We finished watching Bodies on Netflix last night. It reminded me of Cloud Atlas meets Looper. There was another movie that came to mind, with a Victorian sex and drugs cult thing, the title of which I can't recall at the moment.

In that regard, it was disappointing. These series that rely on multiple stories separated by time and space can't seem to do enough in the way of character development to make them reward the investment of the time it takes to watch them. I'm also thinking of Foundation here. Invasion to a lesser extent, as it's only dispersed in space, not in time.

Cloud Atlas and Looper were much smaller chunks of time, and so the plot moved along quickly and the gimmick was the star of the show. In this case, I got the gimmick right away, because I'd seen it before, and so that wasn't especially entertaining. I was mostly just wishing they'd hurry up and do something.

Peripheral was much better in that regard, in that I quickly became invested in the main character. I don't know if that's coming back or not. Probably not, since I liked it.

To the extent that I did become invested, I mostly just wanted to see how they would resolve the thing as a technical exercise; not that I cared about any of the characters. It was modestly successful in that regard, though there were a lot of loose ends and a couple of holes I think. I'm not going to watch it again to take detailed notes, but I think if you watch it you may have a similar experience.

Solid "Meh."

We finished watching Bodies on Netflix last night. It reminded me of Cloud Atlas meets Looper. There was another movie that came to mind, with a Victorian sex and drugs cult thing, the title of which I can't recall at the moment.

In that regard, it was disappointing. These series that rely on multiple stories separated by time and space can't seem to do enough in the way of character development to make them reward the investment of the time it takes to watch them. I'm also thinking of Foundation here. Invasion to a lesser extent, as it's only dispersed in space, not in time.

Cloud Atlas and Looper were much smaller chunks of time, and so the plot moved along quickly and the gimmick was the star of the show. In this case, I got the gimmick right away, because I'd seen it before, and so that wasn't especially entertaining. I was mostly just wishing they'd hurry up and do something.

Peripheral was much better in that regard, in that I quickly became invested in the main character. I don't know if that's coming back or not. Probably not, since I liked it.

To the extent that I did become invested, I mostly just wanted to see how they would resolve the thing as a technical exercise; not that I cared about any of the characters. It was modestly successful in that regard, though there were a lot of loose ends and a couple of holes I think. I'm not going to watch it again to take detailed notes, but I think if you watch it you may have a similar experience.

Solid "Meh."

As you read more about the emerging crisis of modernity, one of the ideas about possible "solutions" is degrowth. We're terrible at framing. Degrowth is probably accurate, but the notion that "growth" is a "good thing" is so firmly embedded in our collective psyche that it will inevitably be re-framed by the right as "de-good."

We read this decades ago when anti-nuclear activists were told to "freeze to death in the dark in caves."

This piece explains the idea of degrowth using the leaf-blower as a metaphor or analogy. All the horrors of leaf-blowers aren't dispelled by using electric leaf-blowers, because leaf-blowers are merely a symptom of the deeper problem. I related to it, because we do have all-electric lawn care tools, and solar panels on our roof to charge them.

Lawns, and 27" iMacs, aren't essential goods. They are things we've created because we can, in large measure to satisfy ego-driven needs to display status or conformity, by a capitalist system that prioritizes profit above all other considerations.

If I were king of the world for a day, I'd ban residential lawns outright. As deliberate features of public amenities, and only where they are essential, like a gathering place or playing field, they'd be allowed. Otherwise, something closely approximating a "natural" landscape, compatible with local climate (i.e., not requiring thousands of gallons of irrigation annually) would be required. Landscapes that didn't require tons of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides to keep them looking like "carpets."

Of course, this would offend nearly everyone's notion of "personal freedom." But nearly everyone's notion of personal freedom is wrong anyway. Perhaps the evidence being developed that shows that tech companies use algorithms to drive behavior will begin to expose our ignorance and misunderstanding of what "freedom" really is.

In the meantime, I live in an HOA that mandates lawns. So we do our best. We only run the irrigation when it's necessary to maintain the lawn. Most folks run it on a timer, and it gets watered whether it needs it or not. Mitzi uses electric tools and does the work herself. Most folks hire landscapers, who use gas-powered tools.

We live in a region that is car-centric, like nearly all of America, with some marketing features that purport to show golf-carts as an alternative. Where we can, we use the golf-cart. We drive an SUV, a vehicle enormously larger than our needs, but a plug-in hybrid with the longest available battery range at the time. We only have one car, though the golf cart should count as a vehicle.

We're roughly 90% self-sufficient on power on an annual basis, but we're still net-positive in terms of the overall energy balance. That is, we provide more solar power to FPL's grid than we receive from FPL's natural-gas powered generators.

We Americans will have the biggest problem in adjusting to the new reality, and a new reality is coming whether we want it or not. It will be imposed on us by the climate, by the biosphere. Degrowth will happen. What we might hope for is a controlled descent, rather than a violent one.

What we can do now is begin to think about and be aware of all the ways we do too much. Have too much. Take too much. Want too much.

And maybe try to embrace less, and see "growth" as the cancer that it is.

This isn't a guilt-trip. But a day is coming when guilt and regret may plague the survivors. I could be wrong. Denial is a powerful coping mechanism.

This piece has been making the rounds in my feeds, and it seems to be resonating with a few people, including me.

Most of us are caught on a treadmill of constant software updates. Some of that is necessary because of how tightly-coupled software is to modern existence, and the security vulnerabilities it exposes to faithless actors (including criminals).

My rant about Apple moving the pause and stop buttons on the Fitness app on the Apple Watch is very much in this mode. Change for the sake of change, or rather, so someone has something to put on their brag sheet when performance reviews come around.

I'm sure it won't be too long before the new locations are committed to muscle memory. And then they'll change them again anyway.

When I was a young man, technology and technological change was exciting. I don't know if it still feels that way for young people today. It wasn't just the marketing. At least in my cohort, we were seeing many things for the first time. Calculators, "home computers," digital cameras.

What are some examples of new, consumer-facing technologies that young people are seeing for the first time? I can't think of any. But maybe I'm just old.

There are new apps. New colors, new ways of presenting the same things.

When home genetic engineering kits become available, maybe that'll be exciting. People home-brewing their new pets.

At some point, my 27" iMac will become unsupported in new OS updates. Maybe Sonoma is it. Maybe then I'll get to enjoy "finished software."

What's kind of interesting about retro-computing is the experience of watching people discover these old machines for the first time, and seeing oldsters with deep, profound knowledge about how they work, kind of guiding people around.

I struggled briefly last week with wanting to buy an Apple ///. I can afford it, but I really have no place to put it. And once you buy the box, you wind up buying a ton of other crap to go along with it. So I'm sticking with an emulator.

Emulators are often updated, so I guess they're not "finished software." But presumably they're getting closer to perfect fidelity because they're chasing a finished, fixed, objective.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:34 Wednesday, 1 November 2023

My new month Edict worked flawlessly this morning. I see one more tweak I might make to it. (Adding the name of the export file.) Otherwise, pretty much a hands-off thing. Cool.

I've read a few things in my feed and on Mastodon about Apple's recent product introduction. No 27" iMac. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Is a 27" iMac kind of metaphorically similar to a Ford F-150 lifted and ballooned to be bigger than a Sherman tank the same kind of thing?

How much more does a 27" iMac consume in manufacturing resources than a 24" iMac?

We want what we want, but do we need it? I could probably exist quite happily on a 24" iMac, but I'm not likely to get one anytime soon.

There's this insanity in computing that's like the myth of "more lanes" when it comes to traffic congestion. Traffic just expands to fill the existing road space, so congestion never decreases. Software just expands to take advantage of the increased compute resources. Your super-wham-o-dyne bazillion teraflops box with VR display turns into a dog slow boat anchor in a few years.

And you feel it as you're posting cat pictures.

We're nuts. The world's on fire. There are people in the world who are actively opposing democracy, equality and equity, and, get this, they're doing pretty well. One of two major political parties in this country is enthusiastically supporting them, and pretty much pursuing the same agenda right here at home. News from the cryosphere ain't good. Hottest year in human history.

But we're complaining about a corporation not offering consumers a giant toy.

Habituated thinking. Hysteresis. Inertia. The inability to see what is right before our eyes.

We're nuts, and blind and screwed.

Anyway, I'm not buying any new Apple products anytime soon. I thought I might get that AR/VR headset thing, but it just seems irresponsible to do that now. Just one more toy to distract me from the unmitigated, incontestable, ongoing catastrophe unfolding before our eyes. (On screens of all sizes.)

Feels like a good way to start the month.

Figured I'd ride the bike this morning and check out the garden. It's been pretty foggy, but it looks like it's starting to lift.

While I'm waiting, I might as well close out October here.

I posted a pic of this morning's moon on Mastodon, and someone remarked that they needed to upgrade from their smart phone. I follow them and they take some very nice pics with their phone, and I said so.

Jack's thinking about cameras. I've been thinking about them too, but not in the way I used to. I haven't had a GAS attack in months. (GAS is camera-nerd for "gear acquisition syndrome.") The mZuiko 8-25mm crosses my mind from time to time, but doesn't seem to hold my interest.

Rather, it's the garden that's got me thinking about my cameras again. I was really pleased with the way the shots from the XZ-1 turned out, and it reminded me of how much I really enjoy that little camera. The Stylus 1s, likewise, pleased me when I took it along and got the shots of the bees at the banana tree.

I haven't been carrying my compacts in a long time. Mostly just the OM-1 with the 75-300mm zoom on my walks, hoping for birds. I took the OM-1 down to the kayak launch point on Saturday morning with the 12-100mm zoom mounted, hoping to get a nice sunrise. I haven't been shooting landscapes for such a long time, I really failed to take advantage of the camera's best features. I stayed in auto-ISO when I could have shot at ISO 200, relying on the combined image stabilization of the 12-100 and the OM-1's IBIS. I could have used handheld hi-res too. You get stuck in a rut looking for birds and forget how to use the camera for anything else! (F-18s are almost like birds.)

Anyway, I'm happy with the cameras I have. I expect I'll remain that way for many years to come.

I think I'm going to put the 40-150mm/f2.8 on the E-M1 Mk3 and take that to the garden. It'll do handheld hi-res and if there's no wind (as the fog seems to suggest), I may try some HHHR shots. Might pop a circular polarizer on it too. But, maybe not.

Looks like it's getting pretty clear so I'll wrap this and go strap a bag on the bike.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:19 Tuesday, 31 October 2023

"Lured by the nation’s highest premiums and new laws making it harder to sue insurance companies, investors see an opportunity in Florida’s broken insurance market. Current and former state officials and other observers said they are receiving regular inquiries from potential investors looking to make a profit."

Having created an insurance crisis, through a combination of incompetence and dereliction of duty, Republican lawmakers now seek to profit from it.

John P. Weiss is always worth a read. Today especially, I think.

I found the link to Kate Marvel's quote in this piece. Just one dimension of the multi-dimensional challenge we face.

This resonated strongly with me. Faith is the foundation of existence. Love is the first derivative of faith with respect to time, "Love is faith in action."

Courage is the second derivative of faith with respect to time. Acceleration, a force. The means of change.

We need courage, not hope. Hope and faith are different things.

Nothing better for a Sunday.

The only spider web I saw. There were a lot of those crazy webs on the low bushes. I don't know if those are spiders or some other insect. But I should have seen dozens of these.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:03 Sunday, 29 October 2023

I rode my bike to the garden and brought along the Stylus 1s. I really need to start carrying the OM-1 or E-M1 Mk3 with the 40-150mm/f2.8 mounted. The Stylus slips into the little handlebar bag that holds some tools, a mask and a beer koozy (I was a Boy Scout. "Be prepared.") with enough room left over for a compact camera.

The larger cameras would require me to put a bag on my bike, which I do when I'm riding it to the pond to look for birds. It's a little more effort, and I'm really trying to combine getting some kind of fitness activity in quickly here, with visiting the garden and maybe getting a few shots. But maybe plants and insects are as worthy as birds in terms of effort.

This is a jpeg straight out of the camera, because I'm lazy and it turned out just fine I though.

I've been an Apple customer for decades. I likely will remain one for the rest of my life. But I have no love for the corporation. None.

I've been using my Apple Watch to record my workouts ever since I got it (Series 6). Am I a dumbass, or did they change the locations of the controls to pause and end a workout? Because I have (had) those committed to muscle memory, and now my watch does all sorts of weird shit when I go to try to pause and end a workout. I swipe right to pause and half the time it gets stuck halfway across the screen. What's up with that? So I try to keep swiping right and it doesn't move. Then I swipe left and the main screen comes back, but it's paused.

And what the fuck is it with this "Are you sure?" bullshit when I go to end a workout? Jesus.

What galaxy brain thought it was a good idea to fuck with the locations of the controls? Where's the improvement? Who's that supposed to serve? Some dumbass looking for a promotion or something?

I'm supposed to come back from a workout feeling tired and relaxed. Instead I'm tired, sweaty and pissed off. This has happened every time since I updated to OS 10.

Apple is like the NY Times, which I've unsubscribed to and now refuse to read. It does its own thing. It's not about serving its readers, it's about serving itself.

Same thing with Apple. Same fucking thing.

Screw them. And all their perpetual apologists too.

Carry on.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:36 Sunday, 29 October 2023

Speaking of spiders. Saw this one in April 2020. Haven't seen once since. Of course, I hadn't seen one before either. But I was hopeful and looking forward to seeing more of this amazing spider.

Picked this up by way of News+ which gets me The Atlantic. Fortunately for you, Dear Reader, The Atlantic linked to the original, which doesn't lie behind a paywall.

It seems our spiders may be disappearing.

Anecdotally, I agree.

I loved photographing spider webs. In Florida, we used to have enormous numbers of orb weavers. To the point where each morning I could pretty much count on walking through an enormous web leaving my house in Neptune Beach.

Even at the condo, where they weren't spinning webs outside my front door so much, they were nearly everywhere.

It's foggy this morning, and normally I'd be outside with one of my little Olympus compact cameras because small sensors and short focal lengths make for convenient macro photography, looking for webs. But it's been pointless ever since we moved here.

There are a few, here and there, but they ought to be present in the hundreds.

We're facing very serious challenges from more than just climate change. We're losing the biosphere to development. And we're even less inclined to act on that than we are on climate.

(The title is an obscure cultural reference to a certain, now problematic, work of science fiction. The phrase has always remained with me.)

(Not about Facebook. Once upon a time, I'd "tag" posts in the title, like "BSG:" for Battlestar Galactica, or "Cheese Sandwich:" for mundane posts. I digress.)

Blogging about blogging goes in waves, I think. It's a Conway thing. Someone posts something about blogging on their blog, they have enough followers in proximity that it gets picked up, those bloggers, in turn, have bloggers that pick it up, etc., etc.

Anyway, this popped up in my feed this morning, and here I am being a dutiful blogular automaton, linking to the thing he was linking to.

Has anyone ever explored blogging as a cocktail party? I'm pretty sure it's been done as a salon. Some people want to be the center of attention. Some people are the center of attention. Most of us just don't want to stay home, and we enjoy watching people, or meeting people, seeing old friends.

I like to think that sometimes the "content," at least about things we're passionate about, may contribute to some net vector sum of what passes for "social thought." The zeitgeist. It feels like ranting into the void to no discernible effect, but who knows, really? Maybe it's not.

Chris O'Donnell (Who shares a name with one of my classmates in my company at USNA, also an ocean engineer.) wrote yesterday, "I've spent a lot of time over the last 20+ years writing a lot of words that were read by not many people."

To which I reply, I've got you beat! 456,424 words read by not many people!

Which doesn't include the >900K words in Groundhog Day. (May its memory be a blessing.) And who knows how many words in Time's Shadow. The marmot's been predicting the weather since 1999.

I guess it's all just "for the hell of it." We do it because we can. Because it does something; that we would feel less about ourselves somehow if we didn't. Maybe that's just ego.

The beat, and the blog, goes on.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:31 Sunday, 29 October 2023

Since sunrise is at a such a late hour (7:24 a.m.), I figured we might as well take advantage of it and drive the golf cart down to the kayak launch and see what there was to see, and potentially photograph.

Wasn't spectacular. There were two young men putting their kayaks in to do a little fishing. Noise travels far on the water this early in the morning. Heard two boats long before we ever saw them.

Was glad we used mosquito repellant.

Still enjoying The Morning Show. One of the things I like about it is that all of the characters are complicated. There's nobody I really despise, or who is genuinely and thoroughly irredeemably evil. But that's almost harder, because there are characters I like who do some pretty messed-up things.

Invasion holds my interest better in season 2, but it's still incredibly slow. I hope this wasn't the season finale I just watched. I should check. I'm hoping they bring this thing to an end this season. The only character I care about is Mitsuki, and I'm really not excited about having to sit through a third season to see how this thing ends.

Because of the lack of new shows rolling out, I ended up giving Foundation another try. It was okay. Great production values. Big Lannister vibes from Empire(s). Too many characters introduced and thrown away, but I guess that's a limitation of the format and source material.

Lessons In Chemistry is holding my interest. I do find the relentless misogyny that undergirds patriarchy depressing. (The racism too.) I don't feel defensive, just sad, and keep hoping for something nice for Zott. I gather that's coming.

I watched Prometheus and Alien: Covenant a couple of days apart. Since Covenant apparently didn't do well financially, I shouldn't expect a third installment in Scott's envisioned prequel trilogy.

Both movies are visually impressive, and move along quickly enough to hold my interest, but it seems like Scott didn't really pull the thing together very well. Creators create man, man creates robot, creators try to kill man, robot kills creators, robot creates alien, alien kills man? It's a bit of a mess. Interesting though. Something about hubris, I think.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:08 Friday, 27 October 2023

In The Matrix, Agent Smith is interrogating Morpheus and is describing for him some of the history of the Matrix. To keep all the humans blissfully asleep and producing energy, they made them believe they were living in an idyllic version of the 90s, which he described as, "The peak of your civilization."

I think the peak was the 80s, not the 90s.

Reagan was in power, but Republicans hadn't succeeded yet in rolling back all the advances in civil rights we'd made. Clinton hadn't sold out the Democratic Party's platform with "triangulation" and neoliberalism yet. Not that the 80s were perfect. AIDS was killing people, but since they were mostly gay men or intravenous drug users, it didn't seem to be a priority for research. We did address the ozone layer though. The last time the Republican Party believed in science.

It seems that nearly every movie remake or franchise reboot is based on the 80s. The Walkman was introduced in North America in June 1980. I don't think the Walkman gets enough credit as the first bit of technology that began to genuinely isolate people. (The transistor radio merely consumed "mass" media. The Walkman and mixtape made it a "personal" experience.) The GameBoy appeared in 1989, and the path was set.

Anyway, all that is by way of preamble as I mention my latest efforts as "a fool and his money."

Yesterday I received a Sony AN-1 Active Antenna. They usually go for more than $200 complete, or nearly complete, on the auction site. I got an alert for one listed at $150, with a "make offer" option. So I looked it over and made an offer. I got it for not much more than $150 after shipping and sales tax. 80s product, naturally. Antennas are about as simple, and cheap, a piece of radio tech as you can get, or make. But, there you go. Fools and their money.

For about the same money, I just bought an HP-15C Collector's Edition. HP is like Kodak these days, with its trademark and some of its IP being licensed to other manufacturers. It's a remake of the 15C, using an ARM processor. I have an original, but it's pretty beat up. Still works, but it clearly saw some hard use.

It's an irrational purchase, and sends a demand signal, albeit a tiny one, for more of this nonsense that is exacerbating the overshoot condition of our civilization. But "free will" is an illusion, and "willpower" is a vanishingly small resource, so I guess I can just shrug my shoulders and not lose too much sleep over it.

Of course, like an object of irrational desire, there are many opinions about it. There's a chance that I may receive one that has keypress issues. And the keys are painted, not double-shot injection molded! Clearly, an inferior reproduction. As some people put it, "HP calculators are all about the keys." That, and the Reverse-Polish Notation. But it does have a new and improved reproduction of the original manual. Like I have any more space for calculator manuals.

Anyway, just confessing my sins. There are many, these are but two.

I think this is about right, and in line with the idea of hopepunk.

I didn't take a walk this morning. Instead I rode my bike to the garden (the "North 40") and checked on the plants. They all looked happy and healthy. (Before we eat them.) I watered them just to let them know I came by.

Rode back the long way so I did about 10K and closed my exercise ring.

I'm looking forward to the end of daylight savings time. Sunrise is so late, I feel like half the day is gone before I'm even getting started. I don't mind it in the summer, but it should end by early October at the latest.

Of course, a uniform time standard is only essential for a functioning industrial civilization, and we're not likely to have one for much longer.

So we got that goin' for us.

Mitzi and I have joined the Garden Club. Since we live in an HOA, everything you might want to grow on your own property is tightly regulated. So forget about growing food. (This will change, eventually. I'd say in about 10 years, 15 at the outside. After the food shortages start becoming a regular thing.)

So we have a little 8'x4' plot in which we get to plant anything we want (well, I don't know about marijuana).

I don't do yard work. I detest it. But I am fond of eating. We want to grow some food. I normally don't go with Mitzi when she goes to the nursery because that's boring. But she was going to buy some plants to eat, and that sounded interesting, so I went with her last Friday to meet "Dave, the plant guy."

Dave, the plant guy, looks and sounds a lot like Jim Carey. Ex-New Yorker, former science teacher, now a vegan who tries to grow his own food and help other people do the same. We spent about an hour with Dave at his garden, which is a large undeveloped lot owned by a guy across the road who indulges Dave in his passion. He walked us around and showed us all the plants, and talked about all the things that grow at latitude 30°North.

We have a humble beginning with about a dozen plants. The idea isn't to save money on our food budget, it's to get some experience in how to raise plants, grow food. So that when the time comes, we'll have some clue how to go about it.

Also, did you know you can eat acorns? There are a lot of oak trees around here...

The thing about science is that it's inherently conservative. When science is telling you that horrible things are going to happen, you shouldn't be wondering if they're right. You should be wondering how much worse it might actually be.

Sea level rise is a game of inches. It doesn't take many inches to create miles and miles and miles of problems. And it's going to take decades to address those problems, so we might as well get started now.

One relatively "easy" thing to do would be to figure out how we're going to condemn and demolish all private housing built too close to the ocean. Restore those areas to something approaching a natural environment.

Since any solution we devise will be litigated for years, possibly decades (which we don't have), we should probably start now.

But...

We won't. We'll wait until it's too late. I mean, it's already "too late," but we could do a lot of stuff to make it less worse. But we're too selfish, too pig-headed, too blind, too cowardly to do anything, until it's too late.

I mean, stuff like this...

This is a crop of the preceding image. Otherwise, straight out of the camera.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:21 Tuesday, 24 October 2023

But 400mm does let you do this.

I took the E-M1X to the airshow on Saturday because I was going to use the mZuiko 100-400mm zoom. It turns out that I might have been better served using the mZuiko 40-150mm/f2.8 with the MC1.4 teleconverter.

This shot is at 218mm, which is only slightly longer than the 210mm of the 40-150 with the teleconverter. The challenge is keeping the aircraft in the frame at 400mm.

The E-M1X handles the 100-400mm nicely and has subject recognition for aircraft, which I would say isn't really essential in an airshow. The subject is usually the only thing in the sky.

This shot is un-cropped. It'd probably be better at 3:2 where I could center the formation vertically, but I'm not that fussy usually.