Category Archives: Technology

I’m not the only one who can see this! Hallelujah!

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Yes, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted, I know. I’m busier than usual, partly because I’m in my third week of classes at USC.

But my assignments include writing commentary on our assigned readings, and these tend to take a form similar to blog posts. And one that I wrote a couple of weeks back is nearly identical to one I’ve meant to write here for at least a year or two. I haven’t written it because it was one of my long, involved posts like this one or this one. I was going to call it something like, “A Hierarchy of Communications.” Too involved. Too easy (for me) to keep putting it off.

But last week, I had occasion to write a brief summary of one of the ideas that would have been included in that tome. It went sort of like this…

Here’s something that’s long been very obvious to me, possibly because I started regularly using a keyboard to send instant messages directly to other people at some point in 1980. That’s when our newspaper in Tennessee abandoned the IBM Selectric and started generating and editing copy on the screens of dumb computer terminals linked to a mainframe. The system had this wonderful little, almost entirely superfluous, feature: You could, using this same system, generate and send a brief written message directly to anyone else in the newsroom.

I could tell you some horror stories about the trouble this caused, but I’m trying to be brief. I’ll simply say that eventually I learned that that there are things you should never try to communicate using this medium. You should instead get out of your chair, walk over and say it face-to-face.

There are all sorts of reasons for this. But mainly, it’s because when someone’s looking at you and listening, you can communicate more clearly not only emotional content (and emotions fly wildly about in a newsroom near deadlines), but the person can immediately, in a matter of seconds, ask questions that wouldn’t have occurred to you as the writer of the text – usually because you didn’t realize such questions existed.

You save a lot of time this way, and maybe even avoid a fistfight under certain awkward conditions.

Today I live in a world in which most of the billions on this planet (as opposed to the 40 in that small newsroom) possess the ability to send text to anyone else whose mobile numbers they happen to possess. And they can do a lot more with those texts, which means they can cause trouble unimagined back in 1980. (This is a central problem with social media, but let’s stick to texts at the moment.)

I’m constantly begging friends, family and sometimes mere acquaintances NOT to send that important text, but to use another convenient application, the telephone feature. (After all, we do call the thing a “phone,” right?) It would save a lot of time, often a half hour or so of multiple, imperfectly typed and even less perfectly understood texts back and forth. Time and again, these matters could be handled more fully and efficiently with a 30-second conversation.

Evidently, I’ve seldom explained this well, because I don’t often succeed in convincing anyone.

So I refer you to the text in the box. The author tells us that spoken language:

  • allows confusion and ambiguity to be resolved directly by repair and confirmation procedures
  • is used in a social and temporal context, and thus brings with it a great deal of background information; draws on context to complement meaning and fill in ellipses

Absolutely. Written communications don’t offer these same valuable features.

Anyway, that’s the end of what I said — on that one subject — in my notes on the reading. It would have been just one point among many in my treatise on the full range of options in daily interpersonal communications.

Here’s the aforementioned box, from page 20 of English with an Accent, by Rosina Lippi-Green.

Hate the latest iOS update? I don’t blame you…

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WHY would you fade out the ONE thing I need to see clearly in the middle of the night?

Last night, sometime after dinner, a dialogue box appeared on my iPhone screen. It wanted to install an update. With reckless abandon, I allowed it to do so.

I agreed on the basis of vague concern that something I rely upon might not work right in the future, at a moment when I really needed it, if I didn’t go along. In other words, the device was saying to me, “Nice setup ya got heah. Shame if sometin’ was ta happen to it…”

Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of those discreet, unobtrusive, polite updates. This iOS 26.1 is more of a tear-down-everything-you-like-and-replace-it-with-something-far-less-appealing update.

A lot of my problem had to do with what I sometimes refer to as my Tory sensibility — my instinctive conservatism. I’m like those Age of Sail foremast jacks Patrick O’Brian describes. Their daily existence might be strenuous and harsh, but it “was what they were used to, and they liked what they were used to.”as

Amen. I like new things well enough — nothing like a new toy. As long as I don’t have to throw away my old toys to get one.

This time, they’ve messed with the visual appearance of practically everything that is completely within Apple’s control– camera, clock, settings and such. Worse, they’ve messed with the functionality. Actually, I’m exaggerating a bit. The visual and functional design of only a few things have changed. But they’re the things you most often use quickly, without having to think about it. Now you have to stop and think.

As I often say, nothing wrong with thinking. But I’d rather spend that mental energy on more important, complex matters than setting my alarm clock.

Example: When I wake up in the middle of the night, I’m used to glancing at my phone’s lockscreen, without putting on my glasses, to see what time it is. Not the date, not the weather forecast, just the time. In previous iOS versions, they made the time the biggest thing on the screen, apparently recognizing that’s what people needed to see. NOW, it’s the one thing on the page that’s faded into the background. This is a pain. (And don’t dismiss this as an old man’s complaint. I’ve been nearsighted since I was in the third grade.)

But rather than give you a list of all the things I don’t like about it, I’ll push myself to be positive and name the one improvement (and remember, there’s no reason to change things except to improve them) I’ve found so far:

In the past, those alternative camera settings that can be fun but which you seldom use — time lapse, slo-mo, cinematic, portrait, etc. — sometimes got in the way when you didn’t want them. Your finger might have accidentally touched that part of the screen and ruined your shot. Sometimes, I would swear it would drift to those settings on its own.

That won’t happen now. After a fraction-of-a-second glimpse when you first open the app, those settings disappear, leaving only “VIDEO” and “PHOTO” readily available.

As someone on the boob tube used to say, that’s a good thing. But it’s the only one of those I’ve noticed so far…

Oh, wait, I almost forgot the nut graf. Here goes: Why won’t technology companies leave their wonderful products alone and let customers enjoy them? Why do they have to create a constant state of unsettled confusion by gratuitously chaning them? I can only think of one good excuse: Their beancounters would make them fire all the R&D folks if they didn’t keep producing these visible changes.

Hey, I want people to keep their jobs. But a wise company would employ these people to constantly seek ways to improve their products by addressing actual existing problems. Just don’t let them make the change unless it is undeniably an improvement, rather than change for change’s sake.

 

Why not a QUIET ‘hold’ option?

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I’m on hold as I type this.

I’m hearing instrumental music — bad, staticky, extremely monotonous “music” — which I could stand, if I must.

(It’s now been 10 minutes.)

What gets me is the earnest robot message about every 30 seconds explaining “we are currently experiencing extremely high call volumes,” followed by a suggestion that we leave a message on the website. Which of course is the point, to the institution from which I’m seeking information that the website does not provide.

At least I’m not being subjected to the bitterly laughable, “We value your call” shtick. This is more honest, but it requires translation: “We don’t want to pay enough humans to help you in a timely manner, so we’re going to torment you until you go away.”

Oh, this just in…

A different recording kicked in to tell me that it would remain connected with me no longer, and that I must now do what it’s been telling me to do and go to the website and leave a message in a location that sounds like the description of where citizens could find the notice that local government was going to tear down Arthur Dent’s house:

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

In other words, the machine had had it with me and my patience, and wasn’t going to take it anymore. The call ended at the 16-minute point.

But back to my original suggestion, before that last insult: Why can’t these waits at least be quiet and peaceful?

Never mind, I know the answer: The water-torture irritation is key to the institution’s strategy…

DeMarco: A.I., my mechanic, and my patients

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The Op-Ed Page

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

Like many of you, I am struggling to understand the repercussions artificial intelligence might have on my life and on my neighbors around the globe.

I’ve read some articles and listened to many podcasts about AI. I’ve heard opinions from the sanguine to the apocalyptic. Experience being the best teacher, I have observed how AI has affected my life and my practice, and thus far, I am cautiously optimistic.

That said, it’s frustrating to have such a small window on the impact AI is having on so many of us. I know it’s eliminating some jobs, while creating others. I sense from a distance that it is transforming the way we educate our children. How do you teach children to think critically and write insightfully when AI can do both for them? AI is already changing the way we interface with the world. Have you called a business and spoken to an AI assistant yet? If not, you soon will.

There are myriad ways AI could influence my corner of the world, primary care medicine. Two are currently top of mind. First, I hope that AI will eventually do most of my documentation. Although there has been some buzz on this front, I have yet to see a system that is anywhere close to a human scribe. However, it’s possible to imagine an AI scribe that would be faster, less expensive, and more helpful than a human one (albeit less enjoyable to work with).

Second, and more interesting to me is how AI will be used in the exam room. A recent visit to my mechanic may give a clue. Several months ago, a vibration began emanating from the front passenger side of my trusty 2016 Ford Escape. The noise had some peculiar characteristics – it was loudest when I first started the car and tended to improve as the engine warmed up and achieved high gear. Once I was at cruising speed, it was barely noticeable.

I took the car to my local mechanic, in whom I have absolute trust, for a regular service. The noise had just began and I had not listened carefully to it at that point. Based on my vague description, he replaced a sway bar link. There was no improvement. Since the noise wasn’t diminishing the car’s performance, I waited several months to return to him. Then I did what I tell my patients not to do. I went to the internet. Prior to AI, I found searches for questions like this one to be mostly unhelpful. In my patients’ hands, medical searches have often led to inaccurate and needlessly anxiety-provoking results. AI has changed the game. Well-constructed prompts can return genuinely useful answers in seconds. I described the noise in detail, and ChatGPT gave me a differential diagnosis. After several rounds of back and forth, the leading candidate was a faulty engine mount.

My mechanic called me that afternoon with a different diagnosis involving the axle. But because the noise was loudest with the car in park, I was dubious. He wondered if we were each hearing different noises. “Let me come first thing tomorrow morning,” I said, “and we can talk about this.”

As I sat with him in the car the next morning, I told him about my AI research. I was uncomfortable as a true amateur (I had no idea what an engine mount (or a sway bar link was until ChatGPT informed me) disagreeing with an expert. But we had a relationship, and I asked if he would replace the engine mount first. If that didn’t fix the noise, he would investigate the axle. Two days later (the mount had to be ordered), I was back on the road and the noise had disappeared.

This could be a guide to how AI will affect my practice. As a generalist, I accept that there are many specialist physicians who know more about a particular aspect of my patients’ illnesses than I do. I expect to need help from them and other parts of the medical team (nurses, pharmacists, social workers, counselors, therapists, etc.). AI could be another member of the team. Since AI can be accessed from both directions– by the patient and the provider– it could also be a bridge to improve patients’ engagement in managing their chronic medical conditions. ChatGPT is imperfect, but often provides reasonable answers to well-written lay medical questions. Providers have access to an AI-powered tool called OpenEvidence that is even more reliable than ChatGPT.

I’m curious about how AI could alter my conversations with patients. I sometimes use OpenEvidence in the room with a patient and let the patient know what I’m doing. I haven’t yet used it to try to change a patient’s mind – for example, to urge acceptance of a vaccine of which the patient is skeptical. But it would provide an authoritative, neutral voice in that discussion.

I don’t perceive AI to be a threat. Nor do I believe primary care doctors could be replaced by AI. Human beings need other human beings to care for and about them. I hope that AI can be successfully incorporated into the doctor-patient relationship to better inform and connect both parties.

A version of this column appeared in the Nov. 14th edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.

Wonder where I’ve been?

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No, it wasn’t THESE three IT folks who helped me. Mine were more effective, but less funny,

Maybe you haven’t, since I’m in the habit of going walkabout these days.

But for a suprising number of these last days, I’ve been completely unable to do anything with the blog — post, moderate, comment, or even READ it.

Just 504 and 505 error messages. I even got a 503 once.

I hoped it would go away for days. Sometimes these things do. Finally, I gave up and reached out to my host for help. I was on a chat with a tech person — actually three different IT folks — for more than three hours today. It took awhile, but they got it up and running. Huzzah!

I’m going to take a nap now. I’ll try to post something tonight.

What does Google think email is FOR?

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Do any of y’all get these stupid things? I’m sure you do, if you have gmail. (Or maybe you’ve turned this function off in the settings. But rather than figure out how to do that myself, I prefer to complain about it in a post.)

They don’t really get in my way of doing what I need to do, so I just ignore them when they come up. But each time, for a split second, I wonder what Google is asking me to worry about.

Here’s the situation in which the item you see above popped up this morning: I saw something in the NYT that I thought might interest a prof over at USC with whom I was conversing about the same subject a few days ago. He found it interesting, and almost immediately responded. I started to send him that emoji I wrote about recently, to acknowledge his response and to to vaguely communicate something like, “Yeah, thought you’d like that!”

Anyway, once I started the reply process to do that, I got the above orange warning. Why? I mean, I’d already written to the guy once, which indicates that yes, I am intentionally communicating with him. (Can’t remember whether I got the warning on the first message.)

And yet it still gives me an orange alert. That makes no sense.

Also, what does it mean by “outside your organization?” What organization? I’m a guy sitting here in his home office — which is so disordered that I promise the merest glance would assure you that there is nothing you would call “organization” in this vicinity.

Is it referrring to ADCO, for whom I do some writing and editing? I don’t think so. This was not on my entirely separate ADCO email address, which I keep running at the same time in a different browser. This was within my bradwarthen.com domain — that’s the ending of my address (although it’s really a Gmail account). Well, that’s hilarious! Aside from Bryan Caskey, who kindly watched over the blog while I was in Thailand a decade ago, and a couple of people who’ve helped me with technical stuff over the years, there is no one else on the planet who has ever had an email address ending in bradwarthen.com. To my knowledge, anyway. So, what — it’s going to give me a warning whenever I write to anyone else?

I remember getting something like this warning back when I worked at the paper. It seemed weird to me then, too, although I was working in a building with 500 or so people with addresses ending in thestate.com. I suppose there was someone in the building who used email to communicate only internally, but I can’t imagine who it would be. Obviously not news people. Like me, their job (at least, the reporters’ job) was to communicate with people out there. If they only wrote to their colleages in the building, they were not doing that job. Circulation people had to respond to readers. The finance people had vendors to deal with (I’m guessing). The ad account executives needed to be in touch with advertisers — although maybe they weren’t in this period (which could be a good alternative explanation for why the newspaper business collapsed).

I mean, come on! You need to talk to somebody 20 feet from you, walk over and talk. Or yell from your desk. Email is for instantaneous communication around the globe! And if it’s something confidential, hand it over on paper or a flash drive — or ask the Chief of Control if you can borrow the Cone of Silence for a few minutes.

I suppose there are large organizations in the world where such a warning might be appropriate. Say, the CIA. Or parts of Google, where thousands spend their days dealing with proprietary code. But they’d be few. How many businesses don’t need to communicate with customers?

Does Google just do this in keeping with the same CYA logic that causes sellers of packaged goods to include warnings such as: YO! THIS BOX CONTAINS NOTHING BUT RAT POISON! DON’T EAT IT! You know, to please their attorneys?

Maybe y’all can see the reason these distracting little alerts are necessary, or even slightly advisable, for gmail users in general. If so, please share the explanation…

The thing that didn’t happen Sunday night at USC

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‘The umbrella guy: Were these images a cause, or an effect, of the panic?

We were having a family birthday party for one of my kids Sunday night when I got a call from my brother in Greenville. He called to make sure that we knew we shouldn’t venture near the USC campus. There was apparently an “active shooter” situation, and the campus was locked down.

I saw that one person at our party seemed to be about to leave, so I asked my brother to hold on a moment, and I made an immediate announcement to the entire household about the news, suggesting that no one head in that direction. I was very much in a mode that was a sort of cross between “Now hear this!” and “General Quarters!”

But everyone already knew. My wife informed me that everyone had been talking about it at the table. I had missed it competely, which is a frequent occurrence with the state of my hearing.

Anyway, by that time the folks in charge on campus were already stepping down the alert, and within minutes they had given the “all clear.” Not because the “shooter” had been arrested or otherwise eliminated, but because he hadn’t existed.

There were some reported minor injuries, however — people who got hurt in the stampede of students trying to evacuate the area.

He was a creation of the remarkable new technology that we enjoy in the 21st century. No, not AI. You didn’t need that to produce this panic.

I’m talking about such quaint things as Al Gore’s Internet, smartphones with ever-improving cameras, social media, and the resulting ability of practically everyone on the planet to pass information to everyone else on the planet, whether it’s true or not.

Which is all stuff I have enjoyed greatly over the last couple of decades. But I’ve also pointed out how this combination of items is destroying our country, and other countries devoted to liberal democracy. But enough politics; back to the subject.

Of course, this causes people to scoff at the old newspaper guy wishing for the good ole days. Well, let me tell you about the good old days. Over the last day, I was thinking about how this would have unfolded, say, 25 years ago.

Basically, it would not have unfolded. It wouldn’t have happened. Of course, it didn’t happen, but something else did happen — a campus full of thousands of kids, not to mention their folks back home, were scared out of their wits. And some of them got hurt (but not seriously, apparently) in the rush to the exits.

Of course, I thought of this first from the perspective of a newspaperman. Back when such things as daily newspapers existed and thrived, news happened all through the 24 hours, but it only got published once. Back then, when the word of possible shootings went out, reporters would have rushed to the campus, the way they did Sunday night, and reported what they found. And for an hour or so, the whole news structure would be in high gear to meet the challenge. But then, about an hour later, everyone would know it was a load of nothing, and calm down. There might be a story about how everyone got excited and worried for a time, but there would at no time be a story delivered to actual readers crying out about havoc on the campus.

But I’m not fully imagining what would have happened. The thing is, there wouldn’t have even have been a story about the big scare. Why? Because there would have been no scare, for a number of reasons.

First, the images of a harmless-looking guy ambling along carrying an umbrella would not have existed. If you’re young — very young — it might be hard to imagine that. But you see, a mere quarter-century ago, people didn’t photograph everything they saw around them. I was one of the few people who might have done such a thing, because starting in my own college days, I got into 35mm photography in a big way. But I didn’t shoot a tenth of the images I now shoot every day, for the simple reason that film — and the chemicals I needed to develop it and make prints from it — cost money. It also cost a lot of time. Even if you were one of those civilians who dropped off their rolls at the drugstore, it still cost you some time. And unless you went to one of those one-hour places, you wouldn’t be seeing your prints for some days.

But let’s suppose that, being the camera geek I was, I did shoot such images, and somehow made the finished image appear instantly (remember that not even Polaroids were instantaneous, and the quality was awful). And suppose I also had the poor judgment to decide I wanted urgently to share this image, and my wild imaginings, with the world. How would I have done that — physically, technically? And how many people would I have reached? I assure you I had a much greater chance than most of you to get my picture into print, but I’d have to wait some hours before the presses rolled. And after they rolled, there’d be a further wait of hours (usually) before readers beheld it.

And by that time, we would have known for some hours that the pictures showed nothing that needed to be shared with anybody. They would be worthless, and of no interest.

There is value in having time to think, time to assess, time to recognize the truth before something is shouted to the world.

But we’ve lost that precious resource, and I don’t see any way of getting it back again. So in light of the existence of these new technologies, how on Earth are we going to stop driving each other stark, raving mad?

[Editor’s note: After I wrote the above, reporting on this incident has shifted more in the direction of a deliberate hoax, part of a pattern across the country, with less emphasis on innocent mistake. That significantly reduces the role that social media played, but it doesn’t eliminated it, because it doesn’t change the dynamics of the way current technology cause panic to metastasize, far ahead of the ability of reasonable investigation to catch up. (Although authorities did an excellent job of sorting it out as quickly as possible.) Without the technology, there might have been a panic on campus, but not across the country, as occurred in this case. This explanation raises other questions — if the cause of the panic was a couple of false phone calls, what role did the photos of the guy with the umbrella play? Was that just already-panicked students shooting pics of everything they saw and sending them out? I don’t know. In any case, they played a significant role in the widespread stress, based on what I was hearing from various folks following the incident.]

The ominous flattening of language

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Winston’s job was obliterating facts. Another character obliterated language.

On a previous post — the one about the “thumb-up” emoji — a reader gently mocked the apparent silliness of the topic. I chose not to be offended, but to enjoy it by riffing on his point.

After all, I sort of did write that because I was looking for a quick-and-easy thing to post about, to assuage my guilt about not posting more often. And, I told myself, not everything has to be as long and complicated as the post that preceded that “silly” one (1,736 words, yikes!).

But… ultimately, I don’t consider the subject trivial. To explain…

Years ago, when Umberto Eco (the Italian semiotician and author of The Name of the Rose) was still alive, I saw something he wrote (or perhaps he was just being quoted) in a magazine. He predicted that our species was moving back toward nonverbal (or perhaps you would say post-literate) modes of communication. And this was years before emojis, in the ’90s or maybe the ’80s.

Anyway, I think of his prediction frequently these days (as I’ve mentioned before in a related rant). My question about the thumb-up emoji arises in that context.

My concern is that I see our ability to communicate flattening, becoming one-dimensional. The English language (the only one in which I am sufficiently literate to be able to perceive subtle distinctions) is amazingly versatile, flexible and able to communicate an apparent a galaxy of things with a single word, depending upon its context.

But I’ve seen a marked tendency to reduce in recent years. Sixteen year ago, I wrote about the absurdity of having my wife ask me why I was not her “friend” on Facebook. But I didn’t consider my wife absurd for wanting to include me in something she was enjoying. My problem was Facebook’s reduction of human relationships to one word. On that medium, you were either a “friend” or you were not, (which makes sense only if you haven’t advanced past the kindergarten level of social interaction). Obviously, my wife was and is much more than that to me. And yet in the years since then Facebook, in its hyperbureaucratic, ones-and-zeroes-obsessed manner, has dutifully labelled her, my parents, my children, grandchildren, cousins, acquaintances, and people I didn’t even know but approved to be polite (and no, I don’t do that any more) have all become my “friends,” without any elaboration or explanation or qualification or enhancement — without any of the things that make life rich and full.

I am reminded of the Newspeak Dictionary from Orwell’s 1984. Each edition is smaller, thinner, containing fewer words. The idea is to reduce the number of concepts a human is capable of generating or communicating, so that ideas that are troublesome to Big Brother’s state simply don’t arise or spread. As the dialectic of Oceania proceeds, language gets flatter and flatter. A thing that is in some way very, very bad is “doubleplusungood,” rather than horrible, evil, shocking, abominable, mortifying, putrid, appalling, disgusting, or … well, you get the idea, comrade.

When I first read that as a kid, being a word guy, I found the idea of such a dictionary, steadily shrinking, more terrifying than what Winston found in Room 101. Although what he encountered there was pretty doubleplusungood as well.

Combined with the communication breakdowns to which I refer, this flattening of the language — Facebook calling everyone you know your “friend,” and the apps that tell us the many-sided “thumbs-up” simply means “like,” is ominous. Creepy. Threatening.

As these modes become common, even universal, we become less intelligent. And humanity sinks into the mire. It’s one of the reasons that “Idiocracy” arrived centuries earlier than the silly film predicted…

What does this mean to you?

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Speaking of modern forms of communication…

What does this symbol mean to you?

 

I ask because when I use it to respond to a text, my phone will tell me “You liked…” whatever I was responding to.

Is that how you would translate this nonverbal communication into words? That seems to me to reflect a very limited understanding of the symbol and its vast usefulness.

Sure, it can mean “like,” in certain circumstances. But if that’s what I need it for, I can just type “I like it!” easily enough. Nevertheless, I do use it for that quite frequently, and it works in the right context. I see others doing the same.

But to my point, it is far more valuable and essential for saying something that words can’t say — or can’t say without hurting feelings. To express it briefly in words, it’s something like one or more of the following:

  • “Check!”
  • “Got it!”
  • “Received!”
  • “10-4!”
  • “Roger!”

Or, at greater length:

  • “OK, you’ve sent it and I’ve seen it, and I have nothing to say about it, and certainly no value judgments to make regarding your important missive. So, with all due respect, please go away without asking further about it, so I can try desperately to dig my way out of this mountain of actual, important work I need to do…”

Employed that way, it is enormously useful.

I learned this almost immediately after joining James Smith’s gubernatorial campaign in 2018. From the first day, I was hit by a tsunami of texts that went exponentially beyond anything I had seen or imagined before. I don’t know quite how to fully convey the quantity I mean. I could easily have done nothing but read and answer texts all day long, and still not do full justice to the task. And I had a universe of other things to do, as a more or less one-man communications department in the last months of a statewide campaign.

It was immediately as horrible as email, but more immediately demanding, since most people know it’s crazy to expect a prompt reply to an email. When you got one of those back in the ’90s, you were excited. Not anymore.

Part of this was that for the most part, James and running mate Mandy Powers Norrell communicated only by text. Sure, there was the occasional phone call while they flitted daily across the state, but no emails — which sort of drove our campaign manager nuts. He’d never encountered anything like it, and his campaign experience was much greater than mine (which is to say, he’d served in a bunch of them, and I’d been in zero).

But our two principals texting all the time would have been tolerable had that been for all the other people that constantly peppered me with information and observations that seemed to them critically valuable at that moment. I’m talking about not only fellow campaign staffers, but friends and contributors and well-wishers from across the state and beyond.

Worse, it wasn’t just individuals. There was also that cruelest invention of the 21st century — the GROUP TEXT! The kind that just keeps coming at you, with multiple responses from various recipients, all day long. The emoji was magnificently effective with these. It said, with all due politeness, “Acknowledged.” But it gave no one anything to respond to, so no one noticed when I removed myself from the group.

Finding that mode of communication was, for me at that moment, as wonderful as finding a cure for the common cold. I’ve used it that way many times since. Not to be rude or dismissive — just to get on with what I need to do, without hurting feelings.

So what does it mean to you? Or perhaps I should say, in what way is it most useful to you?…

OK, I’ve got a beef with Mr. Peabody

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As we all know, the people who created “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show” back in 1959 were geniuses, but none of the writers and animators were quite as brilliant, of course, as one of their creations, Mr. Peabody. I refer of course to the anthropomorpic hound who is, as Wikipedia states:

…the smartest being in existence, having graduated from Harvard when he was 3 years old. (“Wagna cum laude“).

But I’ve got a little beef with him about his Wayback Machine, which enabled him and Sherman to travel back through history at will.

More accurately, my problem is with the folks who set up the website named for Mr. Peabody’s most famous invention.

Don’t get me wrong. Those folks are wonderful. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is one of the most amazing things the internet has given us. It’s almost up there with Google Maps, which could thoroughly absorb me every minute of the rest of my life, if I let it. (Since I am the most distractable being in the universe, I can no longer read a book without pausing to look up each geographical reference to see where it is in respect to other places I know, checking the latitude and longitude, zooming down to ground level with the satellite filter and shifting to Street View to travel up and down the avenue, clicking in closer on interesting buildings… It’s ridiculous.)

The Wayback Machine may not take us back to enjoy a tête-à-tête with Cleopatra, but it does something else pretty startling. It gives us information that no longer exists (at least, not as we mere intermediate users can tell).

But here’s the thing: It’s not perfect. I don’t know if this has to do with different universes creating static and interfering with each other or what (forgive me if I’m getting too technical for you), but… well, it’s not perfect, Mr. Peabody.

Say, if you go back looking for something you wrote on a website that no longer exists, because (for instance) you don’t want to have to research and write that again, you may go back and connect to a site on a certain date, a date when you know the content you need was there, and you get to the home page, and you click on the page you want… and the content isn’t there, or is only partially there.

Which is a bit of a letdown. This probably doesn’t matter much to you, but it’s a big deal to me, because I see the internet a bit differently, as a result of my own particular history of traumatic experiences. You know how veterans of war or horrific natural disasters have trouble shaking the experience, sometimes for the rest of their lives?

Well, my form of PTSD results from all those decades of putting out newspapers under severe time pressure and space limitations. And while you may rightly regard that as less serious than those other kinds of PTSD, it produces some of the same symptoms. Such as dreams. For instance, I frequently wake up exhausted from what seems like hours of trying to crank out the paper in spite of inexplicable technical problems.

Anyway, the Web would be a magnificent thing, to me, even if it did nothing but eliminate this one former problem: As a reporter in the olden days, you’d work yourself half to death getting the needed info and writing it, and then the next day, it’s being used to wrap fish. I don’t begrudge readers using it that way, if fish wrap is what they need. But the thing is, after you publish that first story, you will then have to write multiple followups, assuming the story is ongoing, and most big, breaking stories end up in that category.

And since what you wrote before is now inaccessible to the reader, every single time there is a new development, you have to waste half of the few inches of precious space you have giving the background of what happened before this latest development. It’s ENORMOUSLY wasteful.

With the Web, there’s zero need for that. Give the reader an HTML link, and you’re done.

That is, assuming the frickin’ link works.

So… to put it in different terms, I cannot for a second understand why kids would waste time posting on, say, Snapchat. Or post on Instagram in that way that it goes away as soon as (or before) you’ve had a chance to glance at it.

If I don’t want it to be there and handy after I write it, why would I write it in the first place? (Even if it is something silly like this post.)

It’s not that I expect the Web to be eternal. Or at least, not exactly. I realize it could all disappear instantly if Dr. Evil figured out how to set off EMP devices over every population center on the planet. Suddenly, we’d be back in the Stone Age (or back in times before Google Maps, which, if you look at things from a geological perspective, is practically the same thing, being no more than 15 millennia or so off).

So, speaking of the Stone Age, I’d like stuff to last at least as long as something one of my Neanderthal ancestors once etched on a rock. I mean, that’s not an easy medium to store in a library, but at least it’s something.

All I want is for the Wayback Machine to work perfectly. Is that really too much to ask, Mr. Peabody?

On Tubi and the return of the TV commercial

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The Washington Post had a mildly interesting piece today about Tubi, which reminded me of something else I wanted to muse upon.

The headline is “Tubi or not Tubi? The weirdest streaming service has the most devoted fans.”

You know Tubi. It’s that thing you run into sometimes when you want to stream a certain movie, and it’s not on Netflix, or Prime, or Britbox or any of the services you PAY for, but it is on Tubi — for free.

The Post story is about what a vast variety of material you can find on that service, from stuff so awful that it would make one of the robots on “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” blush, to gems that you would expect to pay for on Criterion — and loads of random stuff in-between.

And it’s free, it a very old-fashioned sense. As the story notes, “But Tubi is a streaming service that doesn’t feel like one. Owned by Fox, it’s free, so long as you can stomach a few ads (you know, like old TV).”

And that’s what I wanted to talk about.

Is the future of screen entertainment going to be the past — the way, way, past, going back before we first got VCRs so we could tape what we wanted to see, and skim past the commercials?

Later, moving into the current century, we thought we were really, truly free — with no ads at all. And without even recording anything on low-res magnetic tape, we were no longer slaves to the clock! Whatever we wanted to see was on whenever we wanted to see it, and in 4k! And no bloodsucking cable!

Except, of course, we had to pay new fees to a bewildering, growing array of ravenous streaming companies. And the worst part is, I for one have NO IDEA how much I spend on these services. Sure, I could look it up and calculate a figure, but I really don’t want to. How would that make me happy? And there’s so much good stuff, way better than broadcast days! You want me to get all depressed and have to drop AppleTV + just as they’re releasing a new season of “Slow Horses?” Of course not. I mean, a TV show starring Gary Oldman, with the theme song sung by Mick Jagger? What’s wrong with you?

But then an interesting thing happened a year or two back. Suddenly, the already huge selection on Prime got much, much bigger, with an amazing proportion of the new content being really top-drawer stuff.

There was just a small catch — most of this new stuff you’d just discovered came with… commercials. Commercials you couldn’t just fast-forward through (or at least, I don’t know how to).

And you know what? I don’t mind. At least, not much. Just keep giving me an expanding supply of high-quality material like this, and you won’t hear any complaints from me.

In fact… you remember when these 15-second ads were 60 seconds? Like on Captain Kangaroo? That was OK. That was our break time. Hit the loo, and come back with another bowl of Kellogg’s cereal. And when you’re back, there’s Tom Terrific!

I wouldn’t even complain about a full minute. But I want one thing — you’ve gotta bring back the Captain. Oh, and Mr. Green Jeans…

Nice playlist, YouTube!

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When I first listened to this, I was initially going to try to say something about how impressed I was that artificial intelligence had gotten so much better.

Screenshot

But then, I realized that such a preference-driven thing as this wasn’t really artificial (or any other kind of) “thinking” at all. It’s more of a case of you press button A multiple times, and the machine keeps showing you A — not even something as smart as “thinks like A,” but A itself. In some way or other, you could probably have built a machine that could do that a hundred years ago. Press these 12 buttons; get these 12 results. Duh…

It wasn’t even as “smart” as the thing I admired Pandora doing several years back — long before, say, ChatGPT and such. That’s when I noticed that, based on the tunes I had elected to hear, the algorithm was intuiting that I would also like this other tune, of which I had never heard. And it was right. I made some really happy discoveries through that process. I was impressed because Netflix had been presented at the time as being able to do that with movies and TV shows, and it failed miserably. I wasn’t sure whether that was because there are fewer variables with music, or because Pandora was just that much smarter than Netflix.

Anyway, this is nothing like that. I’ve chosen at some time or other to call up every clip on this list (except perhaps one), and YouTube just put them together and played them back for me.

But as dumb and obvious as that may be, I really enjoyed it. So I thought I’d share. Maybe you’ll dig it, or some of it, too. Here’s what it presented to me under the “My Mix” heading:

  1. “New Lace Sleeves,” Elvis Costello and the Attractions — What kind of music would you call this? I would have called it “jazz,” based on what that rhythm section is doing. But Wikipedia doesn’t say “jazz” once, which I guess shows yet again that I am a musical ignoramus. It puts both Elvis and the song under “New Wave,” which is hard to argue with. I says Elvis himself said it was inspired by Devo‘s cover of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and Stevie Wonder‘s “Superstition“. I can see the Devo, but not the Stevie. At least Wikipedia admits that Elvis’ wife plays jazz.
  2. “Tired of Being Alone,” Al Green — No mystery here. I listen to the Rev. Al quite a bit. As should everyone. And this one may be the best, although, to quote Ed Grimley, it’s difficult to say…
  3. “Elenore,” the Turtles — I love the story people tell about this one. The Turtles wanted to get all creative and produce a Sgt. Pepper or a Pet Sounds, but their label just wanted another “Happy Together.” So they decided to write the worst piece of crap they could think up, and that was “Elenore,” and the studio recorded it, and it was fantastic. Another big hit, because it’s simply an awesome pop song. Even the Turtles had to admit it. It’s even creative — I like the rhyming with the first syllable: “ELenore, gee I think you’re/SWELL and you really do me/WELL..” and so forth. Yes, the lyrics are moronic, but in a clever way, I always thought. I thought the dumb words were a way of saying that Elenore blows the guy’s mind to such an extent that he is rendered incoherent….
  4. “Use Ta Be My Girl,” the O’Jays — Not sure why this is on here. Not that I hate it, but I don’t remember having deliberately played it.
  5. “I’m an Old Cowhand,” Gene Autrey — I know why this one’s here. My mother was talking about enjoying the singing cowboy when she was a child, so I was showing her how to find some of his stuff on YouTube…
  6. “New Amsterdam,” Elvis Costello and the Attractions — Played this a lot before we went to Europe, especially since we’d be spending close to half the time in Amsterdam. Talk about fun, goofy lyrics… “New Amsterdam it’s become much too much/Till I have the possession of everything she touches/Till I step on the brakes to get out of her clutches/Till I speak double dutch to a real double duchess.” Maybe ol’ Declan is saying something super-deep about New York. I dunno. I just dig the wordplay. I listen to it the way I do “I Am the Walrus” — although this is better.
  7. “King Harvest,” The Band — I’ve mentioned my appreciation of this many times before, and this is a great time to listen to it — the most autumnal song by the most autumnal band ever. I first found this video of the guys playing it live in the studio years ago, and consider it a bit of a treasure.
  8. “Happy Together,” the Turtles — Hey, you can’t put “Elenore” near the beginning of a playlist and leave this one out altogether. As Nick Hornby said about making a mix tape, there are a lot of rules. And apparently YouTube’s algorithm follows them.
  9. “Sulky Girl,” Elvis Costello — I’ve mentioned how impressive I found this one before, so of course YouTube puts it in.
  10. “Delta Lady,” Leon Russell — This clip is another classic in the “live in the studio” genre. And of course, this was a time when musicians were fond of putting glitches and restarts on vinyl, to give listeners an illusion of being there. But this is special. When Leon starts, and stops everyone and starts again — twice — you are hearing the Master of Space and Time himself, an actual leading member of the Wrecking Crew, at work…
  11. “A Day in the Life,” The Beatles — No need for explanation here, is there?
  12. “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding,” Elvis and the Attractions — One of the great things about this is that it comes across as the quintessential Elvis Costello song, suiting his persona perfectly. And yet it’s not. Nick Lowe wrote it… but he could never bring it to life as well as Elvis. Nick sings it too gently. When Elvis does it, he says the title in a way that sounds like he’s ready to fight, and daring you to tell him what’s so funny about it…

So there you go. It’s been a rough week, folks. Enjoy…

You know who inspired “Delta Lady,” right? Rita Coolidge.

 

 

How on Earth is this ploy supposed to work?

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In “Office Space,” there’s a scene in which the three computer engineers, having sort of backed their way into a serious crime, are talking about laundering their ill-gotten money. But they don’t know how. They are reduced to looking up “money-laundering” in a dictionary. And Michael Bolton complains,

How is it that all these stupid, Neanderthal, Mafia guys can be so good at crime and smart guys like us can suck so badly at it?

I’ve often thought something like that, only I don’t think those guys are stupid. I think maybe I am. I couldn’t begin to follow a scam I once heard described on “The Sopranos.” I forget the deal. Maybe it was selling phone cards to Mexican migrants. Whatever it was, I could not see at all how anybody made money from it.

And I really, truly can’t figure out how something like the scam text above, which I got tonight, is supposed to work. It seems to me to be predicated on the recipient getting all worried, thinking:

OhmyGod! My transaction for $292.55 got rejected! Now I’m not going to get that thing I just tried to buy for $292.55!

Suppose someone does think that. What’s going to keep him from then thinking…

Wait. WHAT thing I bought for $292.55? I didn’t buy anything for $292.55!

Also:

And when did I ever do business of any kind with Wells Fargo? No, excuse me, with “W3lls Fargo?” And if I did, what kind of business can’t spell its own name?

And then:

Apparently, I’m supposed to reach out in a panic to the sender of the message. But they didn’t tell me how to do that. Where’s the link they want me to click, so they can steal my identity or whatever?

Maybe this deal is so brilliant that I can’t suss it out. Or maybe this is legit, and the sender was so anxious to help the recipient that he forgot how to spell “Wells,” forgot to provide the contact, and sent it to the wrong person.

But I don’t think so. I suspect there’s a bot out there that’s missing a few lines of code…

 

OK, I give up. How do I exile Yahoo from Chrome PERMANENTLY?

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… which is not what I wanted to KNOW!…

Yahoo search engine is to me what Mexicans are to a Trump supporter. I want to deport it, and make sure it NEVER sneaks back in.

But whenever I try to find out how to do that, all I can find is simple instructions telling me how to switch the Chrome default browser back to Google, and then remove Yahoo from the options.

What am I, an idiot? (And despite that opening, I won’t let you get abusive in comments.) I freaking know how to do that! I’ve done it maybe 15 times now in recent months. And yeah, it always works — at first. But within days, the usurper is back on Google’s throne, and in its own castle — Chrome! That’s like a random Mexican guy crossing the Rio and making himself POTUS (which would not be good, but of course, better than having Trump).

I keep searching, with different wording in the search field. They keep giving me the same instructions I’ve encountered and so many times before.

Do y’all have any good advice to share?

(Yes, I’ll get to your comments and post something new soon, but right now I’m ticked off about this.)

Let me know if you can read these two good Dionne pieces

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OK, I’m going to conduct an experiment here. Please help me out.

The last couple of weeks, E.J. Dionne has had two really excellent columns. There’s nothing unusual about that. But there’s something new — or something that I hadn’t previously noticed — about them. Here’s the first:

Did you see that at the end of the tweet — “my column free access?” I’m asking y’all to try to link and read the column, and let me know if you’re able to do so without being a subscriber. Then, leave your thoughts on the column.

I loved the piece, because E.J. is getting to the heart of my great appreciation of Joe Biden. Because I am both liberal and conservative myself, I see Joe as the only hope left to the country. We had plenty of such people to choose from in the decades after 1945. And we needed them. We need them more than ever now. But now there’s just Joe.

But E.J.’s piece also shames me a bit. I say the same things he’s saying here all the time, but I tend to present them as truth without the careful documentation and explanation. This is possibly because I grow weary of repeatedly explaining how I arrive at conclusions that have taken seven decades of thought and observation to reach. And people shrug it off, because they think it’s just the ranting of an alter cocker.

But I guess it’s also because I don’t get paid anymore to put in the time to dig up all the evidence supporting conclusions I reached long ago. So I don’t. Too much time spent doing what little I do to make a modest living. And doing it around those naps that are the residue of my stroke in 2000. I can do all the things I used to do, but I have less time in which to do them.

In any case, I’m very appreciative to E.J. for taking the time to explain it to his readers, especially since I know he’s busier than I am.

Now, the other column, which features the same “free access:”

First, again, please let me know if you can read it. Beyond that…

Another good piece. There are, of course, many things that, considered alone, tell us “all we need to know about him.” You could compile a lengthy list of things that, considered singly, should cause any voter to run the opposite way. But this should be, if not the top item, at least very close to it.

Anyway, I wanted to share these columns because they’re important, and I’m thinking E.J. gets these points across batter than I do.

Beyond that, though, I really want to know whether those links work for nonsubscribers.

This is one of the things that concerns me most about blogging these days. To me, almost everything worth discussing these days is from things I subscribe to. This was fine 10 or 15 years ago, before everybody got so serious about pay walls. Now, it’s a huge problem — I bring up something, and I want everyone to read it so we can have a discussion with everyone fully informed, but most people can’t open it. Because normal people don’t subscribe to four or five newspapers.

So when I get a chance to share, I seize it. But please let me know if it worked for you…

Submitting myself once again to that great time thief, Gmail

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No, I won’t read this or thousands of others. But it still takes time to glance over them and delete en masse…

I’m getting close to cleaning out my personal email once again. By “close,” I mean I succeeded in going through everything that comes in under the “Primary” tab on my Gmail IN box. Right now, I’m working on the 2,500 that still remained today under “Promotions” (which is much easier, since I delete almost everything — I’ve gotten it down under 2,000 in just a few minutes). I haven’t yet looked at the 238 I have under “Social” (doesn’t sound like much, but I have to look at quite a few of those individually).

But I’m taking a moment now to share with you something I read in The New York Times this morning. It’s a column from Ezra Klein, whose podcasts I enjoy so much. Here’s the special link that’s supposed to allow me to share it. I don’t know whether that means I can share it here, or just with one person. Please try it and let me know if it works.

The headline is “Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I’m Sorry I’m Leaving You.” Basically, Ezra has a much worse Gmail problem than I do, so he’s given up, and trying alternatives. Here’s part of his explanation as to why:

A few months ago, I euthanized that Gmail account. I have more than a million unread messages in my inbox. Most of what’s there is junk. But not all of it. I was missing too much that I needed to see. Search could not save me. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Google’s algorithms had begun failing me. What they thought was a priority and what I thought was a priority diverged. I set up an auto-responder telling anyone and everyone who emailed me that the address was dead….

On one level, that makes me feel so much better. “More than a million?” Now, I won’t feel such shame when I let mine get up around the 20,000 range, which I occasionally do. That is technically manageable. All I have to do is neglect work, reading, and of course blogging, for at least several days. Then I have a clean IN box, and everything starts piling up again as I resume my life.

I’m not ready to do what Ezra has done, however much I understand why he did it. He says he’s moved to an email provider called “Hey.” My eyes lit up at that, because he said “Hey assumes that only the people you want email from should be able to email you.” Sounds nice, but then he went on to describe numerous drawbacks to Hey.

But I applaud his courage in striking out in search of an alternative. And I think he should not beat up on himself this way:

I do not blame anyone but myself for this. This is not something the corporations did to me. This is something I did to myself….

Lighten up, Ezra. You’re a busy man. You have a life. Actual humans (not the algorithms that send you most of those emails) are depending on you to do things in Meat World.

And if this were 1980 or 1814 or 44 BC or any other time — when you were only expected to answer an occasional letter from an actual acquaintance — you’d have no cause to issue such a mea culpa.

I’m sure the robots will have a time machine ready for us soon. Just kick back and wait…

Apparently, top editors suspect the Matrix is coming

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It really struck me that a day or two back, the editors of two of our nation’s premiere newspapers led their reports with the news that Sam Altman — a guy I’d only heard of, before this week, because I’ve listened to some really deep, detailed podcasts about AI in recent months — had been hired by Microsoft after being fired by OpenAI.

If you haven’t spent years of your life agonizing — and I mean agonizing — over what to put on a front page and how to play it, day after day, this may not seem to mean much.

But it meant volumes to me. Excuse me for oversimplifying the definition of a lede story, but it basically means that, at least for a moment or a day, this guy being hired was more important to the world than anything going on in Israel or Gaza or Ukraine or anywhere else in the world. Nothing presidents, kings or dictators were doing anywhere mattered as much.

Now why would that be? This is something you might expect to see, and sometimes still do, in a paper that’s historically all about business, by which I mean The Wall Street Journal. But these are general-purpose newspapers, and the cream of the crop.

So what pumps this up so?

Well, the guy was canned from OpenAI because some people on the board were worried about what AI might do to the human race, and thought Sam wasn’t as worried about it as they were.

But that’s a tempest in a teacup unless you, the editor making the play decision, think this guy’s work situation really IS of some sort of monumental importance to our shared fates — either because you’re worried about the Matrix or Skynet or some such, or because you think AI is so awesome that you believe where Sam has a job, and who he’s working for, overrides everything else in the world.

You wouldn’t be seeing this if the guy was the head of McDonald’s or something — unless, maybe, in the WSJ. They still love them some business.

So… if I see the White Rabbit, should I follow it? Should I keep an eye out for Terminators?

A Lyric Just in Time

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I had a fun little exchange on Twitter with a friend a couple of weeks back, when he posted this quote:


Hey, it’s always fun when people start quoting Elvis Costello. For me, anyway.

So I listened to the song several times, and got to thinking about how that one line is more than just fun:

He stands to be insulted and he pays for the privilege

You know how I frequently make the point that it’s harder and harder to get the kind of people who ought to run for elective office to run anymore? Reading those books from the late 19th century lately has driven home the point so much more painfully. Why do we almost never see the likes of Teddy Roosevelt or James Garfield — or, to reach higher, Abraham Lincoln — step forward any more? Or for that matter, the extraordinary men who served under them, in key positions — John Hay, Elihu Root, Henry Cabot Lodge?

Well, I know why — because of 24/7 TV “news,” and more recently and intensely, social media. Things that climb all over you and mobs that can’t wait to cancel you for the most trivial things. Consequently, instead of people who set brilliant careers aside to give back to the country by sitting down with other serious people and working out the country’s real problems, you get people who don’t give a damn about any of that. They don’t want to work out problems with anybody. They just want to posture for their respective bases.

And to gain the “privilege” of doing this, they spend every moment between elections raising the money to pay for it.

I even felt a moment of gratitude today when I heard the House GOP had gone behind closed doors to nominate a new speaker. No strutting or posturing for the mob. And they came out with Scalise, which I think is better, or at least not as horrible, as the alternative. Which isn’t much to celebrate, of course.

Anyway, Elvis said it better than I have:

He stands to be insulted and he pays for the privilege…

I’ll close with the video:

Top Five Gripes About Apple

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Years ago, I had no liking for Apple Inc.

I didn’t hate it or anything. I just wasn’t interested. I was a PC guy, and had been since 1991, and therefore had little reason to interact with the opposition. (I had a Mac in the office that I had to use to access the newspaper’s photo archives, because the photo department worked in that universe, but I didn’t like using it at all.)

But then, in (I think) the spring of 2011, I replaced my Blackberry with an iPhone. And I loved it. About a year later, I got an iPad — and if anything, I loved it more.

I still don’t have much use for Macs. They’re very solidly made — PCs feel structurally chintzy by comparison — but some very key functions that I perform without conscious thought on a PC (and have for more than 30 years) don’t work the same way, which slows me down. Also, some of the keys are in a slightly different place, leading to lots of errors. And the errors are hard to quickly fix, because the backspace key is positioned slightly differently.

Never mind that. I love my iPhone and my iPad, and have since the start. What I truly hate is the way Apple keeps changing them, apparently in the grossly mistaken belief that it is improving them.

And sometimes you do get actual improvements — greater speed and storage capacity, a better camera, sharper resolution, etc.

But other times Apple goes out of its way to take away good things, things that make life easier. And I hate that.

Here are the five worst, in terms of lost function on these products. Now, I’ll acknowledge that some of these losses were not inflicted by Apple. Maybe — and with No. 4 on the list, that seems a strong possibility — somebody else did it. And if y’all holler out, “That’s not Apple’s fault, ya eejit! You need to make this or that adjustment in the settings!,” I will be grateful. Here they are:

  1. Taking away the Home button. This was definitely and purely Apple’s fault, and it is by far the greatest sin on my list. And I have not been able to find a good reason for it. Oh, I’ve read about the business of removing a (theoretical, since I’ve never run across it with my four iPhones) mechanical vulnerability. But I suspect it was really about aesthetics, and that really ticks me off. If I want a bigger screen, I’ll use my iPad — which, incidentally, has a home button. Anyway, this is why I use an SE2, and if I replace it, I’ll get an SE3.
  2. Taking away the headphone jack. OK, we just dropped way down in importance. While I consider removing the home button a major offense, this one’s more of a misdemeanor — if that. Usually, it’s OK. Except when the only earbuds I can find is the old kind, and the tiny adaptor has gone missing. Or I don’t have earbuds, and want to use the free ones provided by the airline. Or — and here’s the semi-biggie — I badly need to recharge, but I want to use my earbuds at the same time. That’s one’s kind of moot, now that all sound from my phone goes to my hearing aids via Bluetooth. But it was a problem, and I suppose still is for people with normal hearing. And no, I would not consider investing in Airpods. Without a cord, they’re too easy to lose.
  3. Taking away the “find on page” function. OK, this one has really been ticking me off, because this was a huge part of the way I used my iPhone and iPad. I call up, say, a Wikipedia page that’s a couple of thousand words long, and I use the search function to go straight to what I’m trying to find out. But now, for a couple of months, I’ve had to wait until I’m at my PC to do this. At this point, I would cry out in rage, except, well… NEVER MIND… I finally found out, by searching Google one more time, that they just moved that function from the “share” button to the three dots in the corner. I still think that after this change, they should have prevented my phone from working until I had read a clear notice telling me this, but I’m satisfied. Let’s move on…
  4. Stopping me from tweeting straight from various apps. OK, I strongly suspect the real culprit here is Elon Musk. But since this is only a problem on my Apple devices, it made the list. And when you read as many different publications as I do each day, and tweet frequently, it’s a pain. After writing the tweet on the publication’s app, I get a notice that it has failed to post, and have to go to the Twitter app, call up “drafts,” and tweet it from there. And this, to me, sounds like a Musk thing.
  5. Constantly changing the freaking hardware. Have you heard about this?

Of course it we had an Apple Store in this town (a gripe that didn’t quite fit on this list), I could have taken my phone to the Genius Bar first, and wouldn’t have written this post. Because before posting, I made one more effort to find a workaround for some of these things, and I found one for restoring the home button. Sort of. And without my rage over that one, I wouldn’t have started on this tirade.

But here’s the thing — why should I have to find tricky workarounds for things that worked beautifully, simply, obviously and intuitively?

OK, enough. Bottom line, Apple makes some pretty great products. In fact, I almost had to go with only four things instead of five, because I had trouble thinking of the fifth. And in truth, this is not really a Top Five Gripes. It’s more like Five Gripes. But the feature is called “Top Five Lists,” and you wouldn’t want me to mess with the Hornby rules, would you?

 

 

 

 

Living the fantasy…

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If only this creature could evolve a LOT more quickly…

No, this isn’t about something starring Stormy Daniels. (That would be the grand jury case I haven’t bothered to comment on this far…)

No, this fantasy is less lurid, but probably more important in the long run. Basically, this post was originally a comment I wrote in reaction to one of bud and Doug’s usual arguments over public vs. private.

Then I started riffing a bit, and it led to something that was really more involved than a comment should be, so I’m raising it to post level.

Here’s what I wrote, in response to this and previous comments:

Well, bud already cited ONE example of something that was done right. I’ll leave it to him to answer your question further. I’m not going to take a couple of years off from life to become someone capable of parsing road contracts and passing judgment on their efficacy.

It’s a silly argument, anyway, talking public vs. private on a function that will only EVER be undertaken by government. The private sector isn’t going to build highways — except as contractors working for the government. That’s the way it is. I’d be fascinated to hear your alternative plan for providing the infrastructure that makes it possible to have an economy in which private businesses can thrive WITHOUT these danged, pesky governments….

It raises some interesting dystopian scenarios. If we ever do get to a scenario in which it economically feasible for a private entity to provide general infrastructure, that private entity will essentially BE the government, at least within that area. You know, like in the Middle Ages, when the local lord of the manor was over everything. The society in which we live is the product of several centuries of Europeans striving to disengage from that sort of system, and try to build a system in which the things upon which we all depend are controlled, at least indirectly, by all citizens.

Not that we haven’t moved that way a number of times as technology has progressed. In the 19th century, it was the railroads. And eventually, government stepped in to control the freewheeling mastery of the environment that the railroad barons wielded. Over time, other technologies have asserted similar societal dominance. (Anyone ever see “The President’s Analyst,” in which — SPOILER ALERT — the power behind everything was the Phone Company?)

Today, we’re engaged in debates about technology that plays a bigger, wider role in our lives than railroads ever did — dominating and reshaping not only how we communicate, but how we think (ones and zeroes). And of course, all that’s in private hands.

So maybe I should take back my comment about it being dystopian fantasy. We’re dealing with the fantasy now…

I was teetering there on the cusp of busting out on a bunch of topics that are as habitual to me as public vs. private are to bud and Doug, things that are all affected profoundly by the things that have been coming out of Silicon Valley:

  • The Rabbit Hole.
  • The way technology has exponentially increased the problem of political polarization in our society. It had been a problem for decades, but in the years since the development of “social” media and broader technology that makes everyone on the planet more powerful (in terms of ability to instantly communicate with every other person on the planet, without editors or fact checkers or any other sort of mediation) than any newspaper publisher in history ever dreamed of being, humans have been trained to think like computers, in binary terms — ones and zeroes. Everything is black and white (words that newspapers now capitalize, by the way). There are no degrees of gray; there are no subtleties or nuances. There is no tolerance of those who disagree.
  • Of course, I include traditional media in this failure to cope with the problem. The new technology, having reshaped brains, distorts political events so that this madness is what the MSM have to cover, and tragically, they fall back on their old, comfortable love of conflict, covering politics like sports. And I don’t mean multilateral sports like golf or marathon running. I mean contests in which there are only two teams, and therefore only two ways of looking at anything. The deepest questions that get asked are: Who’s winning? Who’s losing? Which is profoundly tragic.
  • The inability of Western-style liberal democracies to deal with such polarizing forces, causing elements of the public to turn, over and over, to more oppressive, far less liberal, figures and imagined solutions. (The latest victim being Israel, trailing behind the U.S., of course.)
  • On a much deeper level than any of the above, the inability of Homo Sapiens to effectively cope with the change, since evolution takes millions of years longer than technological development.
  • That last point alone, of course, is one we could worry over for the rest of our lives, and still not get anywhere close to a helpful answer.

Seeing all of it as too much for a comment, I brought it here…

In “The President’s Analyst,” The Phone Company was Behind It All…