Links

Sunday Morning Reading

Ok, so I lied last week when I said Sunday Morning Reading would be back this week. We’re still on hiatus because of travels and this weekend more fun ensued than we planned for. This time we’re in Memphis to hang out with The Lehman Trilogy gang and see two of them in a prodution of Hamlet.

To be honest, I could have cranked out a post, but we’re just having too much of a good time hanging together and celebrating being in each other’s company for me to set aside the time and brain space to do so.

Sunday Morning Reading will be back next week. No lie this time.

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. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Brothers On Stage

Challenges met. Memories to cherish.

When our team assembled for The Lehman Trilogy some time ago, the three actors, John Maness, Michael Gravois, and Kevar Maffitt and I never knew that expereince would help us build such a strong, ongoing bond. Well it did. 

Last night I had the great pleasure to watch two of the brothers in the Theatre Memphis production of Hamlet, featuring Kevar Maffitt as the Dane, and John Maness as Claudius. I did so sitting along side the third brother Michael Gravois. 

CleanShot 2025-09-20 at 10.56.59@2x.

Let’s just say this. Kevar climbed the mountain that is portraying Hamlet brilliantly, captured the play and the audience and took us for quite a ride. Kudos to Kevar and to John, who was also excellent as Claudius, for their excellent work in this oh, so difficult play and oh, so difficult challenge for actors. 

We sat towards the back of the house so tha we would not become distrations during the many direct address monologues in the show. That said, the director gave Kevar the freedom to move about the house in those soliloquies and he chose to come up the stadium seating aisle and deliver the end of the famous “to be or not to be” monologue directly to Michael and I. 

It was quite a moment among brothers. The bond continues.

Add Satire to the List of the Dead

The Grim Reaper is hiring

The list of the things killed by this soul-less adminstration and it’s bloodthirsty allies keeps growing.

AdobeStock 317104103.

In the wake of the Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel silencing, satire now joins Congress, The Rule of Law, Irony, Facts, The Constitution, Academic Institutions, Law firms, Religion, the Media, corporate titans, health care, women’s rights…the list just keeps growing.

At this rate the graveyards are filling up and the Grim Reaper will be the only one hiring soon enough.

Eventually they will run out of targets. You could argue that the way they are turning on each other over the Epstein files and a few other things they are fast approaching that point.

I just wish that pace of cannibalism would speed up.

The Cowards and Greedy Captains of Industry

If you can’t take a joke…

Once upon a time things like free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the press were considered hallmarks of what America stood for. That feels more and more like a fairy tale. The folks in control of the government keep ripping their claws into social and political fabric and turning America into some weird fascist and cultish state that worships a convicted felon and child rapist.

2021 11 08 smothers brothers alamy.

The latest outrageous move of the Trump administration is threatening ABC to take late night comedy host Jimmy Kimmel off of the air “indefinitely.” It’s a political move and a business move. It’s also a mob move.

Disney, the pseudo-family corporate parent of ABC, Disney made the move after one of the ABC affiliates, Nexstar Media said it was so offended by Kimmel’s comments about the recent shooting of Charlie Kirk that it would pre-empt the show on its stations.

Here’s the fun part. Nexstar is trying to expand its stable of channels and that requires FCC approval. You don’t need a crayon to draw your own conclusions because the thugs in charge are so transparent with their thuggery.

Day by day we’re watching what used to be called the Captains of Industry, academia, and the media drive their boats into what they presume is the safe harbor under Trump’s protection. That harbor is getting so crowded that no one is going to be able to sail out again. Forget the ship of state, the ships of commerce are running themselves aground. This will continue because once ground is given, the bully keeps taking. It’s a tale told too well.

This feels like a yet another power move and of course it requires power to pull off. But it’s actually the move of cowards who realize they are despised and have skin so thin that they can’t take a punch line from a so-so comic. It also requires what we once thought of strong business leaders to show their true colors as cowards. Captains of Cowardice fits more today than the former sobriquet of Captains of Industry.

Another president in another time, Lyndon Johnson, once said about the comedic and satiric criticism tossed at him by the Smothers Brothers.

“It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.”

Don’t get me wrong. LBJ was pissed. But he was man enough to rise above it, at least publicly. Those were tumultuous times then as well. These times are becoming not only tumultuous, but tortuous because of the daily drip of news like this.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

A Constitution Day Like No Other

Not easy to celebrate this year.

Today, September 17 in the U.S. is Constitution and Citizenship Day in the U.S. It marks the observance of the day that delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the document, revered for almost two and half centuries, and now, in my opinion, seriously in danger of being stripped of its meaning by those only adhering to its principles when its convenient and shredding them when it’s not.

CONSTITUTION_iStock 923052552_2500 1200x630.

Tumultuous times today, but there were also tumultuous in the run up to reaching the moment that saw the Constitution adopted. That’s well known and also conveniently forgotten. Until a piece of it needs cherry picking to beat a point home.

It was never a perfect document. It was never intended to be. That’s why there’s an amendment clause in Article V. But amendments to the document require enormous amounts of toil and compromise, are hard to come by, and frankly that process can’t work when you live in a world without principle.

I may not have agreed with some of the things left out of the original document or its later amendments, and perhaps I’m naive, but I do happen to believe that those who argued over what our governing document should be at the time at least had principles that they believed in as opposed to those today who only seem to believe in what’s best for themselves and not the entire body politic.

We talk all the time about the founders who built this thing. It’s a damn shame we’re consumed with talking about a real estate developer who is overseeing its destruction.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

OS 26 First Impressions

Early thoughts on OS 26 versions

Bubbles. My grandkids love bubbles. It’s a kid’s delight. Apparently bubbles also delight some Apple designers. My first impression of the look of iOS 26 on the iPhone was bubbles.

PXL 20250916 124836790.

I watched the OS 26 round of operating system betas over the summer as things evolved and have now installed the first release on all my devices. I’ve seen and heard the reactions so I was reasonably prepared for what would happen once the updates occurred. These are some first impressions after taking a look.

Liquid Glass

I’m not putting down bubbles. Bubbles are fun, whimsical, and joyful. But my overwhelming impression on the iPhone 16 Pro with iOS 26 installed was that the Liquid Glass design language, (that supposedly isn’t a design language,) felt very bubbly and child-like. To my eye I associate it more with bubbles than I do glass, liquid or not.

I also thinks Liquid Glass looks and feels better on the iPad Pro than it does on the iPhone. There’s more space for the chunkier, bubblier UI elements to float around. By and large things look cleaner on the iPad.

On the Mac, Apple didn’t go quite as far with Liquid Glass as they did with the iPhone and iPad regarding transparency and bubbly things, but there is still a more cartoonish feel to macOS 26 than the previous version. I think most of that is due to the rounded corners, rounded buttons and tab bars. I will say in this early going, I miss what I felt was a cleaner design in Sequoia on the Mac than what I see in this early going with Tahoe.

Bubbles are also messy things. Messier than glass in solid form certainly. Perhaps applying liquid properties to this glass like interface provides a license to keep things messier. That’s certainly true in some cases on the iPhone. For example, in the Phone app the reflective (or is it refractive) qualities around the buttons make it feel like light is leaking through a misapplied sticker than I think was the intent.

New Shareshot.

On both the iPad and the iPhone you’ll have to be careful what you choose for a wallpaper, because that same light leaking through means photos that have many colors or light contrasts within them appear more distracting than pleasing. (I like to use my own photography for wallpapers).

New Shareshot.

The issues of legibility have been discussed quite a bit over the summer, and I don’t think Apple has a complete solution for that yet when it comes to complex backgrounds, other than seemingly to force users to make simpler choices with wallpaper backgrounds. In early use, I think what we see on iPhone and iPad completely renders useless the statement of letting your content shine through. It might bleed through, but if it shines it does so in a distracting manner.

Here’s an example of one of my Home Screens that I think makes things look more bubbly than Liquid Glassy, especially in the upper two rows of folder icons.

New Shareshot.

Alan Dye, the VP of Human Interface Design, the Apple guy who spearheaded this UI change, is quoted as saying that Liquid Glass is “the foundation for new experiences in the future.” All well and good when you have a fuller view of the future as one assumes he would. But for those looking at their devices today, that means as much or as little as any tech promise or vision that have been dropped on us these last few years.

Liquid Design, in my very early looks is not to my taste. It may be to yours. the good news is that everything still appears to be functional. But to me, it’s a child-like appliqué on sophisticated devices that seem to beg for something more mature. I’m sure Liquid Glass will evolve, but until it does, I don’t think these bubbles will be popping soon.

Other Changes

I haven’t explored many of the new features of any of these new operating systems, only attempting to get things up and running. Most things appear to be running well.

A few changes I like include:

I prefer this iteration of the Photos app in iOS

I like the big multi-tasking changes for iPad and look forward to working with them more, although count me as one who will miss Slide Over. It was handy in my work in rehearsals.

I like the new Trash Can icon on the Mac. That’s the kind of whimsy I can support.

CleanShot 2025-09-16 at 07.18.24@2x.

I love the wrist flick gesture on the Apple Watch.

Things I’m not a fan of:

On the Mac I miss the Shortcuts item in the menu bar. Yes, you can add one, but instead of getting a straight drop down of clickable Shortcuts, it now opens a new window that requires not only the selection of the Shortcut you want to execute, but another separate action to run the Shortcut. Adding clicks isn’t much of a shortcut to me.  I see where Apple is going with this, trying to move things out of the Menu Bar into the Control Center. That’s going to require developers to make that move successful.

CleanShot 2025-09-16 at 10.04.19@2x.

I’m not a fan of some of Apple’s redesigned icons.

I tried out the Tinting feature for icons. I could see myself using this, if the feature didn’t tint widgets. What’s the point of a tinted Photos widget?

New Shareshot.

Some things I’m on the fence about:

I’ve previously used independent apps Bartender and Ice to control the large number of Menu Bar icons I like to have available. Both are currently in beta so I’m testing out Apple’s  feature to hide the Menu Bar until things change on those fronts. Simply put, that means the Menu Bar disappears until I hover over or click on it, revealing the icons. In using this feature when windows are at the top of the screen, Menu Commands sometimes disappear requiring some window rearrangement. This doesn’t happen consistently, so I’m guessing it’s a bug. I’m not sold on this in the early going but I’m giving it a try.

I’ve been using Raycast as an application and Shortcut launcher, along with some of its other features. I’m giving Apple’s new Spotlight features a try including the long overdue Clipboard Manager. This will require some muscle memory retraining, and it might mean leaving Raycast behind. It would be easier to do so if that Clipboard Manager copied across devices.

It’s early going. For me, as well as these new operating systems. I’ll discover more as I go along. I’m hoping the evolutionary pace for this software from Apple and most certainly developers will come close to matching mine in the days to come. I’m guessing it’s going to be sometime in 2026 before we can really evaluate what’s what in these OS 25 releases.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

We Have To Do Better. At What Exactly?

The time is out of joint

We’re burning up the words and phrases we use for comfort faster than out-of-control wildfires. We’re drowning meaning under flash floods of ravaging frequency. We’re dancing around sensitivities like so many angels on the head of a pin, ignoring that the pin has been smashed into smithereens by a sledge hammer. We keep looking for better angels of our nature to appear but they seem to have given up the ghost trying to reign things in. The time is out of joint.

PXL 20250913 090506555.

The meaningless phrase of the moment this morning that has gotten my goat is “we have to do better.”

What the hell does that even mean?

We pretend that everyone cares about the outrage of political violence. Not everyone does. There are those that care only enough to use it to their own advantage and want to see more of it. Yes, it’s about power. But it’s increasingly  become about the money, because you can make boatloads of it preaching hate and division. You know, free speech and all of that.

We have to do better.

There’s no “better” to do when it comes to language, because language only expresses what is felt inside. About self. About others. About domination. About fear. And when the “better” is about better profits… well, that’s the world we live in and at the moment it’s what’s making the world spin faster.

Step away from politics for a second.

When a sports team loses and coaches and players say “we have to do better” or “we have to play better” it means nothing. Of course they do. They lost.

When a business doesn’t meet its sales targets, they always say “we have to do better.” Unless of course they’re spinning losses into wins hoping no one pays attention.

Shift back to political world.

The spinning happens there as well, with a speed that can burn through the surface it’s spinning on. Yet, it’s a bit late to want to do better after the bullet has struck a target so broadly painted.

We can no longer expect appeals to better angels or doing better to work. It’s a naive call to a different past that in many respects never existed, even though on the surface it seemed to. We should no longer be afraid of phrases like civil war, because in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in one. People are being killed in their homes, at rallies, in schools, just about in any place. Sad fact of history, what we want to believe is random violence by extremists always happens before someone declares that a war is on. But hey, we’ve got a deranged lunatic of a leader who wants to meme one into being, while we spend so much time trying to figure out what we know is the why of it.

You can argue that the extremists aren’t the ones with the guns, but the ones with the big mouths and the AI bots at their command. No one is going to clamp down on the rhetoric any more than they are going to clamp down on guns, and it has already bubbled over into a toxic stew. How are you going to “do better” when all sides claim their way is the better way? I don’t have an answer for that question, because I’m afraid I actually know the answer and there’s nothing “better” about it.

The only thing we have to “do better” at is recognizing the horrors of the moment we’re in and facing it for the reality that it is. You and I certainly don’t want to see and hear what we’re seeing and hearing. But we’re too far down that road to not acknowledge we’ve arrived at a terrible place.

Hamlet says:

‘The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!’

I feel like we’re all caught in Hamlet’s dilemma. Wanting to fix it, but afraid to the point of cursing what will eventually need to be done.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

Sunday Morning Reading is on hiatus this week as we continue our travels, this time abroad.

Sunday Morning Reading will return next week. Possibly. Maybe. With luck.

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. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

EmptyWheel on Artificial Intelligence

Worth your time

I highlighted the excellent 4-part series What We Talk About When We Talk About AI by EmptyWheel in the most recent Sunday Morning Reading column. I’m linking to it again, because it is not only excellent in scope and content, but also depth and context that will be worth referring to as we continue to plunge, or be plunged, into a world increasingly confounded and defined by AI.

Peter herrmann 9_fk2tp kla unsplash.

As I said, it’s a four part series. Here are links to each piece:

A NORMAL PERSON’S EXPLAINER ON WHAT GENERATIVE AI IS AND DOES

THE OTHER HALF OF THE AI RELATIONSHIP

PROTEINS, FACTORIES, AND WICKED SOLUTIONS

LLMS ARE LEAD

Repeating for my own emphasis something I’m saying lately, the pendulum of opinion about AI is swinging widely of late. The more ubiquitous it becomes the more we seeing opinions shift. Sometimes away from using it, but also seeing some who have been negative about using AI, reevaluating it as well.

That all seems natural to me given where we are with this new technology. Essentially in its infancy. A well funded infancy perhaps, but still teething, and shitting the bed on occasion.

Bookmark this series or save it where you will. I have a feeling it will be essential context in the short and long terms of this era we’re in.

(Image from Peter Herrman on Unsplash.)

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. 

Things Apple Won’t Fix In The Next Round of OS 26 Updates

I’d bet money these issues persist after new OS releases

Apple is announcing new iPhones, Apple Watches and possibly other things today. They’ll also announce the release date for the operating systems for all of those new devices and previous generations already in use. All of the focus is going to be on everything new, improved, changed and Liquid Glassed.

55b31eb4ba867b00263c62f538280311 XL.

I’m sure I’ll write about some of that down the road. For today I’m writing about the things I’m thinking Apple won’t address in any of the new operating systems. These are lingering issues that in some cases have not been corrected over the life of multiple operating systems. As much as I get excited about a new software release I remain frustrated year after year when Apple steps forward while dragging its feet on correcting existing problems.

Believe me, I get that Apple has created such a large ecosystem that it is impossible to pay attention to every detail and correct every mistake. I get it, but I don’t sympathize with it. Introducing new operating systems pumped out on what seems like an impossible to meet annual cycle creates other issues that need to be addressed and it is apparently too easy to just let the older ones go unattended. And from what I’ve seen from developers I follow, there are going to be a host of new issues that are going to need to be resolved over the next year. Or longer. The longer you let an existing issue hang around without attention, the more the “control the whole widget” promises seem not quite in control.

Certainly it’s a question of priorities. How the priorities are set makes me question the priorities of those that set them.

Some of these issues I’ve highlighted before, others I have not. Here are a few that continue my questioning of Apple’s priorities. I’m sure there are some that others experience that fall into the same category of hoping Apple pays attention to them someday.

Syncing

I’ve seen a decrease in syncing issues with iCloud in general. That’s a good thing. But Apple still insists on syncing Photos on its own schedule. Whether it’s battery life optimization or system optimization the delay is never optimized for the user experience.

Shared Reminder Notifications

I’ve written about this before. The fact that this one hasn’t been corrected since Shared Reminders became a thing undercuts all of the very good work Apple has done with the Reminders app in general.

Bluetooth Weirdness

I don’t know how else to describe this other than it’s just weird. There are times when Bluetooth connectivity works as designed with my AirPods and other peripherals. There are times when things just go bonkers especially with AirPods. Things will work as designed for days on end, then they won’t. AirPods switch between devices as designed, but then stop doing so. Adaptive Listening will work well sometimes and sometimes not. Connectivity with my car works well and then it doesn’t. My car isn’t smart by any stretch of the imagination and gets no software updates so it makes sense to me that it’s a Bluetooth issue on the iPhone. Note that it happens at random times unrelated to iOS updates or those mysterious AirPod firmware updates. The Magic Trackpad works 98% of the time. Then not. It’s weird.

Shortcuts

It’s become either a legend or a joke that every time Apple releases a new update (full release or point release) something goes wrong with Shortcuts. Either way it’s a problem for “the future of automation.” I particularly love it when a Shortcut just hangs with no indication that there’s a problem after working well for days on end. This inconsistent problem is consistent.

The App Store

Apple’s biggest retail outlet is the slowest loading and buggiest piece of software it has ever designed. It’s also designed abysmally.

Focus Modes

I use very few Focus Modes. I do not share them between devices. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t. I’ve never set a Sleep Focus on my iMac. Yet one mysteriously appears at random during the day about twice a month. The Focus I’ve set for listening to Podcasts inconsistently fails to kick in.

Mail Rules

I think Apple has just given up on Mail Rules because the ones I’ve built just don’t work anymore.

Apple News

I enjoy that on my Mac I can choose to open an article in Safari or that I can open a webpage in Apple News. I don’t understand why that can’t happen on the iPhone.

Notification Summaries

I long ago turned Notification Summaries off because they were just confusing and caused more work than just dealing with the Notification. I recently turned them back on to check and see if there had been any improvement. There has not.

As I said, I don’t anticipate Apple fixing any of the above with all of the new ’26 releases. I’ve learned to work around them the same way I work around the passenger side backdoor on my car won’t open from the inside and I have to open it from the outside whenever I’ve got a back seat passenger. It’s a walk around workaround. It’s not ideal. And each time I have to do it I’m reminded just how imperfect things are and can be. I’m sure it will diminish the value of the car when I do decide to trade it in, but it’s already reduced the value of it in my mind.

I feel the same way when Apple doesn’t address longstanding issues that I and others have brought to their attention. Here’s hoping Apple addresses some of these issues. Here’s hunching they won’t.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.