It’s a Sunday morning of a somewhat lost, yet restorative weekend. Simultaneous with spring daffodils starting to bloom, the cast from my recent gig, The Lehman Trilogy, made a suprise trip from Memphis to Chicago to visit for the weekend. Made we think and feel deeply. Made me laugh. It was glorious. Bonds don’t get any deeper. I needed that. That said, and still recovering, here’s some Sunday Morning Reading to share.
First up David Todd McCarty is searching for the answers on why we do the things we do in Frittering Away What’s Left of Eternity. Terrific piece with no frittering. Resonated with me when it was published earlier this week. After this weekend it resonates with stronger vibrations.
Jim Sciutto sees current global tensions as a 1939 Moment in his new book The Return of The Great Powers. Russia, China and the Next World War. I’m looking forward to reading it. You should too. In the meantime, David Smith talks about Sciutto’s book in ‘A 1939 Moment’: Jim Sciutto On Russia, China and the Threat of War.
Once a teacher always a teacher. I grew up in a family of teachers. NatahsMH in The Blind Leading the Blind recounts her experiences of teaching young ones what it’s like to experience being disabled for only an hour. I’m not talking comedy, but here’s the punch line: “And you experienced being disabled for one hour. Imagine a lifetime. Now go design the world a better, smarter place.”
It’s been 10 years? On the anniversary David Pierce wonders Who Killed Google Reader? I remember that death. The internet remains, but there’s a hole left by it.
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
At times it feels like we’re uncontrollably tumbling downhill in our attempts to stave off the end of our American Experiment. At every pause in the tumble or reach for an anchor to stop our descent, it seems like more and more ground gives way threatening to bury us all if we ever reach a bottom.
If we somehow survive what’s ahead of us and historians are able to do what historians have historically done, this article, Supreme Betrayal, by J. Michael Lutting and Laurence Tribe, will be an excellent chronicle of what just happened when the Supreme Court of the United States helped the often shaky, but always resilent foundation of our democracy slip its moorings like many of the other fabled institutions we used to rely on.
I strongly encourage you read the entire piece but this excerpt is both damning and telling:
What ought to have been, as a matter of the Constitution’s design and purpose, the climax of the struggle for the survival of America’s democracy and the rule of law instead turned out to be its nadir, delivered by a Court unwilling to perform its duty to interpret the Constitution as written.
It’s much too late in the game for this to have any impact in the current election. That decision has been rendered. Let’s hope it’s not to late for the historians who will need to understand what this moment means long after most of us are gone to consider this in their chronicles. If they’re allowed to.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
This cracks me up. The NFL is investigating whether or not there was tampering between its teams and potential free agents. Of course this tampering comes outside of the officially condoned “Legal Tampering Window” the NFL allows prior to free agents being able to sign with other teams.
The Oxford dictionary defines “tampering” this way:
1. Interfere with (something) in order to cause damage or make unauthorized alterations.
2. Exert a secret or corrupt influence upon (someone).
Sounds bad. I’m not sure prefacing it with the word “legal” softens it as much as some lawyers thought it would.
My reaction isn’t about the monkeyshines that happens when players and teams are trying to one up each other. That would be akin to being shocked if there was gambling going on in a casino or in NFL locker rooms. All’s fair in love and war and apparently in billion dollar businesses that can tamper with language in ways that only a lawyer can love.
Just who do they think they’re fooling?
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
Magicians have a hard job. Everyone is looking for the trick. Politicians have it easy. No one looks for the trick. Everyone already knows it. They’re not marks. They’re part of the act.
Donald Trump is a degenerate criminal, a rapist, an insurrectionist, a scumbag, a loser, a lousy liar, and more beyond redemption than most of the evil people in recorded history. And he’s the Republican nominee for President of the United States. If you’re voting for him I feel sorry for your grandkids’ future.
Judge Aileen Cannon is on the take.
Apple is screwing the pooch when it comes to PR and policy of late. Unusual.
Even if Putin died tomorrow he wins. We’ve already given him the win. Regardless of how the war in Ukraine or the 2024 US presidential election turn out, he’s overseen the decline of the West he and his predeccesors always wanted. So much damage from falling out of a first floor window.
The Main Stream Media will blame its continued demise on everyone and everything except themsleves.
Boeing has become synonymous with the Ford Pinto.
The vast majority of Internet issues (spam, bots, etc…) could be eliminated if the companies that control communication technoloy and social media apps would forego profit from that behavior. And that’s never going to happen.
Did the early voting thing today. As all the attention in the big race turns towards the fall, I encourage everyone in primary states still ahead to get out and vote. Down ballot races are just as, if not more, important. We live in a reasonably safe Blue state, so as far as the presidential primary it doesn’t mean much. Down ballot races on the other hand need just as much attention as the marquee races.
Besides, you might as well stay in practice. Otherwise it might be the last year that voting matters.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
Some Sunday Morning Reading as the time shifts and some are racing against the clock to turn back the hands of time in our political and social lives. Yes, some politics but also some history and some tech today.
Laughter may be the best medicine, but not when it can be used against us. Fintain O’Toole in the New York Review of Books takes a look at how cruel humor can be used as a weapon. Laugh Riot is an excellent if not troubling (also long) read.
(Side note: some folks get upset at links I offer here that are behind paywalls or require registration. I get it. Two thoughts: Writers deserve to get paid. Also, there are only a gazillion ways around circumventing these kinds of things on the Internet. Use your smarts.)
Speaking of baffling tech, Steven Aquino takes a look at How Smart Home Technology Made My Home More Accessible. Why do I say baffling? Steven’s post isn’t, but in the potential gold mine and boon for those with accessibility issues that is Smart Home Tech, no one has gotten this right yet. When it works it’s great. When it doesn’t it’s a mess.
And returning back to time, David Todd McCarty is searching for answers. I think we all are. Well worth your time to read Frittering Away What’s Left of Eternity.
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
Some things we suspect. Some things we know. Some things are just rotten.
Donald Trump is a degenerate criminal, a rapist, an insurrectionist, a scumbag, a loser, a lousy liar, and more beyond redemption than most of the evil people in recorded history. And he’s the Republican nominee for President of the United States. If you’re voting for him I feel sorry for your grandkids’ future.
The Republican Party doesn’t exist anymore. It hasn’t for awhile, but we’ve been pretending/hoping. The media should just start calling it for what it is. Dead and rotting. Quit dancing around and call them the Orange Party. If you’re a registered Republican, you own this rot and this death. If you’re proud of that I don’t know what to say. And if you’re in the media, I hope there’s a heaven to help your soul.
The Supreme Court is only supreme in its craven cowardice.
Donald Trump won’t need to “terminate the constitution” when he’s elected. The Supreme Court essentially did that with its recent ruling.
“Money talks and bullshit walks” used to be a truism. Both money and bullshit seem to be doing most of the talking these days.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
Part of the Information Super Highway traveled some rough road this morning. Meta experienced an outage in all of its services today that took down Facebook, Threads, Instagram, Messenger, and I imagine everything else in the Metaverse. A source told the Daily Mail that the company’s internal systems were also down. Boomshakalaka, another day on the Internet.
We’re somewhat accustomed to Internet outages. In much the same way we’re sadly becoming accustomed to extreme weather events. Some are caused by malicious hacks, some by incompetence, some by rodents chewing through cables. Internet connectivity has made so much of our current world more convenient and convenience always comes with a cost. It’s a cost that those who own the servers, the services, and the connections, sometimes don’t want to pay for, leaving users stranded at times. It’s apparently tough to value an ounce of prevention on the Internet.
We hear about these outages when big ones hit. That’s sensational news. But far too often there are “backend” issues that happen that we never hear about. Those are the ones that only affect “a small percentage of users” or companies that don’t command the public’s day in day out appetite for connectivity.
Intriguingly enough, those charged with communicating with users when problems do arise sometimes never hear about them either, or if they do are they are told not to talk about them. Again, nothing surprising.
The corporate PR pros may or may not issue lawyered up responses, but rarely do users get any nuts and bolts answers as to what went wrong. Vague apologies, promises to do better, free credit monitoring when user info is hacked, etc… We’ll’ hear the now-clichéd “small percentage of users” modifier trotted out whenever things get righted. It’s funny/not funny how we all just move on.
Earlier this morning I was chatting with some folks on Threads who were seeing issues with Apple’s Weather app not updating as designed on their Apple Watches. I casually replied that it was probably an issue with iCloud’s backend and how it was associated with the provider Apple uses to offer up weather info. These issues with Apple always seem to manifest as they are rolling out new operating system updates, so my guess is more than a guess. (Apple rolled out iOS updates today.)
I’ve been going round and round with Apple for almost two years now trying to solve what is apparent to me, after much effort and investigation, an iCloud related issue. It’s not just apparent to me, there are several other users experiencing the same issues I’m having, as well as other users with other iCloud related issues in similar but different veins.
When I talk to Apple Support (a regular occurrence) we’ve developed this coded, often unspoken, acknowledgment that the issues are iCloud related. But as I said in this post, Apple needs to allow its support personnel to acknowledge directly what the problems are. And in my case, and those of others, so far that continues to not happen.
(Side note for those who might read the links above or are familiar with the situation: I’ve discovered a workaround to sometimes get things back to normal thanks to Dwight Silverman. Signing out of Messages and then back in works about 8 times out of 10. Otherwise I just have to wait it out.)
The problem is bigger than a social media network going down, or a streaming service buffering out during the big game for lack of bandwidth. Those may be frustrating but in the grand scheme of things merely inconveniences. But the more connected our daily lives become to our banks, our medical institutions, our governments, etc… the more reliant we become on services being well run, well maintained, and frankly just available and working as advertised.
I think of it as I think of streets and roads. We’re reliant on them and need them well maintained. The big difference is we see the potholes and understand the inconvenience we’re about to experience when the construction barriers go up.
When Apple, Microsoft, or Google releases a software update, they are not just updating the bits and bytes on your device. Corresponding updates happen on the backend as well. When your favorite app updates the same thing occurs. If that app provides a service, whether it be a social network, streaming media, or checking your bank balance something’s cooking on the backend.
And that’s just the backend updates we’re at least peripherally aware of. Perhaps we need better signage on the Information Super Highway.
You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome
Still bouncing back and through some health issues, but it’s Sunday and we’re approaching the start of the baseball season. So here’s some Sunday Morning Reading to share.
David Todd McCarty wonders how we convince friends and family that they’re wrong and we’re right in today’s mixed up world in Those Closest To Us. My hunch is that’s becoming no longer possible.
The Internet is as mixed up and crazy as everything else in the world these days. Was it always? Joan Westenberg published a zine that you can download for free called I Miss The Internet: a zine. I’d grab a copy if I were you.
It didn’t take long for someone to create an AI worm. Makes one wonder where the good guys are who might use AI to beat this stuff back. Matt Burgess sounds the alarm in Here Come the AI Worms.
Sports analytics has been the latest craze for quite some time now. With the Major League Baseball season just around the corner, some are concerned that AI will eventually overwhelm the new wave of analysts and the games. The AP has this report from Jimmy Golen, Sports Analytics May Be Outnumbered When It Comes to Artificial Intelligence.
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
I sure hope we don’t have to find out if the American people, so filled with anxiety and anger, are as brave as the Russian people are attending Navalny’s funeral and the protests around it today. If and when push comes to shove in the country.
If we somehow survive what’s ahead of us and historians are able to do what historians have historically done, this article, 
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 