Ponderings and Musings

The world keeps turning.

I’ve been working my way through Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations”, as translated and annotated by Robin Waterfield for the past several months. This activity has been an effort for me to find a stronger center during this second half of my life. I have received the daily emails from The Daily Stoic for a few years. When we lived in Chicago I studied the “Enchiridion” by Epictetus. Reading and thinking around these teachings have helped me find, grow, and solidify my moral foundation. Never stop trying to better yourself.

I never studied philosophy when I was in college; my two social sciences were sociology and psychology. Sociology was mildly interesting but I didn’t get into psychology as much as I thought I would. In some ways I wish we would have explored these topics in high school as I feel like these studies would have motivated me to be a better person earlier on. Since I was in my late 30s when I went to college the second time around, I already had a good idea of who I was and what I believed in. These studies just helped me find a deeper understanding of the subjects.

I should have studied philosophy. One of the things I’m always asking is “why”. I want to know why things happen, not just that they happened. This drives my husband a little crazy, because he’ll be telling me something about politics or that an acquaintance has done this or that and I’ll usually ask “why”? 

I always want to know the why.

Non satis scire, which is Latin for “to know is not enough”.

Another bonus of reading is that it’s distracting me from the news and the social media conjecture around the news. Whether it’s Bluesky or Mastodon or Threads, there’s a lot of gnashing going on around the U.S. government, and rightfully so.

I don’t have the mental capacity to deal with any of that right now. I can’t help but think about how grounded my father was and it seemed like very little fazed him. I very much admired that about my dad and it’s a goal I still have on my personal growth list. 

One small step at a time.

If there was ever a video that articulated my feelings about LLM, or Large Language Models commonly known as “A.I.”, it’s this video by Bridget Carey at CNET.

Apple Intelligence, and all its brethren like ChatGPT, is basically a very smart Magic 8 Ball when it comes to giving you the answers you’re looking for. It’s all a probability game. The GPTs are very good at determining the next word that comes after the current word, and hopefully the context will be correct.

Apple Intelligence, and all the tools like it, uses information from smart people to make people too lazy to think look like they actually took time to think.

I know I’m a middle aged man that sounds like he’s yelling at folks to get off his lawn, but there’s a certain beauty in being able to think for yourself.

This morning one of my HomePods announced, “Sure, I’ll play some music selected just for you” and started to play “Everything She Wants” by Wham!

No one had said anything and I was just sitting at my desk doing my morning reading. I wasn’t even using a computer or my phone. I was just sitting there reading a book. I have no idea why Siri decided I needed a bit of George Michael at that moment, but I promptly unplugged that HomePod to stop the music. I put in the Goodwill bin.

Whatever Apple has done with improving Siri with Apple Intelligence is a mystery. I prefer to step away from the mystery and just think for myself.

We were sitting in the living room. My sister and I were both fueled by crazy amounts of sugar dumped on top of our “Super Sugar Smacks”. The Zenith color TV, maybe a 17-inch model, was perched atop a console television that had given up the ghost. We were watching ElectraWoman and Dyna Girl.

“Why do you bang your fingers together like that?”

My sister was referring to a stress relief habit I have. I curl my fingers inward and then bang the parts of my four fingers between my top two knuckles together. After doing it a couple of times my fingers start to feel flat.

“I don’t know, I just do.”

This was often the explanation I had for anything. I didn’t realize it was unusual, but it wouldn’t be much further into my life that I would realize that most found me weird.

I added, “try it”.

My sister did and she never found the sensation of her fingers feeling flat.

I still do this. It’s still a stress relief for me. It’s not the only thing I do. Like this habit I also snap my fingers when I walk when I’m running out of processing power. I’m also a 56 year old man that carries a fidget spinner.

I guess I’m still weird.

Every once in a while Earl will notice I’m typing out patterns with my right hand on a table surface.

He’ll ask, “what are you calculating?”

I’m actually distracting myself by typing out items on a 1970s cash register (NCR 255) I used at Hills Department Store, when I worked there back when I was in my early 20s.

No idea why that particular muscle memory lives on well over 30 years later. It must be part of my being weird.

I’m good with that.

The super moon was gorgeous this morning. I’m happy that I was awake before moonset and sunrise. This was a great moment to start the day.

Here’s one of the best television show theme songs in the history of the medium. From the late 1970s, here’s all the versions of “Different Worlds” by Maureen McGovern, the theme song for “Angie”.

Back when theme songs could be 90 seconds long without the suits flipping out.

I was 19 years old (just shy of age 20) when I started working for Digital Equipment Corporation, today commonly known as DEC. At the time it was the second largest computer company in the world (IBM was the leader). It’s a job I fell into through a brief Manpower temp contract. I was new to the Boston area and in many respects of my life I had no idea what I was doing. I was hired because of how quickly I could navigate computer systems, fix issues, and do both technical writing and coding. I had completed the week long Manpower “Digital basics” program before lunch that first Monday. 

Every once in a while I’ll dream about working at Digital again. The dreams usually take place in the present day but with many aspects of 1988 hanging around; things like using the technology from that era to solve problems for today. As with most of my dreams, the technology is never quite “right” and then the frustration aspect of the dream starts. I suppose this is much like college graduates dreaming years later that they’re late for psychology class or something.

This dreamed kicked in some pre-sunrise ponderings about the kindness of the people I worked with, and how these folks, much older than me, did many things to make sure that as a very young adult figuring out life, I was taken care of. There were times I didn’t have enough money to buy lunch, and Dawn would loan me $5 so I could buy a salad. Or when I was waiting for a dentist appointment because one of my wisdom teeth was going nuts, and Anne booked me with her dentist to take care of it right away. Or when the team’s HR representative, Cheryl, figured out we lived in the same apartment building and because I was a neighbor, she let me take her car out at lunch time to run errands when my car was not running. And then there was Donna, who was my best friend at work. She once heard me making distressing noises on a phone call when a man I was dating at the time was yelling at me. He was listing my personality faults and telling me why I was a horrible gay man, an outcast, etc. As I started to explain and apologize for being who I am, Donna came over, took the phone away from me mid sentence, hung up the phone and said to me, “Don’t ever talk to him again.”

I didn’t. 

I learned a lot about the kindness of people during my days at Digital. I like to think that somewhere there is a 19 year old just getting their start in their professional life, with little sense of where they’re going, but surrounded with people pushing them and guiding them.

Sometimes the brain fires off a dream that kicks off a pondering moment. And this dream, though it was lending itself to frustration, kicked off some good memories and made me realize, there are good people in the world and I need to continue being one of them.

Sometimes we all need a little nudge.

From “The Beautiful Mess” by John Pavlovitz.

“You shouldn’t let politics get in the way of your relationships.”

You’ve been hearing that for the past few months and seeing the sentiment pop up on social media in the wake of the election: the idea that family members and friends are too important to lose over a political position or a ballot choice.

I just wanted to offer a slightly dissenting opinion: bullshit.

That made philosophical sense in the past, prior to 2016, when we had parties and candidates who genuinely desired the common good, when we were just debating methodology or financial approach to problems that we all agreed were problems. It made sense when we imagined that our fathers, cousins, neighbors, and lifelong friends cared about diversity and justice and personal freedoms and helping people as much as we did.

We are way past that, dear friends.

Throughout this campaign, Donald Trump and his surrogates offered an openly nihilistic, misogynistic, hate-poisoned vision of an intentionally-divided nation without empathy for the poor or the sick; a naked declaration of white supremacy and intolerant nationalism; a movement completely devoid of policy and erected solely on those it would exclude and punish and banish.

And that is what so many of the people we once shared this life with have chosen, many for the third time now. That doesn’t just point to political fissure or ideological misalignment, but a complete moral incompatibility.

I’ve made a change to my approach around social media. I know, I go on about social media more than I should. But hear me out:

1. I’m avoiding algorithmically based timelines as much as possible. Obviously I’m avoiding Twitter, as it’s owned by Sissy Space X and basically just contains the dregs of the planet and the journalists that support them. But this also means leaning away from Threads, Facebook, and Instagram. Facebook continues to be the hardest to ignore, because too many friends and family use that as their only means of communication.
2. I’m giving Bluesky another whirl, and you can find my profile here. Since the online folks I have followed for years have scattered, a Bluesky profile let’s me keep in touch with some of them.
3. I’m still on Mastodon and it’s still my preferred social media platform. You can find me here.
4. My YouTube account will continue to grow, as I am enjoying the creative outlet of video making. I have confined my consumption of YouTube to my subscriptions list courtesy of a bunch of browser extensions and the like that hide the cruft along the sides of the pages.

In addition, I continue to approach my technology with a “pick your battles” approach. This involves a mix of Apple and Linux in my computing platforms of choice. I’m keeping a VERY close eye on Apple these days; Tim Cook’s exuberance the day after the elections was very concerning for me. Apple has pledged to keep user data private. Let’s see if they live up to that.

I’m writing further ideas down around cost savings and my technological habits. I’m letting them sit on a list of pondering notes for a few days before I take action.

It’s good to take a breath before taking action.

My husband took this photo last night.