But this winter, even before I had started to gain back some weight, my cholesterol shot up way high. With my family history of severe heart disease, it was time to get on a statin. But my weight kept creeping up and we also have a history of weight-related diabetes. I was struggling, and I knew I didn’t want to get things out of control. After discussing it with my doctor in what was a quick and relatively easy conversation, he agreed that with my activity level and diet plus family history, it would be worth trying Wegovy as I could see some real benefits.

I haven’t lost monstrous amounts of weight– instead, I’ve lost weight just like I have in the past when I was the most successful counting calories. But the “no food noise” thing is real– I cannot believe how much less I think about food, how much faster I feel full, and how much easier it is to just eat less. While I was counting calories in the beginning, I am not at this time. I don’t really need to because my appetite doesn’t lead me to going over. I’m losing at a rate of about 1.5 lbs a week, depending on the week, and I’m now much closer to my “typical” healthy (but still quite over) weight, even though I’m not yet on a full dosage.

My most serious side effect seems to be increased heart rate– it makes it a little harder to do the most intense forms of exercise and it makes my sleep feel a bit less restful. It’s worth it for me.

Unfortunately, I’m not able to do my favorite exercise– volleyball– very much lately. Someone crashed into me while I was swinging for a hit back in May. At the time, it felt ok, but ever since I’ve had shoulder issues. It’s just on the very edge of my motion. I can do almost everything at the gym and never feel it in every day life. But if I try to play volleyball, I really feel it. And the other day I did a some pull-ups for the first time in a while and there it was. I probably should get some imaging, but I’ve been taking it easy and it has improved, just slowly. Welcome to being in your late 30s.

Travel

We went to Providence for our reunion, Nashville for a wedding, and Seattle just because and had a gra time late May through mid June. We also went to London this summer as our big trip for the year. It was my first time to the UK and we had a very good time. My review is short and simple: I’ve never been somewhere that reminded me of New York so much. I do love to travel, and it’s a bit tough on me that post PowerSchool acquisition I don’t get to travel much for work. Oh, and I just got back from visiting my sister and her husband in Pittsburgh over Labor Day weekend.

Miscellaneous

I started to go to a book club at my favorite local bookstore and I’ve had a really good time doing it. I missed the two summer ones (because I was in London for the first and in a rut with reading for the second), but September’s book is Slow Horses, which I expect will be an easy read given how much I love the AppleTV series so I’m excited to head back there.

I’ll try and do this once more before the end of the year.

Barry Sampson looks at website analytics and says:

I look at that list and while I think it might be interesting, for me it’s not actionable.

I disagree! I used to feel this way, but I recently changed my mind. In particular, I find it very valuable to know “Where those visitors appear to come from”– this is the most reliable way for me to know that someone who has a blog has linked to one of my posts. And so, without analytics, I’d never read some of the best responses to my writing, nor would I find bloggers who read me so that I can add their RSS feed and read them as well.

The best blogs to read are written by people who are interested enough in things that I write that they would bother writing a blog post in response. I’m curious if Barry will ever know this post exists– probably not! But with analytics, he would.

via Loren

I caught the attention of Matthew, leading to an update to his mega post on the IndieWeb.

As ever, I’m always thrilled when someone responds to something I write on their blog. I am sure he is sick of writing about this, so I hope my small followup doesn’t lead him to feel the need to jump back in (unless he wants to!).

So, I wanted to answer his wondering:

Jason also has this to say, which I’d like to address.

There’s this beautiful world where Integration is Not Your Problem, but we don’t live in that world. Not only are RSS/Atom feeds not generally supported by other systems, there’s little to know reason to ever expect them to be. Even API entry points are largely dead and a struggle right now. But I don’t agree this makes it not my problem.

I’m curious as to what Jason means by ‘we’ here. He might not live in that world, but I certainly do.

So do I! Almost everything I read on the internet I read using Feedbin. If something doens’t have a feed, I try to make it one. RSS has essentially been what I consider “the internet” since Google Reader. When I say “we don’t live in that world” what I mean is that the people who want to read my blog, to a reasonably approximation, do not live in that world. Just like it’s terribly difficult to get people to switch messaging apps, I can’t convince people to browse the web the way I want them to.

I am not publishing copies of my content to various platforms because I think Matt is wrong:

You owe these platforms nothing. You are not obligated to integrate with them. You are not obligated to provide them with “content”. You are not obligated to acknowledge their very existence.

I don’t owe platforms anything. Whatever obligation I have follows from the later part of my post– namely I want to make it easy to read my blog for the people who want or may want to read it.

Matthew notes:

The following sentiment is one I find admirable, however.

I like to make it easy for people who opt in to read what I write. I think it is important, or at least valuable, to put in some work to make it so that people who read have to do less work. POSSE, and the tech that supports it, is what makes this possible.

This is why I provide feeds. This is why I try to improve my website’s typography and accessibility. That much I can do. But if making my writing more accessible to other people means manually posting links on commercial platforms, then be damned to them.

Here we’re in total agreement. But I’m pleased that my host, partially inspired by the IndieWeb, and certainly inspired by POSSE, makes it so that manually posting links on commercial platforms is not a thing I have to do at all. It also makes it so that I don’t have to do anything to read people’s replies to my posts from whatever platform they read them on when that’s supported! It’s great!

And I’m glad Robb made something like Echofeed so that this is possible without doing things yourself if you don’t host somewhere like Micro.blog.

I, of course, wish platforms cared about my stupid little blog being able to publish directly to them in a way that they don’t. But I care much more that if people who may want to read my blog use those services, they can still find their way here.

If I didn’t use Plausible analytics to occasionally troll the what domains are referring people to my blog, I’d have never known Matthew saw what I wrote. Maybe that’s ok, but I think it’s better that I can find the folks interacting with me, from wherever they choose to do so.

I don’t fully understand the bill proposed in Lousiana that would have forced App Stores to enact age restrictions. ¹ I’m not sure that age restrictions at the App Store-level on apps is the way to go. However, I do think that there should be a secure API for physical devices to report if users are over a certain age, and I think that should be available to web browsers.

I think we need to permit and preserve the right to access adult content while still permitting protecting children. Rather than pointless dropdowns asking for your birthdate (like many online alcohol ordering services have, for example), there should be an API request that activates a passkey-like biometric authentication that will report back TRUE or FALSE. We should let apps and websites ask a device, “Is the current user over a certain age?” Maybe limit that to a few ages (in the US, 13, 18, and 21 would cover nearly all age-related restrictions) or have some kind of rate limiting (once asking for an age verification, you cannot change the age you verified for 3 minutes or something).

This way, if there’s content that we want to only show to those above a certain age, you can do so with some confidence. Maybe this can only be done in states that adopt the ISO 18013-5 standard– if you want to get age checks from the platform, adopt and provide identification that can be loaded electronically onto our devices. I worry a little bit about this because the US has a terrible history of limiting access to state IDs for all kinds of marginalized groups. But I think there’s something to be done here by the platforms. This is a level of safety that I think we should hold the duopoly platforms take on, but once, in a uniform, standards-based way. Not state by state, or even to a degree, country by country.

Just to briefly weigh in on my own experience with the SSO Tax as a provider and customer.

1. Any SSO that is not bog standard Microsoft or Google does come with meaningful costs that can get out of control.
2. SSO has never succeeding in reducing support for log in issues, and sometimes has increased it.
3. The SSO tax is more about a signal– SSO is required by large, sophisticated clients. But those customers and buyers almost always also require other things that are complex and expensive like negotiating contract terms versus standard terms of service, purchase order/invoice-based payment with net 30 or longer terms, etc. You’re not being upcharged for just SSO, it just so happens that requiring SSO is a pretty good sign you’re going to be a much more complex customer on the whole.

I quite often see the SSO tax only being applied to custom SAML BS, whereas a standard log in with Microsoft/Google/Github/OAuth provider-named-here is not an extra charge. I think that makes perfectly good sense.

And by the way, Microsoft Entra/ADFS/whatever they call it is an insanely jacked-up and dumb system– like all things Microsoft.

I appreciate Marty McGuire’s pushback on the IndieWeb pushback. I’m glad Manton shared it.

A lot of complaints about IndieWeb, to me, completely miss the mark. I emailed Manu on this topic after he posted about Yelling at the Web Clouds.

One excerpt from what I sent Manu was about what makes IndieWeb distinct from “just have your own website”:

I think it’s about the second bullet on the main page: indieweb.org :

You are better connected

Your articles and status messages can be distributed to any platform, not just one, allowing you to engage with everyone. Replies and likes on other services can come back to your site so they’re all in one place.

The intent is ownership, connection, and control.

I love blogs, obviously. And I love personal websites, hopefully also obviously. I’m thankful that folks like IndieWeb are around. They’re experimenting with figuring out “Why do people choose siloed web applications over the web? How can we close that user experience gap?” The goal is not building a smooth product– that’s left to folks like Micro.blog– but tinkering with and trying to understand what are the interaction primitives that are offered by web applications that lead to mass adoption. IndieWeb observes, “People like to reply to each other’s posts. We’ve had email and comment sections for years, but as soon as ‘native’ replies in web applications came along, it dwarfed email and comments. How can we bring that experience to websites we own and control.”

And that’s just one example.

You may think, “everything that’s wrong with the internet are the interaction paradigms of social web applications.” Great! IndieWeb is less for you. The ownership and control ideas apply and appeal, but connection does not– at least as a newer technology.

But if instead what you think is, “I, too, like or liked those social web applications. I want to enjoy my blog and the experience with it more than that,” then some IndieWeb stuff may help you out.

Now, if you’re not a developer really building your own site, then I don’t think you fully fit what IndieWeb means by control. You are someone ready to take advantage of what we’ve learned from IndieWeb and probably want to use a service like Micro.blog or some of the plug-ins built into Wordpress, for example. But if you’re a developer, you may want to dig in further and start to use and build and alter tools folks have put together.

There’s this beautiful world where Integration is Not Your Problem, but we don’t live in that world. Not only are RSS/Atom feeds not generally supported by other systems, there’s little to no reason to ever expect them to be. Even API entry points are largely dead and a struggle right now. But I don’t agree this makes it not my problem.

I’ve written about this before, but POSSE is a profoundly egalitarian idea. I am never going to get all of the people I’m connected to online to go back to using RSS. And I’m not going to get them to bookmark my webpage and visit it multiple times a day. They have places they consistently read feeds. I’m having a lot more fun writing on my blog because people do reply to my posts, or comment in various ways, wherever they are.

I like to make it easy for people who opt in to read what I write. I think it is important, or at least valuable, to put in some work to make it so that people who read have to do less work. POSSE, and the tech that supports it, is what makes this possible.

I’m still dealing with viral keratitis. Most of the pain is gone, but I can still use just one contact lens. I can see ok like this (I can legally drive because my “bad” eye is the one that is not infected so my vision is actually corrected just fine). But the difference in vision still leaves me with a low grade headache most of the day. And although my eye itself is no longer in a lot of pain, I am still having some soreness around my brow and below the eye (I’ve been calling this “orbital pain” but who knows if that’s accurate.

For this reason, and just the way my calendar worked out, this week was particularly grueling at work. It just felt like constant pressure and a fair bit of exhaustion.

Despite that, now that we’re nearing the end, there were some nice things that happened. Today I got some really positive feedback from one of our customers directly and I indirectly heard about some solid validation on what we’ve been cooking. I had a couple of one-on-ones where I got to quick agreement and an action plan that we feel good about. There were rough parts of the week too, where things are not going as planned or smoothly. But I’m glad that after a week that felt endless, what I remember at 9pm on a Thursday were a few bright spots.

Tomorrow I am headed back to the eye doctor. I am not confident I’ll get the ok to put back in my right lens, but I’m choosing to be hopeful. It’d be real nice to be able to see and get rid for this dang headache.

While I like that @Havn wishes for a world of APIs and protocols for services, it’s mostly a dead end ¹.

We tried the world of services and APIs and called it Web 2.0. There are all kinds of places on the web that are talking about APIs and protocols again, very, very slowly gaining traction. The problem with the idea that some businesses are services and that they don’t need to be clients is that those are almost always terrible businesses compared to the alternative. Maintaining an API or protocol makes client applications your customer. But these clients generally do not want to pay for access to services or don’t have financial models that support passing those costs on to customers.

And for all the costs of maintaining a service or API, consumer preferences have longed shows that third-party or alternative clients are minuscule portions of usage compared to first party offerings, even when they’re superior. Apollo never impacted overall Reddit usage. Twitter apps barely registered on monthly active users.

“Services”, as though that boundary was clear, make less money with a more difficult to serve customer that represents a vanishingly small part of their business when they build to allow clients. So they eventually stop.

This just won’t happen unless users actually adopt clients, but they mostly don’t. This won’t happen unless clients and their customers are willing to pay for services access.

I know that Matt works in payments so he definitely loves Apple opening up the NFC chip for payments (including double tap to pay), but I’m personally terrified. I have at least 8 payment instruments with like 6 different issuers in my Apple Wallet. When they each retreat to their own app that wants to be my default, my life is going to get harder.

And I really do think this is a when— prior to Apple Pay, in the US, banks and credit cards avoided contactless pay like the plague. I don’t want to have to make Chase or Amex or my bank a default and lose easy access to switching and changing payment methods at will. There’s no world where I’m advantaged by any system produced by a first party payments company. In fact, we saw what happened when they tried their own QR code nonsense (lookup CurrentC to learn about this shit future we’re reintroducing).

Secure payments like this should be a platform feature. Like age verification technology, I want this extremely secure, extremely embedded, and providing little specific value to the platform creator.

I’m worried after years of the perfect electronic wallet, I’m about to get a mess.

Sometimes we get really lucky. There’s a product in the market that exactly meets our needs. It need not be The Perfect Thing, but importantly, it’s the perfect thing for you.

That’s all we are really looking for– great quality products we can afford that solve our problems just right, and maybe, just maybe, offer an extra something delightful into the mix.

But because we’re each individuals, with our own unique problems and preferences, we don’t often get The Perfect Thing. The market for The Perfect Thing may not be big enough to make it worth making, if it’s even possible to make your Perfect Thing. So we often compromise and it’s fine. There are plenty of good things out there.

A lot of pointless fighting on the internet happens between folks who have found or are very close to having The Perfect Thing and by those who are far away. It’s a tired argument. The folks who are happy with what’s out there aren’t defending it because they think it’s right for everyone– they are terrified at losing The Perfect Thing. And the folks who are unhappy are convinced they can’t get what they want because of obstinance instead of accepting that what they want may not be what enough people want.

It’s really nice to not have to think about things. My favorite products are The Perfect Thing, because I stop thinking about them. I don’t think about the TV stand I have. I don’t think about the bar we bought. I don’t think about my office chair. I don’t think about my home theater speakers. I am not sure I love these things the way I love my guitar, which I think about constantly. I just spend hundreds of dollars on my guitar ¹. But in some ways, maybe I love these things even more. They occupy no space and use no energy.

There’s a lot of relentless optimization/maximization out there. It’s exhausting. Don’t make it a hobby unless it’s fun. It’s fun for me to think about guitar equipment. It’s not fun for me to think about email apps.

I took about 12 weeks off from volleyball after a collision on the court took out my shoulder. I’ve had pain just when extending to the edges of my shoulder mobility that just won’t go away.

After a deep massage in London ¹, things have felt better for the last week so I decided to play for 90 minutes last night.

1. Good lord I’ve lost a lot of cardio stamina going from playing 5-6 hours over 3 nights a week to nothing.
2. Fuck me, my shoulder made it through, but it is super sore this morning. More sore than pain, but it’s still not what it was.

I know nothing serious is wrong— I can still lift weights and have full mobility in most planes/alignments, and the pain is specific versus radiating and diffuse. But it’s absolutely insane that getting knocked, and not even that hard, required 12 weeks of rest and still isn’t right. I have a feeling I’ll be rehabbing this for a year. I’m going to try just playing 2x a week and see how I can tolerate it. I have too much fun and really need the cardio.

I will now make this the standard travel plan for red eyes going east to Europe.

Apple could probably make a great search engine to compete with Google, it just never was worth it. It might be worth it now, except it may not be legal.

I haven’t fully read about the case, but Google’s search supremacy never seemed like the place I’d go after them for anti-trust– it’s their two-sided advertising market that seemed like the place the real abuse happens.

Here’s something I’m struggling with in the midst of election enthusiasm:

• Barack Obama
• Joe Biden
• Kamala Harris
• Tim Walz

What do these people have in common? Other than being the most recent presidential and vice presidential nominees from the democrats, they are all also genuinely admirable humans. These are role models. Their biographies and accomplishments make that quite clear. The Democrats keep nominating people who should be admired. These are people whose lives read a lot like the people we teach kids about in elementary schools, not because they were consequential, but because of what their stories represent on the way to being consequential.

None of that should be controversial. I don’t think it would have been controversial at all to state from at least 1950-2000, give or take. Yet the GOP points to these people not as admirable, but instead, as almost subhuman. They are characterized as evil.

Evil

Saying these folks are evil is not even hyperbole— it’s just an unserious lie. And the people in power in the GOP and those who are empowered to shape the right wing narrative know that they are lying.

Even if you agree with everything Donald Trump wants to exercise the power of the presidency to accomplish, you cannot say that he is a role model the way these four folks are. You cannot possibly believe that someone who is born incredibly wealthy who is known more for the way he built himself into the brand embodiment of conspicuous wealth, and generally ran failing, highly leveraged businesses is admirable. JD Vance’s story is barely even true, forget about admirable.

I’m just filled with that Gen X/Millennial rage remembering all of the scolding of the 80s and 90s from the right wing about values and character. I look at who the Democrats choose to elevate and I think about their stories, and then I look at who the Republicans elevate and I want to scream about hypocrisy and express my disgust.

I am so tired of the fake virtue and morality of the right. I am so tired of the Evangelical Christian nationalists. I am so tired of the moving goal posts. I am so tired of the lying about who these people are instead of talking about what their ideas are for this country with respectful disagreement.

I am done. Let’s turn a page on this nonsense. We are not going back.

We’ve been trying to upgrade our flight all week with British and running into issues online. After forty five minutes on the phone, they told us they can’t honor the online price and wanted to charge us £1600. Figured we’d take our chances as the airport.

When we got here we learned not only are there no upgrades, there’s no change of changing our seats. So we have two middle seats on a 777 for over eight hours.

I was mad about how British Airways had technical systems that kept offering us upgrades for reasonable prices that didn’t exist. But now I’m just frustrated that it would take an astronomical amount of money beforehand to make the trip comfortable. On our flight out, I could not even fit an 11” iPad on my tray with the person in front of me fully reclined.

All of this came after our morning plans being thrown for a loop because the Elizabeth Line is not running. We chose our second hotel in part for its proximity to the Elizabeth line, making it easy for us to get to the airport in a timely fashion so we could have a relaxed morning. Our alternative options involved walking a half mile and a transfer— too much on a beautiful, but hot and sunny day with our bags. And, because it would have involved taking the Heathrow Express, the cost was higher than a cab.

So we got an Uber, a Model 3, which is not that comfortable, and no AC running. He then proceeded to circle SoHo in a bizarre way and take the objectively longest route any of our mapping programs could figure to get here.

We still have plenty of time and everything is going to be fine, but overall not an ideal travel day when I didn’t take the remainder of the week off from work.

Joe Biden joined the raise in 2020 to beat Trump. He succeeded. Since then, his record of accomplishment as president with the narrowest of Senate majorities has been strong. He was far more progressive than the Obama administration.

I wish he had decided not to run a year ago, sticking to the oft-repeated notion that he was playing the role of custodian. However, his effectiveness in office and the failure for other clear leaders to emerge in the Democratic Party made his decision to run in 2024 understandable. He had earned the right to tell us when he was no longer up for the job. And even though he was diminished from four years earlier, when I cast my vote on May 14th for President Biden to be the nominee, it was a vote for him. Even at that time, he remained seemingly capable, and he had earned my trust and faith.

I am not sure if now is the right time to drop out strategically. But I know that President Biden wants to be president and I know how seriously he takes the thread that Donald Trump poses to the future of our country. President Biden is leaving the race because in spite of the turmoil and chaos that will be created over the next several weeks, he believes this is the best way to defeat Trump and elect another American President who will make us proud and do right by the country.

I can make my peace with that. I don’t see this as a disgrace, but a triumph. I don’t see the time he’s taken to make that decision as selfish or intransigent, but as considered given the gravity of what will be unleashed.

President Biden has dedicated himself to serving this country, and his final four years of service have been crucial.

Now it’s up to us.

Note: I wrote this within 20 minutes of learning the news, without having read further analysis. These are my feelings captured in the moment, though I don’t think they’ll change, new facts will surely emerge.

Everything I read about Silicon Valley’s support of Trump comes down to this:

These are people who believe in spending massive amounts of public money to enrich themselves while they make shitty tunnels under Las Vegas or drop off scooters on city sidewalks or chase self-driving cars, so firmly believing that these are total solutions ready to solve all problems right now, in complete ignorance of any existing systems or mechanism or solutions that exist.

These are the folks who reinvent busses or trains, but do so in a way that will make them rich, and therefore, they’re better. Except in practice, each time we follow their lead we end up with something worse than what the rest of the world gets through competent government. These are the folks who think the solutions are $600 home test devices for COVID and not wearing a mask. These are the folks who will block real solutions while they waste money failing over and over to solve big problems and then walk away without a consequence. These are the folks who think the only thing we have to learn from each other or other countries is what cannot yet be exploited for profit by a Stanford drop out building something 1/8th as good for 10x the price.

These are the people who think the best things that have happened over the last fifteen years have come out of Silicon Valley, even though virtually all of those things are not profitable and have come with major downsides.

I work in tech. I think a lot of cool stuff is being built and a lot of good work is being done. But tech is a mature industry, and most of what is interesting these days has to do with bringing the things we learned from 2000-2015 about how to use software into places that have not yet modernized. We’re at the tail end of what’s interesting and good and novel. Software technology has very little left to change in a major way. And the entire ethos of a16z and the like has utterly failed to produce breakthroughs in computer hardware, biological sciences, energy, environment or any other major sector. The last decade of innovation has been entirely about reducing friction in commerce. That’s it. And it’s not that profitable and will end up with a very small number of winners.

The major successes in tech are largely SaaS companies selling tooling to hopeful SaaS companies. It’s a spiral-jerk that ends in an easier buying experience online or shitty advertising.

The problems we face in the US, and the problems faced by folks throughout the world, will not be solved on Sandhill Road. And the thing is, they all know this. Support for a monstrous fascist like Trump is the warning sign. It’s just like how companies don’t move to Texas to be great, but instead to squeeze margin out of cost cutting everywhere you can when you no longer capable of growth or innovation. The Trump-Vance ticket has the support of Silicon Valley because their goal is to have government give up. Elon Musk pushed the hyperloop to stop California high speed rail. And in that space, Silicon Valley can try and convince us to drive self-driving electric cars underground. When that doesn’t work, they walk away, and the problem remains unsolved. In the meantime, we’ve wasted billions and they’ve made millions off of carry fees. When the government isn’t even trying, it creates space for charlatans to step in.

Think of all the problems Silicon Valley won’t solve, but can look great telling LPs that they’re part of the solution. Doesn’t it feel better to be part of the solution and make a profit instead of paying taxes? Never mind nothing will be solved.

I have so few stats on my blog, so here are some interesting ones:

I have 4601 posts on my blog.

I have written 2067 replies on Micro.bog.

I have received 51 webmentions ¹

Since May first, I’ve had about 1,000 unique visitors. I have about 327 Mastodon followers. I would guess (because it’s not shared) that I have about 50 folks following me on Micro.blog. I crosspost to Bluesky and Threads as well, but would guess even fewer people follow there. My gut is the vast majority of my short posts are read natively in social apps, and that long posts get the click/hit.

My gut looking at the stats is I have about 50 active users. A day with a new long post might get 30ish hits. A popular post might get about 100. I rarely write something that is read more than 200 times.

Not bad for just, tossing out my thoughts whenever without a theme, rhyme, or reason.

Baldur thinks that when he leaves his tech bubble, everyone is much more critical of AI. I couldn’t disagree more. Everyone I know involved in tech, especially in the tech-adjacent fields of journalism and various parts of “nerd” culture is furious about AI. And in my experience, there’s no one more wary than web developers when it comes to AI. My own bubble here couldn’t be further from embracing it.

Meanwhile, I know tons of people who love using CoPilot or Gemini or ChatGPT. Random people tell me all the time about how AI is a better editor/Grammarly for their writing. They talk about how some tedious things they did are easier. I hear things like:

It was so much easier than trying to figure out the right Google Search or watch a 15 minute video on YouTube to figure out what was subtly wrong about this Excel function I wrote. I hate writing sympathy notes. I never know what to say. ChatGPT wrote something trite, but it was enough for me to edit it up a bit and help me get over my procrastination/fear/anxiety. I can’t believe how well this summarized these research papers and helped me to actually figure out which one was relevant to my question.

I’m not all rah-rah about LLMs and what they’re bringing us, but I continue to think that the folks who are most ardently against AI are just plain wrong when they claim these tools are not useful or that no one wants them. That doesn’t mean I think that the hype is fully justified, but pretending these things don’t work or aren’t useful or only produce slop is a skeptic’s wish-casting.

Around the time I started at Allovue I started tracking my travel with TripIt. There are a lot of advantages– most importantly, the quality calendar syncing with information like check in times and addresses of hotels, flight time, and flight information. One of those advantages is I have a lot of data, particularly about my flying. ¹

I am not sure that all of this data is 100% accurate– I may have missed a cancelled trip or leg along the way when I had to move things around– but to a first approximation, these stats are pretty good. And what’s even better is that my favorite flight tracking app, Flighty, syncs with TripIt and provides great summaries.

The very first flight I tracked was on Jun 27, 2014, when Elsa and I flew from my parents in New York (LGA, before it was nice) to Fort Lauderdale to meet up with her family before flying to Port Au Prince, to visit more of her family. So this post has some fun facts from 10 years of flying.

I have been on 447 flights totaling 443,966 miles (714,494 kilometers).

My total flight time was 48 days and 11 hours across 76 distinct airports and 12 airlines.

Wednesday is the day I fly the most– having racked up over 100 flights.

November is the month I fly the most at just under 75 flights. I travel the least in January– under 25 flights, followed by June and then December.

2016 was the peek of my flying at 72 total flights. Unsurprisingly, 2020 was the year I flew the least– though I still managed to take 8 flights before the COVID lockdowns and by 2021 I took 24 flights.

My longest flight was JFK (New York) to TPE (Taipei) clocking in at 7,794 miles.

My average flight time was just 2 hours and 26 minutes– I suspect this is so low because of the amount of Providence to Baltimore and back flights I’ve done, as well as quite a few Baltimore to Midway (Chicago).

I have flown in or out of BWI 320 times– the next closest airport is Providence at 91 times.

I have flown Southwest 395 of the 477 flights for a whopping 82.8% of all air travel (how’s that for loyalty!).

I have flown 210 distinct routes, with the most common, unsurprisingly, being PVD to BWI (at 42) and BWI to PVD (37). It’s pretty obvious that moving to Baltimore in 2016 had a profound impact on my flying.

I’ve only been to 11 countries in this time, which makes me sad, and shows how flying a ton domestically has reduced my time and energy for international travel.

I’ve lost 73 hours to delays, with 172 flights out of 477 (36%) having some kind of delayed arrival. But actually, 60% of my flights arrived early, so the “net” of delays and early arrivals is 8 hours and 37 minutes of delays.

The newest plane I flew on was just 25 days old, whereas the oldest was 31 years old, with an average age of 18 years old.

At the Atomic Book club last night, I was just about the only person who liked the book of around 25 people. I was glad to go nearly last, and happy I had long decided my open comment was, “Some books I love and want to hand to everyone. This book I loved, but I have no idea who it is for, except maybe me.”

I was, however, disappointed to learn more about the author. What I read as a brilliant, very aware, attempt to build a very specific kind of art with a specific message, may, in fact, be a straight, earnest take. There’s a whole project around this work. One of the other things I decided to share before book club was, “I hope this is the only book he’s written like this. It would be a sign of his skill if this was built with an intent to go for a very specific language and intent versus this just being how he writes.” That seems… not to be true.

Oh well, death to the artist.