One of the things that blows my mind are social logins. Log in with Twitter! Log in with Facebook! That’s preying on ignorance and people too lazy to create a millionth password. And the sites that partner with Twitter/Facebook to offer it? That’s just plain being accomplice to corporate malfeasance.

Fuck you Internet. It used to be a beautiful place. I met my wife here. Now it’s like walking down the street and being followed by creepy corporate dudes, offered sex and viagra every 10 steps, while watching out for pickpockets at every corner. All just because you wanted a fucking milkshake.

I’ve been closing more accounts. Flickr is gone, Instagram is gone, Tumblr is gone. And I’ve been off of Twitter and Facebook for a while. Never had a YouTube account. Wish I could close Google. I can’t but I make sure to never surf logged into anything.

I’m getting so tired of fending off all the tracking and data collecting. I’m really fed up with all this so-called smartness. Meanwhile, so many things that stop working, the wifi, the laptop, iWatch unlocking, etc, etc. It’s unacceptable in 2018. Tech should be better.

Wait a minute. My Pixel 3 was just sitting there on my desk, shut down. Yesterday the battery was at 100%. Today it’s 84%. Apparently “shut down” doesn’t mean what it used to mean.

I’m so glad I got out of Twitter and, years before that, Facebook. It’s unfuriating that they are institutionally unable or unwilling to see the harm that they do.

I don’t hate Gutenberg but it doesn’t help me write more productively and I do dislike that tools appear or disappear depending on where you click. Too much friction. Just give me a blank square to write in. Hello Classic Editor plugin.

Greta Thunberg talked at #COP24 and said to the politicians in attendance so many things I’ve thought. Good for her. Whoever smiled at her because, oh look, she’s 15, is demeaning her message. Nobody smiled at Jewish children during WWII. Her words are no less important.

I moved my microblog to a different web host. Let’s see if this still works.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said today that their “oil is not dirty”. In other news, meat is vegan, glaciers are advancing, and science is a game played in Irish pubs.

The Tumblr for iOS mystery is getting more interesting each day that passes by without the app reappearing in the store. They made it sound like a bug, but sounds like policy. If Apple yanked it because of porn on Tumblr, it’s not coming back anytime soon.

I installed WordPress 5.0 and I’m posting this using the new (dreaded, from everything I’ve read?) Gutenberg editor. We shall see whether words will fall into place properly and whether the cross-posting to Mastodon and Micro.blog will still work.

I still marvel every time I’m driving around in my electric car that what powers it used to last only an hour or two if we were lucky after Christmas playing with our new battery-sucking toys.

I received the Pela phone cases this week. For packaging they came in a brown envelope, no wrapping, no plastic. The bio-plastic has a nice grippable texture without being sticky or a lint-magnet like silicone. They fit my phone snuggly without being too tight, which I appreciate. Very happy.

In Scotland they generated 98% of their electricity from wind turbines last month. Meanwhile, here in Canada our government bought a pipeline and is trying to bring more oil to market. How do you even keep a straight face?

And as I posted this, Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Universal Soldier song came up on shuffle. So perfect.

I’m glad the Bells of Peace are ringing everywhere. I’m against all wars if we can help it, but knowing that others went through it against their will and came out on top is important for the younger generations. We have to remember never to do this again.

My daughter found this Canadian company, Pela Case, that makes phone cases from plant-based plastics. They also ship in plastic free packaging. They’re more affordable than the Apple ones and the second one is half price right now so I ordered two. I’ll let you know how they feel when I get ’em.

The MacBook Air and the Mac mini are back on the list of machines we would recommend to family and friends. I can’t help but wonder what the updates Air means for the qualifier-less MacBook.

Forget the BP spill disaster. This one has been leaking oil into the Gulf for 14 fucking years and it keeps on leaking. We don’t deserve this planet.

Saw The Hate U Give tonight. I don’t remember the last time I cried so much at a movie. For the impossibility of the choices black people face and the unfairness of it all. Also, I hate the police and their fixation on not allowing people to walk down the street to say they disagree with something.

I still use TextMate as my go-to text editor. I like that it’s truly Mac-like with Mac shortcuts and behaviors (hello Command-E), but I’ve been wanting more from it like a nicer UI, better documentation integration and better code execution. Today I found CodeRunner and it’s pretty sweet, with a built-in debugger and a true Mac UX.

Tim Winton on a whale encounter:

Ordinary citizens want to believe there are some places too precious to surrender to corporate interests, unspoilt places that shouldn’t be industrialised. We need to know there’s a line we’ll draw and will not cross. Because a world given over entirely to the engine of industry becomes a world no longer fit for creatures, human or otherwise; it becomes a world without hope.

Wonderful words from Dr. Genevieve Guenther:
”To think of climate change as something that we are doing, instead of something we are being prevented from undoing, perpetuates the very ideology of the fossil-fuel economy we’re trying to transform.”

It’s kind of rude but at the same time I can’t help but nod my head reading this piece about climate change and the growingly irrelevant viewpoint of the older generation.

The latest report from the IPCC unequivocally says climate change is a matter of life and death. The lack of progress since the Paris Agreement is alarming and mind boggling. All major and minor news outlets reported it but here’s The Guardian and CBC.

This article from 2013 in The Atlantic comparing Scandinavian and American prisons is very interesting. The takeaway for me is that to have better prisons requires society to look at criminals as regular people.

Mazda finally decided to make cleaner cars and said, with a straight face, that by 2030, EVs will make up 5 percent of their lineup. 2030. 5%. Are they fucking insane?

Responding to my own post looking for an alternative to xScope the other day, I found QuickLens which does the crosshair feature and other goodies at a bargain 10 bucks. Looks good so far.