Fuel prices have been outrageously high in the Tucson area for the past two months. The oil companies say it’s because there’s been maintenance on the pipeline from California or Texas, I’m not sure which, and that the oil companies were also doing maintenance on the refineries during this time. Interestingly, fuel prices at stations just outside of the city limits were sometimes over a dollar cheaper a gallon.
I also find it quite interesting that all the fuel prices at all the gas stations in the area went up to these outrageously high prices at that same time.
That’s not supply and demand. That’s corporate greed.
Fuel prices have started slowly coming back down toward the national average, but they’re not coming down nearly as fast as they shot up earlier this spring.
Again, more corporate greed, plain and simple. We live in discouraging times.
Yesterday’s shooting in Nashville was awful. Some sources say there’s been over 100 mass shootings in the United States in 2023 and we haven’t even hit day 100 yet. Unfortunately it feels like the country is numb to this sort of thing. Children should never be afraid to go to school. Teachers should never have to worry about evacuating their classrooms during a mass shooting. School was always suppose to be safe space.
There are no safe spaces in the United States in 2023.
According to some reports, the shooter, who was also killed, was a trans individual. Some of the news outlets are not reporting this, others are trumpeting it quite loudly. Apparently the shooter had been a student at this private school back during their school days.
There are some opinions I have that I won’t share here on this blog. My opinion of the recent trend of conflating gay rights with trans rights is quite complicated. My opinion is probably best left unwritten in this space. But the fact that the shooter was trans will definitely affect the increasing political spotlight on the subject.
Six Colors and other Apple aficionados are releasing their 2022 “Report Cards” for where they see Apple as of 2022. These report cards are very interesting and I look forward to reading them everywhere. I don’t use the commentary to sway my opinion, nor reaffirm my opinion, but I do often agree with the assessments presented.
I am typing this blog entry on my M1 iPad Pro. I would like this device to be my main computing device. I want a Star Trek experience where I can take this device anywhere, work with it as a tablet or connected to the Magic Keyboard, or plug it into a keyboard and monitor setup, and be productive on this device. I don’t need it to run MacOS, because that would be continuing the same old paradigm. But I have to admit, I’m really confused as to what you want this device to do.
The M1 (and new M2) processor is the same exact processor in your Mac lineups. My M1 Mac Mini is absolutely amazing. It has been a workhorse since I purchased it in 2020 and easily handled my work at home needs without even getting warm, let alone breaking a sweat. The M1 (and now M2) processors are amazing and you should be commended on this advancement.
So why do you stifle your iPad Pro lineup so much by restricting this beautiful device to iPadOS?
Let’s face it, Stage Manager in iPadOS 16 is a mess. It’s not intuitive, it’s buggy, and it’s too restricted for power users and too complicated for normal users. When I fire up my iPad Pro I don’t want to see a bigger version of my iPhone, I want to Think Different.
The iPad Pro, in the focus of your company with billions and billions and billions of dollars in the bank, should have a completely different experience than both your iPhone and Mac line ups. The iPad Pro deserves to stand on its own and deserves to bring a new paradigm of desktop computing front and center.
For a few years now I’ve mentioned MercuryOS from time to time. A brilliant concept by people smarter than me, MercuryOS is designed for tablets exactly like the iPad Pro. The concept shows a new, intuitive interface for computing, powered by the likes of AI we see today with Siri. MercuryOS is gentle, elegant, and designed to bring users into a state of “flow”. Flow is good. Flow on an iPadPro would be a godsend.
Please, hire the people that built the concept of MercuryOS. I know you have the technology today to make these things happen. We all know that if any company in the world has the capital to pull this off, it’s Apple.
We have spent well over a decade waiting for the next step in computing. We have waited for well over a decade for the next giant leap in the user experience. We have the devices, we have the technology, and the cash to make it happen is there.
Please give us the next big thing.
(I am in no way associated or involved with the folks at MercuryOS. I am just a really big fan).
Tech journalist Mike Elgan sums up a bit of 2022 quite well in this article (unfortunately it may be behind a paywall, I received it as an email).
And that’s why “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” is exactly the movie we need right now. Yes, it’s a fun murder mystery. But the theme throughout is: Most of these young super-geniuses lionized by social media are actually just narcissist morons.
Some other gems from the article:
Elon Musk ran his mouth about Twitter so narcissistically that he was forced to buy it, wasting $44 billion and destroying the social network by personally making all the major decisions and, in doing so, driving away its most active users and best advertisers.
Kanye West ruined his own business empire by expressing his antipathy for Jewish people and his admiration for Adolph Hitler. But behind this garden variety antisemitism was a more familiar trait of total narcissism — West’s longstanding belief that he’s an unparalleled artistic and business visionary genius. And Jesus.
And, of course, Donald Trump continued to dominate the news with his own special mix of malignant narcissism and criminality, caught stealing top secret documents (most likely to show off as trophies at his golf club) and lying about winning an election he lost.
I won’t share the entirety of the article here, but if you’d like to see more, drop me an email.
I hear Twitter is having an outage. Thank God. I hope that platform dies an agonizing, painful, bankruptcy inducing death and the likes of Julia Hartley-Brewer, whoever the heck she is, goes away to the nearest rock as her new residence. Not cool at all.
Twitter is not a Town Square. It was never a Town Square. Don’t buy into the Silicon Valley hype of creating a virtual town square. It’s not. It has become a haven of horrible people getting way too much amplification of their hateful, inhuman voices.
Yesterday Donald Trump announced he was making a “major announcement” today. The accompanying graphic had him superimposed onto a superhero outfit. “The country needs a superhero”.
Many theorized he was going to run for Speaker of The House, others thought that he was announcing his running mate. I saw tweets of folks theorizing his next major step in his Presidential campaign for 2024 (it’s still way too early for this, folks). His fervent supporters were EXCITED. EXCITED, I tell ya.
The announcement came out this morning.
MAGA folks can buy an NFT of Trump in a superhero outfit for $99, just in time for the holidays. It’s not a real trading card, it’s a digital trading card.
This is beyond “Four Seasons Landscaping Day” lunacy. I’m not going to share the graphics involved with this idiocy but I’m blown away by how stupid this is. I’ve checked several sources to confirm this wasn’t some sort of parody, and then I went to his “Truth Social” social media account and confirmed that yes, indeed, this was the major announcement.
‘ Merica, f*ck yeah! These NFTs are going to look great emblazoned on the sides of MAGA homes.
The captain on the flight from Philadelphia to Denver was very pleasant. About 60 minutes before our arrival he announced, “Folks, if you haven’t flown into Denver before, you’ll notice turbulence can pop up at any time. This is due to the proximity to the Rocky Mountains. As long as you keep your seat belt on, you might feel uncomfortable but you’ll be safe. I’ve asked the flight attendants to prepare the cabin for landing early and for them to take their jump seats. Please be seated and make sure you’ve fastened your seat belt.”
So, of course a gentleman promptly gets up, opens the overhead bin, pulls down a whole bunch of stuff and apparently starts rearranging his bag. I took this photo just as he was opening the bin for the purpose of griping about this sort of thing on my blog. Two flight attendants asked him to have a seat but with his rearranging it looks him a few minutes.
Now, he could have been moving around a heart monitor and medication or something. Perhaps he had his wife stowed up that and she needed more Cheerios. Maybe he didn’t hear the announcement due to his AirPods. But of course I rolled my eyes and wondered allowed to my husband, “why is there always one that defies the seat belt light and announcement and insists on doing their own thing”.
After a few bumps that caused the open bin to bounce a couple of times, he swiftly put his bag up with his wife and had a seat.
I had my latest COVID-19 booster and yearly flu vaccination on Tuesday. I haven’t felt right since. In fact, I’ve felt awful. Better yet, I’ve felt the worst I’ve felt in several decades.
I am never getting two vaccine shots at the same time ever again.
We’ve scheduled our next COVID booster shot and we’re going to combine it with our annual flu shot because that’s what we do in 2022. I’m still not a fan of vaccines but I still get them because it’s probably for the better for me and it’s for the greater good. I tend to think of this little activity as not selfish.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
