As of May 31st, 2024 when Microsoft announced Windows Recall, I have a single physical machine, and no virtual machines, with any version of Windows installed and that will not be changing as long as Microsoft remains on the path they're forged for themselves. The one machine which has Windows 10 is a Dell Venue 8 Pro which needs a dongle to install another operating system, and I need to find the dongle. Once I find the dongle, Windows is gone, gone, gone. Why would I go through so much trouble getting rid of Windows?

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I came across the following article on Apple Insider a few days ago and was initially enthused. I'd recently written a quick guide to a freeware tool for the Mac called Spaced and was hoping to find some more gems to get my menu bar under even more control. It turned out to be little more than an advertisement for Bartender, a paid app.

So, I've decided to write my own guide instead and this post has no paid anything. It's all freeware.

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I was a Bartender user for a few years. It was quite nice to get a handle on my Mac's menubar. But I was paying $10 a month for SetApp and access to their library of around 240 applications and utilities. I could have purchased Bartender for $16 instead, but I didn't. I paid SetApp $240 for two years to end up using about six apps. 

That's not a value in my book.

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I'm likely going to have difficulty quickly explaining this, but the creator calls it the MacPad. After trying various solutions in an attempt to make a more functional single-computer setup to support his Vision Pro, Federico Viticci finally settled on an astonishingly thoughtful combination of a headless MacBook Air, a magnetically mounted iPad Pro, and his Vision Pro headset. In docked mode, it works much like a regular MacBook Air, but when the iPad Pro is detached Federico can use it as intended or set it aside and put on his Vision Pro with the headless MacBook Air resting lightly on his lap. Mr. Viticci has posted a comprehensive blog post on his thought process and how he went about solving his problem. 

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In the first part of this series I started last year, I spoke about the idea of Dollarnomics, describing it in some detail. If you want to get the basics of the concept, then you should go read that first. It’s not a long piece and I’ve linked it below. I do outline a few ideas there, but there needs to be some additional context so that you might fully understand the power that I believe resides both in the $1 bill and in the people who are tired of always being on the bottom of the economy, even if you only have a few million dollars in the bank, an amount that is nowhere near as comforting as it was a decade or two ago.

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Remember when Elon Musk said that orbital internet wasn't going to interfere with astronomical study? Yeah, so do I. Seems like that was yet another of Musk's 'mischaracterizations' he's become so famous for, like the one's he vomited out regarding AutoPilot and his Twitter 'acquisition'. #elonmusk #astronomy #spacejunk https://www.salon.com/2024/02/13/an-astronomers-lament-satellite-megaconstellations-are-ruining-space-exploration_partner/

This sucks ass. Known as a bare-metal hypervisor, ESXi is a tiny operating system that allows you to partition a PC into multiple discreet virtual machines without the overhead of a host operating system (i.e., Parallels on macOS). Now, Broadcom is killing it so if you want to use it, you'll need to pay. So much for small home labs. #capitalism #vmware #technology https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/02/12/1816248/broadcom-ends-support-for-free-esxi-vmware-hypervisor

Oh, the woes visited upon we poor folk by those who wield the cosmic powers of Public Relations. Think back to the last time you were legitimately impressed by an advertisement to buy a product. With all the ads you see, you'd think that they'd be good enough to convince people to just try a product, but most of us use commercial breaks to get a snack or pee. So, the tl;dr is that the reason AI ads suck is because AI isn't intelligent. It neither understands the content being shoveled into it nor the relationships between them, in all their glorious, chaotic combinations. The human experience cannot be replicated by some code. At least not yet. #ai #superbowl @advertising https://arstechnica.com/?p=2002656

Let me get this straight... At a rally in South Carolina Trump outlined a classic Mafia-style protection racket around one of this favorite subjects of hate; NATO. If they don't pay, America won't intercede to protect NATO members if, say, Putin wanted to put boots on the ground in said NATO countries, sovereignty be damned. Hell, NATO be damed. Since, of course, Putin hates NATO as it stands in the way of his dreams of expanding his criminal empire. #trump #NATO #putin https://boingboing.net/2024/02/11/trump-offers-putin-europe-meanwhile-the-media-is-focused-on-biden-forgetting-a-name.html

Musk facing consequences for his fluid definition of responsibility? That would be novel! #elonmusk #twitter #fuckaroundfindout https://www.engadget.com/court-orders-elon-musk-to-testify-in-the-secs-investigation-of-his-twitter-takeover-193303461.html

Trump is oh, so very wrong on oh, so many things, but one thing he's gotten right is that the voters should decide. Unfortunately, an enormous chunk of Americans who are eligible to vote do not. Why? Because nobody talks TO the poor, they just talk AROUND them. And Gerrymandering. And the dissection of the Voting Rights Act. It's time to wake the "Sleeping Giant". #election2024 #votingrights #politics https://www.salon.com/2024/02/11/can-americas-sleeping-giant-shake-up-the-election-lets-hope-so/

Check out Sean's latest shenanigans with weird, old computers, and by weird I mean awesome! #vintagemac #apple #retro

They always do the same thing, words. They hide away under the folds of my mind, deep in the shadows, keeping as silent as death. My ability to search for them is limited, so I try my best to shine light into those darkened box canyons of brain tissue, but words are not bound by the laws of physics and my feeble light is obscured by a thick fog. The multi-verse is popular these days, so I imagine that words exist in their own pocket universe and they can control when and where the two realities intersect, allowing me to access them again, but only for a short time.

I try to force myself to create new words when the ones I seek refuse my peace offerings and woeful cries for respite. This piece was born of that method. Here, now, I sit trying to push the words out of my mind and onto the page, but it is a painfully laborious process that taxes my attention and enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm. What even is that any more?

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Comedy Central offers us on this solemn day a guide on how to navigate MLK Day. Take a few moments to view this, then reflect on the fact that Donald J. Trump is running for President in 2024 to save his ass from being an "alleged" criminal in pretty much everything he's ever done. Oh, and to become the Dear Leader of a new dawning of the White Supremacy Movement in this country that was built on the enslavement of Black bodies, hearts, and souls, stolen from their homes, and sold as chattel, and treated like animals. Shockingly little progress has been made since his assassination.

So, maybe not the best day to throw a rave or BBQ party, but definitely a day to remind ourselves what MLK actually spoke to; real justice for the oppressed.

PS: Go check out RimaRegas.com for more on social and civil rights. I know her. She's awesome and gets most of her traffic from MLK-related searches.

According to new research from Consumer Reports, phthalates and bisphenols -- two chemicals linked to various health risks such as diabetes and hormone disruption -- are "widespread" among supermarket staples and fast foods, regardless of their packaging and ingredients and whether or not they are certified organic.

Researchers found that 99% of the supermarket and fast foods they tested contained phthalates, also known as plasticizers, which are chemicals that are added to plastics to make them more flexible. In addition, 79% of the food samples contained bisphenol A (BPA), an industrial chemical used in plastic manufacturing, and other bisphenols. Both chemicals have been found in studies to be hazardous to health.

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I have over 300 notes.

This is not only annoying but terribly wrong of Apple. I shouldn't have to explain why. I didn't spend a few thousand dollars on Apple gear to lose control over the data I create. I have personal notes, drafts of articles, detailed project concepts, musings, recipes for loads of gluten-free foods, and a bunch more categories. And now that I'm not using Apple Notes anymore... er. No. That's not right. Now that I don't use Apple Notes anymore I am forced to keep it around in order to retain all that material I generated or saved from various web pages.

I am now using Drafts ($20/year on the App Store), also known as Drafts 5 for iOS and iPad, which has been around for a very long time, from what I understand. Using the app, I can see why. It's a powerfully fast and capable notes capturing tool that allows me to create a new note with a simple keystroke so I don't lose the bright spots of inspiration that, today, seem to fritter away all too quickly. In a 24-hour period I've already created thirteen notes with over 2,000 words combined.

There is, however, nothing I can do about all the notes I have in Apple Notes since the damnable thing won't let me grab them all wholesale. If I can offer any advice, it would be to not engage Apple's Notes app for any reason because if at any point you need to get them out, you will not be able to do so without spending a load of personal time exporting them to PDF... the only export option. 

Unacceptable, Apple. Unacceptable.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation 30th Anniversary Print by Dusty Abell, Copyright © 2017, Roddenberry Entertainment Inc. Reprinted with permission. All Rights Reserved. Dusty Abell is a comic artist who has pencilled countless comic books, is an illustrator, and has been involved in the animation industry as a character designer since 2000. He has worked on productions such as Batman: Return of the Caped Crusader, Batman vs. Two-Face, Young Justice, Mike Tyson Mysteries, King of the Hill, The Official Handbook of the Invincible Universe for Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead, and many, many others.

This is my stats page. This is not helpful.

Much like today’s other causes of cultural constipation such as race relations, government, cold medications, etc., etc., ad nauseam, the page you see above appears functional, but is not.

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The Keychron K5 SE Low-Profile Mechanical Keyboard is anything but low profile. It’s also a clicky, sloppy, error-prone mess for a writer who taught himself to touch type using his own system.

CLACK CLACK CLACK… TIKTIKTIKTIKTIK… CLACK CLACK… TIKTIKTIK… AUUUUUUGGGHHHH!!!

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The now legendary 

Mac OS 9 desktop, a refinement of what came before and the influence for today’s macOS releases. Even to this day, untold thousands, likely tens of thousands, classic Mac OS machines are being used & loved, traded & developed for. [SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons]

Dear Tim,

How’ve you been? Good, I hope. I’ve been watching Apple’s events and your production quality is just top notch. Serious kudos to your production team. Gotta love those drone shots and slick transitions :) I’ve also been tracking the transition to Apple Silicon and I’ve been impressed. I got myself an M1 Mini that I’ve very pleased with, so much so I bought one for my wife.

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If you think Musk is going to get you to Mars, just check out how he’s been managing Twitter… er, X. This guy’s no genius. Don’t be fooled. Yes, this was made with some dumb AI thing I found.

A conversation I had with a friend of mine. In addition, the term "Longtermism" has been replaced with Accelerationism. I've updated this piece with some more context at the end.

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Photo by Marten Newhall on Unsplash

Well, at least the internet…

Okay, maybe some people. I think it’s clear that one cannot make simple proclamations without applying major caveats, so I won’t. I honestly have no idea whether or not my concepts will benefit humanity at all, but I’m can’t-code-myself-out-of-a-paper-bag levels of confident.

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Or not…

The Internet of 2023 sucks.

Every site, every service, every entree and every destination on the modern Web of today is controlled by corporations. Blood and treasure is expended, our personal data and real money is hoovered up to feed bottomless C-suite salaries…

While the World Wide Web may be comprised of an endless cavalcade of corporate entities vying for ultimate control, there remains a much, much larger contingent that has yet to stand up and take it’s own power: we average peeps.

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