Took a lot of pics for Mom's birthday. It was cloudy and cool, but it didn't rain.

I like this one.

Home again, that is. I could complain about travel, but I'm not. It is what it is, and it's not fun, nor cheap. But it's nice to be home.

Mom's birthday was also very nice. My son and daughter-in-law had a scare on the drive up on rain-slick roads with their 3-year-old onboard. Spun out, but fortunately there were no other cars nearby, and they didn't strike anything on either side of the road. The older I get, the more I pray for my kids. Don't know if it works, but episodes like this tend to make me want to keep doing it.

All my siblings and nearly all of my nieces and nephews made it in. One nephew FaceTimed in from Utah. I got to see my sister's reaction when her oldest surprised her by showing up unannounced. He lives in Mountain View and had told her he wouldn't make it since they were planning to be in New York in three weeks anyway. It was sweet watching her run to him, and hear the catch in her voice when she called out his name.

Aunt Carol made it out with two of her three daughters, Debbie and Elaine, cousins I played and did farm chores with growing up. Mom's brother, Uncle Tony, and Aunt Carol ran Grampa's dairy farm. Debbie's older than I am, and she drove the tractor while her brother and I stacked hay from the baler. Elaine and I were classmates in high school. She still lives in Canastota, but she doesn't see many of our classmates very often, and I'd just seen a few so I caught her up. Debbie brought along her daughter, Susan, who's the genealogist in the family, so we exchanged contact info.

Mom's fraternal twin sister Mary Ann and her baby sister Emily are the only remaining siblings of 13 in the family. Emily is something of a recluse now, and Mary Ann lives in assisted living in Colorado, so it was great seeing Aunt Carol. She was always a "fun" aunt, ready with a wise-crack and something good to eat. She's 88 now and the years are beginning to catch up with her, but her voice still sounds the same.

Chris and Caitie enjoyed seeing all their cousins and a couple of them brought their fiancés along to get acquainted with the family. Jackson was well behaved and enjoyed a great deal of attention.

The get-together was held at my sister's place. We were worried about rain, but it held off. She had two fairly large tent canopies with walls, and it was enough to keep the chill out from the 60-something degree weather.

Mom seemed thrilled with it all. As much as I dislike and dread travel, I'm glad I did it. We used to do stuff like this far more often back when nearly all Mom's siblings were alive. Getting together up at Gramma's with thirty-some cousins, all the aunts and uncles, having pot luck picnic dinner. Everyone lived within a few hours' drive at most, most of them within a few miles! It's not like that today, and I suppose we're the poorer for it.

Anyway, I'm home. I have a lot of photos to go through and share. But it'll be quiet around here for a few days until Mitzi gets home from Greece, so I should get everything squared away soon.

I listened to climate scientist Michael Mann on NPR's Science Friday about how past climate events suggest that it's not "too late" to arrest irreversible climate change. You can listen to it here.

A couple of comments. I'm going to have to do a deeper dive on Mann's claim that the oceans will become some vast carbon sink once we stop emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. We know that the oceans do absorb a lot of CO2, but it's an equilibrium process and it's not clear to me how it would do enough to slow catastrophic warming. It seems to suggest that the ocean's being this extraordinary carbon sink would turn Earth into a snowball, eventually absorbing all the CO2 that has generally prevented that condition. So I'm unpersuaded, but happy to be wrong, if I am.

But it's not just climate change that's propelling us toward a cliff. It's the destruction of the natural world. The human population is vastly larger than the rest of the planetary biosphere can support, and we're witnessing the sixth mass extinction in our efforts to keep supporting it.

The other significant part of Mann's pitch is the pushback against "doom-ism," presumably people like me. I get where he's coming from, because there are people who seem to advocate doing nothing because it's too late to avoid a collapse. Why inconvenience ourselves, it's all going to hell anyway?

But that view is unsustainable as well.

For months now, I've been wrestling with this kind of "existential dread" slash "despair." We have failed everyone on this planet. I've failed my children and now my grandchildren. Much of my adult life was as a professional trained to identify threats and prepare to meet them. To protect my country, my shipmates and my family. And I saw the threat. I knew what we faced, the risks, the stakes. It wasn't until recently that I think I had a full appreciation of them, but I knew enough to know that we are in a great deal of trouble.

It wasn't enough.

But I've come to also understand that there are dynamics at play that are beyond our ability to control. We are not the rational beings we flatter ourselves to believe. You do your best, and the rest isn't up to you. Trying to know what "your best" is, and how to ensure you're doing it is challenge enough. You don't cling to outcomes. Non-attachment to results.

The future is always uncertain. And the sad reality is that each and every one of us is born to die. It is how we live where we make that life meaningful.

So despair is not an option. We must confront reality and allow it to inform the choices we make. We can't pretend that it's something else, because then we're making our choices based on a fiction, something meaningless. And that truly is something to despair over.

We meet this moment by calling on the best in ourselves, regardless of what the outcome may be. We find the best in ourselves by knowing what we're facing.

Here's a bit of cheese for you this morning, from a future that was twenty years ago:

Agent Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson? Why, why? Why do you do it? Why, why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting... for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although... only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?

Neo: Because I choose to.

The only power we have is the power to choose. Life is meaningless. We bring meaning to life. It is in the act of choosing that we make meaning. And for those choices to have any real power, we must know what we're choosing.

We meet this moment with love. Love is faith in action. We meet this moment by doing the best that we can, even if it's not enough. Because it is enough. Our charge is not to preserve this civilization, it is to love one another. To serve one another. To sacrifice for one another. Not to feel sorry for ourselves, to indulge our appetites.

We must look to each other, call upon one another, to work together and do our best. And for now, that means we have to try. To stop the assault on our planet. To reduce as much suffering as possible. To restore what we can. To preserve what we can. To avoid needless destruction. To prevent unnecessary suffering.

"Doom-ism" isn't about giving up. It's about getting up.

"Get up, Neo."

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:51 Saturday, 23 September 2023

As may be inevitable these days, when you're talking with friends, especially ones you haven't seen for a long time, politics and climate come up. The friend I was staying with was an entrepreneur, and I suspect that his politics are generally more conservative than mine. Though we're largely in agreement about our current trajectory, and our views are mostly in sympathy with one another.

With regard to climate change, it hasn't been a topic he's followed closely. He has other activities he's passionate about that consume a majority of his time, and I commend him for that. Envy him a bit, too. So he was interested to hear my thoughts, but I think at the end he rather regretted hearing them.

The second night I was there, two more of our classmates joined us. One was a retired Air Force E-9 who'd worked in meteorology his whole career. The other is a highly trained engineer. Climate came up again, this time from the engineer. He's convinced we can solve the crisis. Our host told him not to ask me, because he wouldn't like the answer. But our Air Force friend was in my camp. It was interesting to me to listen to his take. Our views differ somewhat, but our conclusions are the same. It's too late to avert a general collapse of civilization, likely before this century is out.

But we do have to try. We could be wrong. If we're so smart, why aren't we rich? But moreover, we owe it to everyone we share this planet with to try, especially the children being born today and those that will continue to be born in the future. We can't just go, "Oh, well... Sorry about that." I should note that our Air Force friend is childless, the rest of us all have kids.

The engineer is convinced solar shading, fusion, hydrogen fuel, etc will save us. But the atmosphere is already filled with an amount of carbon dioxide unseen in hundreds of millennia. Even if we could achieve zero carbon emissions today, it will be decades and possibly centuries before the climate reaches an equilibrium state. Until then, we'll be experiencing unprecedented weather extremes that will disrupt this highly inter-connected, highly optimized advanced technological civilization responsible for supporting the lives of eight billion people.

It's already begun, we just have to watch the news. The point is, it's only going to get worse. We can try to adapt, and we have to; but the scope of the problem is too great. Billions will die, and many of them will not go quietly. What we must do is work together, the best that we can, to alleviate suffering wherever we can, as much as we can. Like it or not, we are all in this together. We in the west are largely responsible for it, and we should accept that responsibility and act accordingly. We must avoid a nuclear exchange, and as much deliberate destruction as possible.

Maybe, if we can manage the collapse (perhaps an impossible task), the survivors will be left with a world and enough remnants of this civilization to begin a new one, a sustainable one. The fact that we will have exhausted most of the readily accessible fossil fuels will be something of an advantage in that regard, retarding the pace of growth and development, giving the natural world a chance to recover, and compelling a focus on sustainable existence, and not exclusively on "growth."

Anyway, that's what four old white guys talked about sitting around the kitchen table over beers.

Not exactly what I expected when I was a young man, but here we are.

On the way to the airport on Tuesday, I listened to a podcast about the September Apple Event. I listened to another one on the Thruway yesterday. I'd watched the livestream, but didn't seem to have many compelling thoughts then. Perhaps trapped by trip anxiety.

Anyway, a few observations and meta-observations after listening to the podcasts. (Parenthetically, this predictive text is becoming a pain. Sometimes it'll present the right word, but I'll be typing along and, if it's a long word, I'll type a letter about the same time that it registers that the prediction is correct and the prediction will disappear. I'll keep typing and it'll re-appear and maybe I'll hit the spacebar or maybe I'll finish the word first. It's annoying.)

First, the meta. I've seen some complaints about the reaction by the usual Apple press. I get the complaint, because I was somewhat annoyed by the fawning praise offered up for the most trivial of aspects of these products. I wrote it off to, "Of course, it's how they earn their bread-and-butter, what could you expect?"

The most "critical" comments were reserved for iCloud storage and the lack of a USB-3 data cable in the Pro models of the new iPhone. A $1300 phone and they can't throw in a high-capacity cable to take advantage of the interface? Ok, seems legit. The other is about iCloud storage tiers. 5GB free, and it's been that way since Steve Jobs announced it. Again, legit.

But the praise for the cameras was over the top. Same with the "ion-infused" color, although one podcaster thought it wasn't "saturated" enough.

There was a lot of BS about titanium. I'm skeptical about the strength properties ascribed by the pundits. I suspect that the aluminum frame delivers more than 90% of the structural strength and rigidity, and that titanium is kind of a veneer (albeit "welded") applied as a way to differentiate the "Pro" models from the "consumer" models in terms of "look and feel" to justify the premium cost. The weight savings also show up in Apple's shipping costs, which may be a net positive in terms of carbon, though I don't know what the energy cost is of fabricating the "titanium" frame versus the stainless steel.

I'm not a "Pro" iPhone customer. I think my brother is, I didn't ask him though. I rather suspect that he is, as he got the Apple Watch Ultra on release. I think the "Pro" thing is a cash-grab by Apple, and more power to 'em from a capitalism point of view. But the whole net-carbon neutrality of the (Aluminum) Apple Watch is just a way to greenwash the milk-the-market extremism of "pro" models. Make all the frames purely aluminum, and then I might be impressed. Maybe.

I've got an iPhone 13 and I'll wait and see how the "consumer" version of the 15's camera looks first, but I may skip the 15 as well.

I will likely get the Series 9 Apple Watch. I have a Series 6 and I find it generally useful. Enough so that the improvements in the 9 seem meaningful to me. I say this while experiencing this gnawing irritation at the back of my mind that I'm participating in the process that is dooming this civilization, but I think that ship has largely sailed.

Ignore the weather data, I took the marmot on the road with me, which is an interesting exercise I should try to do more often. Had to re-enter my Tinderbox license, which meant finding my TB license. Then had to log into the server, which always seems to entail resetting the password.

Then there's the matter of re-jiggering the view because I'm running TB on a 27" iMac at my desk, and a 13" MBP on the road. I'm writing this post in a separate Text window, which is a new experience.

I went to launch the marmot from the pop-up list of documents from the TB dock icon, only to discover that those aren't sync'ed with iCloud, so a July version opened. I quickly closed it, selecting "revert changes" out of desperation, worried that this old version would automatically be uploaded to iCloud and I'd lose the current version (again). Went to iCloud Documents and opened it from there and all appears well.

Yeesh, so many moving parts!

I'm up in Clifton Park, NY to visit with Mom who celebrated her 90th birthday yesterday. Record longevity among her 13 siblings was Aunt Gert who made it to 95. Mom's goal is to make it to 91, which I think is achievable. Parkinson's is slowly making things more challenging, but she's still independent for now. Her fraternal (sororial?) twin, Mary Ann is also still with us. She has low vision so she lives in assisted living in Colorado.

I'm writing this in Sonoma with the new predictive text model, and it's somewhat distracting. Some of its predictions are quite accurate, while others are nonsensical. Perhaps it will get better with time, or I'll become more accustomed to it.

It's been refreshingly cool here, to the point where I wish I'd brought a sweater or jacket. I'm not complaining though, it's nice. I came up a couple of days early and flew into Syracuse so I could visit with some old high school friends. I stayed with one who's looking after his wife who is profoundly disabled by early-onset Alzheimer's. He has in-home help, but I'm still impressed and amazed by his commitment and resilience. Renée was with us for most of the our activities in his home. I'm humbled by his compassion.

While the home health aid was present, we took a ride in his Miata with the top down around the area where we grew up. So many changes! It's remarkably beautiful though. That part of New York is far more rural than where I am in Clifton Park, so it was very nice to see the farms and trees and hills. Windmills have been part of that landscape for about 20 years or more, but it seems to me that the original ones may have been replaced by far larger versions. They were astonishingly huge.

Drove out here yesterday morning to be with Mom on her birthday. We're having a kind of family reunion on Saturday at my youngest sister's house. Two of my kids will be here, with my grandson, Mom's first great-grandchild. We're hopeful the weather will cooperate.

Set-up is later that afternoon. My brother texted last night that he may not be able to help out. He's a bigger Apple fan than I am, and his new iPhone is scheduled to be delivered today, but he must be present to sign for it and it may not be delivered until 7:00 PM.

Which is perhaps the right point to end this post, because I have some thoughts on Apple...

Having only seen my first cattle egret around here a month ago, here's another one this morning. This one seems to need a bath. Kind of came up on it unexpectedly, so I zoomed and shot quickly thinking it'd fly away. So framing isn't ideal. I needn't have worried, but I didn't take my time and frame it up nicely.

This is a long video in today's world. I watched the whole thing. It's pretty remarkable.

I found it encouraging and uplifting, and I'm proud of the people who made this happen. It's technical, but it's so much more than that.

Hat tip to Bill Meara of SolderSmoke Daily News, whose RSS feed brought this to my attention.

This morning's birds are these mourning doves.

My 2019 27" iMac will update to Sonoma on the 26th. I'd have installed one of the betas, but I kind of rely on Michael Tsai's SpamSieve to help manage my inbox. I turned off the iMac when we went to Martha's Vineyard and I was dismayed by the amount of crap that filled my in-box on my iPhone.

So, I guess I'll have to buy a new desktop Mac at some point if I want to keep up with the OS updates. Security considerations seem to argue strongly for that. I'll get a couple of years of security updates after next year, so maybe 2026? '27?

Maybe the scope of the calamity we're facing will be clear to everyone by then. I watched the Apple Event like I watch a lot of things these days, realizing that it's approaching the time when they'll seem absurd. For me, they're already there. This overt display of "normalcy" (cameo appearance of "Mother Nature" notwithstanding), while fully aware that there's maybe a decade or two before cascading climate catastrophes begin disrupting supply chains to the point where new product introductions are going to be impossible. They'll likely go on, but they'll be more aspirational than anything else.

"Keep calm and carry on," and all that.

There's a fire aboard Spaceship Earth.

It's reached the life support system.

The bridge is still worried about upsetting the first class passengers.

Life goes on.

Until it doesn't.

Dew point was reasonable and the sky was clear, so I pointed the EM-1 Mk3 to the sky with the 8mm/f1.8 fisheye mounted. Not a lot of excitement. Seems to be more satellites visible, I'm guessing those are mostly StarLink. Maybe an "Iridium flare" or something like it, or possibly a meteor. If I weren't a lazy man, I'd get up early and go to the beach and try to capture the comet. Bigger version at Flickr.

Put the drone up this morning. On the flight back from Miami, Mitzi had the window seat so I only got glimpses of a spectacular cloudscape. But I do have a drone.

Showed up to donate blood this morning, and my octane* was high enough to meet the requirement this time. Did an apherisis donation, so a double-shot of red blood cells.

Very magnanimous of me, since they only give you the same $20 they give for a pint of the regular stuff, and I can't donate again until after the new year. Leavin' money on the table! But I need the karma.

• Hemoglobin. Iron.

Our travel insurance just covered illness. It must cover something because Mitzi said we'll probably get about $150 from it. At least that covers the cost of the insurance and the difference in the higher, "no-fee cancellation" fares. She said she's going to see what her American Express card may cover, since we paid for the flights with it. And then we'll appeal to Delta for some reimbursement.

The policy we bought specifically excluded weather, and I don't actually know if you can buy insurance for weather-related travel interruptions. Something to look into though.

C'est la vie, je pense.

My caution that the marmot would be silent until Monday "at the earliest," was appropriate. We didn't get home until just after 9:00 last night.

The weekend was wonderful, though. The trip up went smoothly, with everything departing and arriving on time. We stepped off the Peter Pan bus at Wood's Hole and walked right aboard the ferry just minutes before they pulled the gangway. We didn't wait long for a Lyft driver in Vineyard Haven to take us to Oak Bluffs, where we stayed at the Madison Inn.

We had the day on Friday to wander around and explore, so we rented bikes and pedaled over to Edgartown. It was warm, mid-80s, and very humid so that was a sweaty affair. There's a topographical difference, I've found, between various regions' interpretations of "flat." Nearly all of Florida is "flat," as in "as a pancake." The route was described as "flat." As an expert in "flat," I can assure you, the route is not "flat." Fortunately, the bikes we rented were both geared; and apart from the amount of effort required, and accompanying perspiration, it posed no insurmountable difficulties. The roughly nine-mile round trip did kind of wear me out though.

As an aside, there are too many cars on Martha's Vineyard. Seems like the kind of place that would do well to make a serious effort to significantly reduce their numbers. I doubt that will happen, too many vested interests, to include the ferry business. The bike path we took is separated from the road, which was nice, and important. But once you get into town, it's bumper to bumper cars. For the most part, drivers will yield to pedestrians with little complaint, but they seem to resent bikes. The number of cars does make the island much less pleasant.

We had dinner with my navy friends Thursday night, and we were able to take a bus to the restaurant, dropping us off right across the street. We had to walk a bit to get to a crosswalk, but it was otherwise perfect. Two dollars, versus a $28 Lyft fare to go 3.8 miles. I'm guessing it was the "dynamic pricing" model, that aligns demand with available drivers.

The one glitch during our time on the island occurred on the way home from dinner. I wanted to go left leaving the restaurant, and walk about a quarter mile down to the Vineyard Haven dock, where I knew there was a bus stop. Mitzi was certain there would be one "on the way" back to Oak Bluffs. So we went Mitzi's way, right. There wasn't, and at some point the "sunk cost fallacy" had us pressing on over the causeway at night, walking about a mile or more to the hospital, where the next bus stop was located. I was tired, my back was hurting, my feet were sore and it was still warm and humid, so I was a bit of a bear about the whole thing. Mitzi would probably say I was rather more than "a bit."

We ended up getting a Lyft, having watched the bus roar by us in the dark, the bus stop shelter being unilluminated and us being seated inside. After waiting about 20 minutes, for $15 we got a driver to take us the couple of remaining miles to the post-rehearsal get together for the wedding party and guests. The good news was Mitzi, being charming and resourceful where I am definitely not, got the driver's card and asked about picking us up when we were ready to leave and head back to our inn. He told her to call his dispatcher and see what he said. So she did, and we did have a ride home. There were apparently 14 weddings on the island that weekend and taxis and ride-shares were in high demand. It was $20 to get back to the room, but I overheard my late friend's brother-in-law asking about how to get a ride. He'd tried to arrange for the taxi who brought him to pick him up again and that was out of the question. I asked him where he was staying, and he was in Oak Bluffs as well, so when Mitzi confirmed our driver would return to take us home, I told him he could share our ride. Perhaps a bit unfair to the driver, as he checked with his dispatcher and the price went up to $25. Still, it was better than walking!

On Saturday, our goals were much more modest. I wanted to make sure Mitzi saw the Camp Meeting Association houses, which were just a short walk from where we were staying. To me, that's the most remarkable thing about the island. We went down to the beach and Mitzi enjoyed some time in the ocean while I kept a sharp eye out for sharks.

We had the same driver pick us up to take us to the ceremony on Saturday evening. It was a lovely affair, simple and brief. The reception was likewise quite elegant, but not elaborate or ostentatious. Food was excellent, band was outstanding, and we navy "olds" were seated at "Table 1," which was located outside the main event room. Which also had the salutary virtue of being much cooler than the un-air conditioned event room. Winning!

We were ready to go home by 9:30 and there were taxis already arranged to shuttle guests back to their accommodations, so we had no challenges getting back to the inn.

There was a Sunday morning brunch planned, but our itinerary had us getting on the 10:30 ferry back to Woods Hole to meet our 12:00 PM bus. All that went according to plan, notwithstanding a dense fog covering the island. Bus departed on time, and though we encountered rain and traffic delays, it seemed we would be at Logan in plenty of time to catch our flight.

But...

Mitzi looked at the Delta app to check for our gate and discovered our flight had been canceled. No notification from Delta. Apparently it had happened shortly after the bus, which had wifi onboard, left Woods Hole. Mitzi immediately began looking for other flights. The one option Delta had was a two-stop, three plane affair that had us getting in around midnight, and even that disappeared as she was searching.

We were fortunate. Because of the rather complicated logistical elements, we had purchased travel insurance for this trip, mainly concerned about a Covid cancellation. We stood in line over an hour to get to a Delta service agent, and she confirmed they had nothing for us until Tuesday. While we were standing in line, Mitzi booked a one-stop American flight from Boston to Miami, changing planes to Jacksonville, that would have gotten us into Jax by about 6:30PM. Then she found a non-stop Jet Blue about 7:00PM that would have gotten us into Jax about 10:15PM. I told her to book that too, in case the American flight was cancelled. We paid extra for flights without cancellation fees, expect that at least she flies enough that she would be able to use any credit if we couldn't get our money back. Delta refunded the unused portion of our ticket which was $500 alone.

Apparently it was weather-related, though we never got a specific explanation for why the fight was cancelled. Because of that, no voucher for lodging was offered. But... we did have trip insurance! So we found a room at an airport Hilton Garden Inn with shuttle service to Logan. The Hilton attached to the airport was full.

So we got the hotel shortly before 5:00 and got checked in. I looked at the little amenities booklet and saw that they had a washer-dryer available for guests, which was quite welcome as we'd only packed for the weekend and it was a very sweaty one. Down to the lobby with laundry in hand, we stopped by the desk to buy soap. Someone had to go back and find some, because there was nothing in the little "sundries" store. Apparently we got the last one. More luck!

We put our laundry in and came back and looked at the menu for the restaurant, there being nothing "walkable" nearby. They didn't start serving until 5, but the guy in the kitchen said, "We're ready, if you are." So we sat down and had dinner while our clothes were being washed. After dinner, we stuck them in the dryer and repaired to our room.

After the clothes were done, we surfed around and found Psycho on Turner Classic Movies, not long after Marion had absconded with the cash. Mitzi watched another movie after, while I faded off.

Monday morning. Plan A is American. Plan B is Jet Blue. If we get seated on the American flight, we cancel Jet Blue. All is going according to plan until we get to TSA pre-check. We're booked on two flights. I'd given the agent my retired navy ID, which I suspect may have made him somewhat more accommodating. Explained the A/B thing and which flight we were going through security for (A) and he let us through.

We board the American flight and Mitzi cancelled Jet Blue. On to Miami! Our flight actually arrived early, which was welcome because we'd only had a 45-min layover and we were a little concerned about how much time we had to make it to our next gate. Of course, arriving early usually means you wind up waiting for a gate, and we did. In any event, we got to the gate for the Jacksonville flight in plenty of time.

Which is when I started looking at Flight Aware to see where our next plane was. The lady across from us had been in the terminal since 11:00 am, her flight being delayed and subsequently canceled. I saw that our plane was in Nassau, at the terminal. It's a short 52 minute hop, so I wasn't especially concerned, and genuinely relieved when I saw it had begun taxiing. Where it stayed for the next 20 minutes. Uh-oh. Equipment problems?

Eventually the gate agents announced the delay. The plane finally took off and we were able to board. I was at the point in line where they decided all the overhead bins were full, and my bag and those of everyone after me would have to be checked. Oh well.

I think we arrived about 90 minutes after our scheduled arrival, but I didn't care. Got to baggage claim and there was my bag just coming around the carousel. Grabbed it and went to find the shuttle to the parking facility. Looked at the slip they gave us and it said to meet the shuttle at Pillar 1. Well, there's a sea of people around Pillar 2, but Mitzi and I went to Pillar 1 as directed. They're separated by about 20 feet, so I didn't know what all those folks were doing at Pillar 2.

Shuttle shows up and stops at Pillar 1 and we're like the second people to board, another couple at Pillar 1 apparently not waiting for that shuttle. After we're seated, another guy comes on board and complains to Mitzi that we jumped the line. The sea of people around Pillar 2 didn't resemble anything I recognized as a "line." We were able to cruise through them with little difficulty even pulling our luggage, and no one uttered the words, "Back of the line!" She said, "You made it," and he said, "Yeah, but there are people who won't." Thought it might have gotten ugly, but he shut up. Bus filled, and there was another one, literally, right behind it. Nobody was seriously inconvenienced by us following directions.

Traffic was light at that hour. Got home with no problems. Happy to be back in our own house after 36 hours in hotels, boats, buses, terminals and planes. I was pretty chill about the whole thing. Happy we'd had the foresight to purchase insurance, and the vagaries of weather being something you have no control over, unlike going right instead of left.

There's a claim to be filed, but Mitzi seems to actually enjoy that sort of thing. The Delta agent also mentioned appealing to Delta for some reimbursement. She'll sort all that out.

I've got to do this all again in a week, heading up to New York for Mom's birthday. I don't have trip insurance. But it'll be what it'll be. While we were in Massachusetts, my daughter Caitie was flying to New York from LA. That flight ended up on a weather hold over NY, eventually diverting to Philly to refuel and finally going on to NY. She spent over 10 hours in that plane.

I think with our "new normal" of abnormal extreme weather, there's a good deal more uncertainty in air travel. Probably good news for the travel insurance business.

Until it's not.

A year ago we flew to Boston for the wedding of my late friend's daughter. Today we're flying to Boston for the wedding of his other daughter. This one is taking place on Martha's Vineyard, so it's a bit of a trek. After we land in Boston, we take a bus to Wood's Hole, then a ferry to the island.

I checked the post from a year ago, and the flying part was apparently quite pleasant. Which may explain why I haven't been dreading this one quite as much. Normally, I look forward to flying about as much as one looks forward to, say, a root canal. That's not to say this experience will be the same, it's just that I haven't felt the same degree of anxiety and resentment.

To be clear, I still hate flying. The fact that it's about the most carbon-intensive thing I do is only the icing on an already awful cake of corporate and security state apparatus dehumanization and exploitation. I actually enjoy being in the air, it's dealing with the traffic, the terminal, TSA and being crammed into a tube with "other people" (in the Sartre sense) that really suck. I will try to work on my compassion and loving-kindness, but I'm not very good at it.

We'll be masking for this one, the travel portion at least. The wedding itself is outside, but there will be get-togethers indoors and I'm quite conflicted on those. The fact that there's a new booster being released "real soon now," only makes that more acute.

Anyway, such is life in late-stage capitalism.

Back Sunday night, if all goes well. The marmot will be quiet until Monday at the earliest.

Jack linked to a post by Cal Newport (FWIW, I've never heard of Cal Newport.) about the Mythic Computer. The Verge piece is worthwhile.

I thought it was ironic, in the sense that irony is the fifth fundamental force of the universe, that Newport referred to Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.

I think it's true that, "We make our tools, and then our tools make us." There's plenty of evidence for anyone who cares to look. And the assertion is often offered as a lament about a perceived diminished existence as a consequence.

So we've recently been through a period where developers and the technorati (the élite technology class) embraced minimalist apps. Apps to afford greater focus. I still see that mentioned from time to time, here and there, but it seems to have lost some of its cachet.

What's hip now is a minimalist, wooden computer!

That will improve... something!

(In the same way that film makes photography more intentional. Which, one takes it, is a superior experience to the presumably less intentional digital photographic act.)

Maybe that's why Apple I auctions command such ridiculous prices. Wood. Limited. Perfect!

But I love the fact that we're uncomfortable with our tool-using existence, and the solution to our discomfort is somehow building a different tool.

Back when I was a more unhappy man than I am today, I used to tell myself, "It'll get better when..." And much of my unhappiness was compounded by the fact that "it" never got better, regardless of the "when."

That's when I learned that "it" never gets better until you do.

Looking for solutions outside of what goes on between your ears is a fool's errand.

But it can drive clicks, and sales.

As the wheels, and the widgets, turn.

Turn, turn, turn.

Unremarkable photo. What is remarkable, and disturbing, is this is only the second bird (the first of two) I saw this morning. As I got toward the back pond, I realized I wasn't even hearing any birds. I normally hear mockingbirds, mourning doves, woodpeckers, hawks, whistling ducks, ospreys and bird calls I can't identify. Not all of them, but usually at least a couple.

Just before I got home, I heard a mockingbird, and then spotted it on the roof of a house. The only one I saw. As I'm typing this I'm hearing some kind of crane vocalizing outside.

Can't be good.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:33 Wednesday, 6 September 2023

Mitzi and I are watching season 5 of Unforgotten. It's good, though I relate to Sunny and his grief over Cassie. Tough role for Sinéad Keenan to step into, because they don't make it easy to like her right from the beginning. Which is perhaps the best way to do it, if the series will continue.

Interesting listening to what Lang wants to talk about in the series. This one is the most overtly "political." I especially enjoyed the little soliloquy on being powerless in episode 4. People on the margins live the most uncertain lives. As uncertainty appears to be something we will all be looking forward to a great deal more of, perhaps people on the margins will be the best equipped to navigate the future.

It's streaming on PBS Passport.

Jack laments the current fad or fashion of film. I can relate.

I was never as much into photography as a younger man as I became when digital arrived. Chiefly because of cost. When I was shooting with "intention," I was shooting slide film, because it was cheaper than getting prints. Later on, I was shooting mostly as a tourist when we made port visits, using whatever plastic Canon compact 35mm auto-whatever was available at the time.

Somewhat later I bought a Canon AE-1 Program, which seemed to be the most popular camera at the Navy Exchange. But I'm unsure of whether I have any pictures from that camera. I probably do, but there's no meta-data on the prints to tell me, so I have to guess from the sharpness and depth of field.

I genuinely appreciate digital photography. Although I confess that I too sometimes succumb to the fads and delusions of things like the "CCD-look." For the most part, I do understand it's all just numbers and you can make them anything you want. So if you work a little bit on contrast and saturation, you can make your stacked 80MP CMOS sensor have as limited dynamic range and high noise as that beloved 8MP Kodak CCD.

It's all just numbers.

Anyway, same thing with "computing." I can still kind of recall the excitement many of us felt with the advent of "home computers." I can definitely recall the ridiculous amounts of money many of us spent for precious little utility, just the chance to experience something that felt like "the future." If I'd have known then what I know now, I think I'd have run away screaming.

I do still enjoy those old machines. Mostly in emulation. They do recall the feeling of thinking the future was going to be something cool. I still think that much of the attraction, for me, was that it empowered me to put something on a TV screen, something that had been just a device to look at things someone else had made. Probably the same thing that motivates me to maintain the marmot. I get to read something I wrote on a screen, and other people can too.

Same thing with the pics, I guess.

Why they should want to is a question I don't dwell on.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:13 Tuesday, 5 September 2023

Very pleasant morning today. 67°F! Supposed to get over 90° later today though. Still, I'll take it. I opened the windows the morning to get some fresh air in the house. I have a CO2 monitor and it's consistently over 1200ppm, which doesn't seem to cause any overt effects; but has been shown to cause measurable cognitive deficits in controlled tests. It won't matter, because I just closed the windows and it'll be over 1000 again shortly.

If I weren't laboring under those cognitive deficits, I'd look into plants or some other mechanism to reduce the interior CO2 levels.

Anyway, no birds this morning. I don't really understand it, and it's troubling. A few mockingbirds, a couple of doves and a woodpecker, but that was it. Nothing standing still long enough to photograph.

Spotted this green anole, which I don't see as often as the ubiquitous brown ones, when I was shooting some flowers. It'll have to do.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:00 Tuesday, 5 September 2023

Pretty pleasant this morning! 74°F, though the humidity was still rather high. It's fine until you start sweating, then it's just damp, not hot.

Went just before sunrise so brought the E-M1 Mk3 with the 12-100mm/f4 Pro. Wasn't sure if I could get the moon in the frame, and the star of this is the cloud. Overall, a nothing-burger, but I liked it.

All fixed now. Had the computer photo post fail to export because the HTMLDontExport boolean attribute got set somehow. Ticked that box and all is well.

Carry on with your Sunday.

Ah, mystery solved. Mark Anderson just emailed me that the September archive wasn't resolving. Couldn't figure that out, since the file was there. It was the individual permalinks that were malformed in the file, and therefore everywhere else. Like the RSS feed.

"Yay for automation."

Well, yeah. If it does everything. Had a template assignment glitch initially. Caught that. Did not detect that the "permafile" attribute wasn't being set. Had to go back and fix that. Fortunately, the RSS feed already downloaded in NetNewsWire had all the correct creation dates since I foolishly corrected it by just dragging the posts out of the September 2023 container and dragging them back in, which had the effect of giving them all the same creation timestamp. Alas.

"Switching to manual!"

Fingers crossed, all should be well. The apocalypse has been postponed.

My workflow is flawed. I recently read something and my unreliable memory suggests is was about a Buddhist monk who was talking about a particular glass or vessel that pleased him. But he knew that it was very fragile and that it could easily be broken.

So he imagines that the glass is already broken, and appreciates the miracle of it being present in this moment.

Thought it was a blog post, checked my starred posts in NetNewsWire. Nope.

Maybe it was a toot, checked my bookmarked "toots." Nope.

Ephemeral.

All things pass. Memory fades. Do not cling.

Be here now.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:12 Sunday, 3 September 2023