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Virtual or Physical Civil War?
In my timeline of doom and gloom, I put forward my theory that the recent divisions in societies around the world would push them into civil war. In particular, I (still) feel that Brexit will be the spark required to turn Europe against itself and I'm feeling even more confident that the United States will slip into civil war in the next decade.
A recent news article on BBC World has done nothing but solidify my feelings. Donald Trump’s appalling behaviour, too, is pulling the US deeper and deeper down that rabbit hole. It is not a good place to be. It is playing with fire. The question is whether the civil war being started now is going to stay virtual and played out online over Facebook and Twitter/Parler —as it is currently— or whether it will spill over into physical civil war?
All major wars are precluded by many skirmishes and localised battles that do nothing but solidify the divisions of all. Keeping an eye on what happens over the next couple of years, and particularly as this current pathetic administration in the US gives way to the new one, will give us an idea of where America wants to go.
Mark my words, this is not going in a peaceful direction.
18 November 2020 — French West Indies
Software is indeed, eating the world
When Marc Andreessen famously wrote that software is eating the world, it was seen as both a love letter to the tech industry and an alarm of the consequences of a fundamental shift in the way the world will work. I’m not writing about the latter part here, I’ll leave that to those better placed and more inclined. But the first part I find fascinating.
I’m looking to replace an ageing iMac from 2014 that neither has a fast processor or an integrated SSD, making my computing experience less than optimal compared to today’s offerings. The promise of a radically faster next iMac around the corner, and something that the release of Apple’s in-house designed M1 means that I’m unlikely to replace my computer until the iMac line is replaced by this new line. For the moment, only the low-end has been introduced by Apple. The fact that this low-end is promising to be faster than the current high-end is absolutely unprecedented.
But this is hardware, and whilst hardware has the possibility to enhance your computing experience —and to be fair, enable new computing experiences—, it is software that affords the complete reinvention.
My old iMac has been completely transformed by the installation of a new operating system. Big Sur, released last Thursday the 12th November 2020, has converted by computer into a completely new computing affair. I’m spending more time at the computer because I like it more. I’m spending more time at the computer because it is more conducive to work. And I'm spending more time at my computer because I can’t wait to see what the M1 will bring to this equation.
Without diminishing the thousands and thousands of man-hours, innovation and inventiveness that goes into developing an operating system, we’re talking about a (long) string of 1s and 0s. A string that changes everything about the way one interacts and uses the technology in front of us.
There is nothing like this in the world. It's akin to removing all the acquired knowledge, feelings, experiences and genetic information stored in your brain, re-writing it to be arguably better, and then re-injecting it to produce a completely new human.
I’ll let that sink in for a few moments.
15 November 2020 — French West Indies
Time for all Internet comments to be switched off?
This article from John Dario resonates with me when I read it this morning. It's not that comments are unwanted by or in itself. Internet assumptions in hand, we can understand that Internet comments are just too frequent, too prevalent and too divisive to be of any use to anyone wishing to cling on to what is left of their sanity.
I’ve never got into that situation for several reasons. Perhaps if comments were active, you’d tell me why; useless articles, unknown, loser etc.
The day to day cognitive workload for us in this interconnected world is big enough without having to deal with everyone else’s idiosyncrasies. I’ve not, and will not activate comments on this blog, and I will not make it easier for anyone to hurtfully spew garbage in the face of others.
The rage-economics of the social networks are showing their limits and fragility. It is only a matter of time before they will change their business models. To what, I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be even worse. But the fact that, according to a recent study, Facebook now only commands 51% of surveyed users feeling it is a net positive, speaks volumes to the direction we are heading.
Read, watch, slag off and whinge as much as you like. Just keep it to yourself and the yes-people around you. When you’ve gone through the process of distilling and formulating a cognitive and interesting point of view, then by all means, share it. On your blog.
4 November 2020 — French West Indies
Election Day USA
Never have I had any misgivings about the authenticity and verity of an election.
For more than forty years I have been nothing but a believer of the fact that the USA elections were nothing but fair and a true representation of the will of the people. That they were conducted with the utmost honesty. And whilst there were contentions and questions surrounding counts, it was done with dignity and a genuine will to serve the American people. Yes, even the famous hanging chads incident in Florida in 2000.
It’s 2020, and that has all come crashing down. All because of one single sociopath that knows no limits, has no self-control or decency, to get what “he” wants. Be damned with anyone else.
This will end badly for you, my friends in the USA. Either way this election will be seen as the starting point of America's second civil war. A war that will not take the form of the first, but a war nonetheless.
3 November 2020 — French West Indies
2020 Tropical Cyclone Season. Nearly over, but not quite.
A truly breathtaking season that thankfully resulted in few storms directly hitting us here in the Caribbean. The US, particularly Louisiana, didn’t have such fortune, with Laura, Marco, Sally and Delta all affecting the state. An overly busy season appeared as predicted, with (so far) 29 depressions, 28 named storms, 12 hurricanes (Category 1 and 2) and 4 major hurricanes (Categories 3+).
Each year the NOAA and other meteorological institutions around the world predict the season ahead using a scale called the ACE or Accumulated Cyclone Energy index. After studying reliable data from 1981 to 2010, a team in Colorado State University, and independently the NOAA, derived a scale to measure and help predict tropical cyclone intensities for each season. They arrived at an average of 12.1 storms with 6.4 hurricanes and 2.7 major hurricanes. This is enabled the development of the indicator, the ACE, and set a value of 106 for an average season.
The 2020 season is currently at 143 and it is not over yet.
Bear in mind that in 1954 Hurricane Alice formed on 30 December in the mid-Atlantic to the north-east of the Leeward Islands, traveling south-west directly impacting these islands with maximum winds reaching 90+ mph, around 150 kph.
Stay vigilant.
Image: [upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/1f4a7932cbee5dcb8c94b0df46fc7f48.png)
2 November 2020 — French West Indies
After the first real TW, comes the first real TS
Genuinely a worrying image to see when you live in the Caribbean. For the best sources to follow and to learn about how these predictions are done, the NHC NOAA website is key, but my preference is for Tropical Tidbits. His nightly (during current storms) presentations on his YouTube channel are second to none. Easy to understand, easy to get the key messages and removed from drama to prevent panic, something the world’s TV channels would do well to emulate.
22 July 2020 — French West Indies
The first (real) Tropical Wave of the season
As many of you will know, I live in the Caribbean. And apart from its idyllic setting sometimes, we do have 3 major potential natural disasters to cope with; Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Hurricanes.
The 1st of June debuts the Atlantic Hurricane Season, which lasts until the end of November. The early part of the season is relatively quiet for us in the Caribbean as most storm-potential depressions tend to form in the Gulf of Mexico, way past our islands. Their movement tends to be NE, threatening Cuba, and Florida mostly. That’s not a perfect explanation, but you get the idea.
Further on in the season the Cape Verde tropical waves begin to get more and more active. Caribbean Hurricanes are Cape Verde hurricanes, and take their name from the waves that come off the coast of Africa, head west and using the earth’s rotation spin up to become hurricanes.
Today is the 7th July, and we’re currently under a tropical wave that is producing a little thunder and rain. It’s a wake up call to all us here in the Caribbean that the season is now underway. Now is the time to start planning and preparing. Every Island has advice on what to do, how to do it. Take that advice. It’s free.
From a rainy and thundery Windward Islands.
7 July 2020 — French West Indies
These companies constantly prostitute the notion of the First Amendment
From Fast Company’s interview with Scott Galloway:
Fast Company: What do you think about Mark Zuckerberg’s relationship with Donald Trump?
Scott Galloway: Everyone kind of figured out that Mark Zuckerberg is the biggest oligarch in the history of mankind, and that he is leveraging his proximity to power in corrupt ways just to increase his wealth. And I think the Trump-Zuckerberg story is going to have a big impact on the way political speech happens on social networks.
These companies constantly prostitute the notion of the First Amendment. And whenever they say First Amendment, what they really mean is they want to pretend that they shouldn’t be the arbiters of truth, such that they can let their supernova business models run unfettered. This has nothing to do with the First Amendment. They are private companies; they are not obligated to the First Amendment. There is nothing in any of their backgrounds that shows any reverence or respect for free speech.
I’m still of the opinion that to work for Facebook is to put your morals “on hold”. Read the whole article to get a better picture.
5 July 2020 — French West Indies
My timeline of doom and gloom. Here’s hoping I’m wrong!
I wrote in one of my recent newsletters that I had started to form a bigger picture of the events that are happening around the world currently. I thought I’d have a crack at trying to articulate this feeling. It’s not very positive as I don’t feel the future is that positive in the short-to-medium term. Long-term, I think things will right themselves after a wave of unrest and a reset as we all collectively wake up. Then the cycle will start over again.
Here’s a timeline of the events that started me down this track. For the record, I know other events happened earlier than this timeline, which I why I say the events that started me down this.
Brexit: The collective undoing of a stable —although not by any means perfect— relationship with Europe is, in my mind, a short-sighted and ultimately destructive path for the UK. Both sides will lose out, but I think my native UK will come out worse. But to be honest, that doesn’t really matter, as the UK will find a way to be OK. What really worries me is how this plays into the next step on this timeline?
Political and social division: If anything, this is one of the core parts to creating the necessary climate to feed and grow Brexit. Europe is the big monster to blame for all ills, while in front of our faces political and social groups are profiting from the division in society. Take the US as an example of extremes. There seems to be no middle ground any more. It wasn’t like this before, and it doesn’t have to be this way, but society is walking blindly into the guet-apens.
Social media: I'll not blame anyone social media firm in particular because, in reality, they are all willing participants in a destabilising social experiment. They just haven’t admitted it yet. The cognitive dissonance for me and others is that these platforms do lots of good and being digital hence agnostic, they simultaneously do lots of harm. Does the good outweigh the harm? I don’t think so currently.
Covid-19: It couldn’t have come at a better time to anchor and entrench people in their bubbles. Not only did lockdown give many people a lot more time to go down their own rabbit holes even further, but the fact that the virus exists gave some the power to develop or extend existing conspiracies to an extent never seen before. We’ve seen burins of cell towers, potentially putting people’s lives at risk, large protests against mask-wearing and the whole situation was just manna for QAnon.
Civil war: I think the next logical step in this increasingly divided state of affairs is nothing short of civil war. After Brexit, I was convinced that Europe would be first to spill into civil war, and I’m not fully convinced yet it won’t. Legitimising nationalism (which is what essentially Brexit is) I felt, was to legitimise nationalism in Europe, ergo civil war in Europe. However, the recent instability in the US has got me thinking that there is a real risk of the US tipping into civil war before Europe. The US is on a collision course with itself like it has not been since 1861.
World war: If either Europe or the US bascule into civil war, it is only a matter of time for the other to do the same. We’re too intrinsically linked on a social level not to follow suit. We know that will only lead to world war, and we know this to be so, just look at the central purpose of the European Union:
The precursor to the European Union was established after World War II in the late 1940s in an effort to unite the countries of Europe and end the period of wars between neighboring countries.
This extract is from this article at ThoughtCo.
There is a ray of hope, however. The #BlackLivesMatter movement offers us a glimpse into a better future. One where we are conscient and empathic to one and other. According to some figures, 62% of the US population agrees with the movement, with 76% of those surveyed in a Monmouth University poll stating that racism and discrimination is a “big problem”.
I fear for the future, as I’m predisposed to do so, but I’m hopeful that I’m wrong. Thank you for reading. Please get in touch through Twitter @virek.
4 July 2020 — French West Indies
A few thoughts
I don’t know about you, but it has been a particularly difficult couple of months to think clearly about things.
First, the pandemic was “over there” and not a risk for us. We quickly found out that that was complete rubbish and were thrust into a strict lockdown with little to no preparation. The governments were clearly caught off guard despite repeated warnings for years, despite the early warning signs in January and despite a hot of countries that had earned experience offering their help that was, in what I can only describe as a biased denial. No, I’ll call it for what it is. Racism.
The West was collectively laughing at those folks over in China and Asia at the time. They soon had a rude awakening. Despite 400K deaths worldwide later —of which eastern countries have only limited casualties— there still seems to be a collective denial of reality.
Then on top of it all, in a violent land, with a violent police force, built from violent white supremacist origins, went and did exactly what the system was designed to do. Kill another black man in cold blood for no justifiable reason. It sparked ongoing worldwide protests and is having global consequences. Consequences that, this time, seem to be different.
Because of ubiquitous technology, the veil of lies, denial and gaslighting has been pulled down, revealing to the masses what was previously local and isolated, and therefore easily controlled.
The tide has turned, and you should learn (quickly) to ride with the wave, or you might suddenly find yourself stranded or drowned. Get onboard, be anti-racist, it’s not enough only to be all “equal rights ’n shit”. You have to actively participate in bringing this system down and help to build a new one, intelligently.
Start by learning about the history of others. If you’re into tech, read the plenty of books on technology and racism. If you’re into politics, countless works cater to that subject. Do it! Pretty please, with sugar on top - clean your fucking house.
8 June 2020 — French West Indies
Wish list for a new Magic Keyboard
Just to be precise, I’m talking about the separately sold Bluetooth Magic Keyboard that comes bundled with an iMac. It’s slight, light and very reliable as a keyboard, with the keys being almost perfect for long-form writing.
I use one regularly in my iPad Pro/Canopy setup. With added mouse/trackpad support, the experience is even better now. But the keyboard lacks two things that I think would be relatively trivial for Apple to add.
One change that just about everybody in the Mac-verse is requesting is the inverted-T configuration for the arrow keys. Even after several years of use, I frequently fumble around trying to hit the right key only finding myself having to look at the keyboard to accomplish the task. It’s not a big deal, and frankly, I’ve lived with it for many years now — especially since my MBP 13-inch has the same arrangement — but it is such a flow-breaker, that it feels like a punishment and not an encouragement to type.
The keyboard exists, as evidenced on the new 13” MBP released yesterday and on the previously released 16” MBP a short time back. It should be a simple re-tooling of the production line to incorporate the changes and ramp up production. To be fair, there may be a fair bit of inventory that needs to go before a full ramp-up is ordered, but that shouldn’t take long as this old design is included in all iMacs, and they’re selling quite well at the moment according to the latest financial results and subsequent investors call. Tim Cook made comments on the health of Mac sales due to increased WFH and that Apple is bullish on Mac sales going forward.
The second change, a backlight keyboard, is a modification that would be the icing on the cake. I don’t know if it’s feasible or if it would be too much of a battery drain or not. Having it would materially improve life with one of these keyboards in low light working conditions.
Current keyboards are charged via the lightning port and have really long battery life. I’m writing on my iPad with one at the moment, and I can’t even remember when I last charged it. I’d probably better check. The question then is, would a bigger battery be necessary to have acceptable battery life and backlighting.
I think I’d be prepared to accept that kind of trade-off towards slightly heavier to have backlighting. In doing so, it might require charging the keyboard more frequently as a result too. Again, I’m willing to accept that on the face of it. To be fair, I’m charging pretty much all the devices like the iPad nightly as it is. The other side of the argument is manifest in the way AirPods are just so much more enjoyable to use because you don’t have to think about charging nearly as much. But I’d argue that this is incomparable.
When you think about Apple’s products in their entirety, you tend to see that AirPods (and to some extent the Apple Pencil) have accessory devices that keep their charge topped up when stowed away. The AirPods have their case that can be charged separately and independently, and the Apple Pencil charges directly on the iPad. The beauty of that design being that those devices are always ready for use.
Keyboards and Mice are not in that category. They are standalone devices with no accessories to suck power from. And yes, while writing this, a thought popped into my mind about the now-infamous AirPower. A mouse may have been in development to be able to charge wirelessly overnight on the pad. I’m guessing a keyboard too. It’s not a power question, it’s more of a design and usefulness trade-off.
For now, I would just like to see those two ameliorations and dream of a future with fewer wires. Tomorrow I guess.
5 May 2020 — French West Indies
More on Studio Neat’s Canopy
I wrote about my love for the Studio Neat Canopy here. Literally, the only thing it lacks compared to the new iPad magic Keyboard is the different viewing angles. It’s virtually perfect for me.
One thing I omitted to mention is that when you have your iPad in portrait mode, there’s enough space on the side to sit an iPhone, giving you the ability to have an extremely portable two-screen setup. It’s not an extended desktop or screen-sharing, of course. However, if you use Continuity, as I do, copying and pasting between devices is simple and fast.
This ultra-portable and ultra-productive setup is my goto configuration for the time being.
27 April 2020 — French West Indies
GatesNotes : The first modern pandemic
A thoughtful and interesting must-read, worth all of the twenty or so minutes it’ll take you to read it in detail. Take your time and ingest. It’s packed with sensible and researched information.
Opening up
Most developed countries will be moving into the second phase of the epidemic in the next two months. In one sense, it is easy to describe this next phase. It is semi-normal. People can go out, but not as often, and not to crowded places. Picture restaurants that only seat people at every other table, and airplanes where every middle seat is empty. Schools are open, but you can’t fill a stadium with 70,000 people. People are working some and spending some of their earnings, but not as much as they were before the pandemic. In short, times are abnormal but not as abnormal as during the first phase.
24 April 2020 — French West Indies
The versatility of the iPad
I’ve been thinking about the new iPad Magic Keyboard (iPad MK) and have a couple of thoughts I’d like to share. I get it, I really do. I’m someone who instinctively wants the newest and best, as ADD tends to do. But this time, I just can’t quite see the use for me based on the setup I’m currently using. Oh, of course, I can clearly see why others would want it and find it the dog bollocks to use—more power to you.
There seems to be a couple of required compromises to get the best out of it. Compromises I don’t need to make with my favoured solution; a Magic Keyboard (MKB) and Canopy from Studio Neat. On the face of it, it does all the things that the iPad MK can, minus the different viewing angles. But I feel it goes much further, let me explain.
I can use the iPad in or out of a case, detach it easily. It features a full-sized keyboard, with Function keys, Multimedia keys and a real Esc key. It folds away neatly and is lighter than the iPad MK with the KB in it. If the KB dies, buy a new one and plop it in, 100$ tops.
As I said, it lacks different viewing angles, but it also requires what might be the real issue for some, the trackpad—solved by having a Magic Trackpad along for the ride for an, admittedly, extra 130$. That’s a total of 270$ (the Canopy is 40$), with each part easily replaceable, without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If you’re a mouse user, like me, it’s even cheaper than that. Oh, BTW, it’s lighter too, at only 393g as opposed to around 1/2 a kilo for the 11” version, if I’ve understood John Gruber’s article. What is also of note, is that transitioning from iPad to iMac requires zero readjustment. It’s the same KB, size of keys, feel, angle, etc.
One thing that is less than optimal is that it requires sliding three items in a bag instead of one, I guess increasing the risk of loss. But the MKB in the Canopy is so slim, just like the Mouse/Trackpad, that I don’t notice it. Often, I’m in a meeting and only need to take handwritten notes with the pencil, so the KB and Mouse stay in the bag until I need them. Getting them out when needed is little bother.
One last point that, for me, is important. And it is perhaps, the elephant in the room for the iPad MK. It doesn’t allow use in portrait mode. With the Canopy there’s no such restriction, even putting the iPad in “upside-down-portrait” to gain access to the USB-C connector.
Lastly, and not unimportantly for some, if you want to move to or from a different sized iPad, no problem with the Canopy + MKB. It still works.
And that’s the point. We all have differing needs and wants. The iPad is there for them all.
I do hope you don’t see this as crapping on the new kid on the block, as I think it is just about perfect for most people. To be fair, I probably wrote this to stop me from buying one 😜.
NoNaBloPoMo
My self-inflicted pressure to write a blog post per day for the month of November didn’t quite go as well as I’d hoped. It did, however, confirm something. And that’s fine.
As a writer and blogger I think we tend to put everyone in the same basket. A writer will write and therefore whatever style of writing is possible he or she is capable of writing. Bloggers blog and blogging is a form that everyone understands and adheres to.
Not so. I write, but I’m not a novelist and I don’t know how to write daily blog posts on my observations in the day. I tried and I can’t do either of them.
What I can write, is long reports, long articles explaining the historical context of a subject and informed analysis pieces that demand lots of research.
I think I’ll stick to what I know best. I’m just not ready or capable of opening up my life as a constant stream of blurb on the Internet.
10 December 2019 — French West Indies
Depends where you look
Although I haven’t been as active as I’d hoped, I’ve not been lazy. Quite the opposite in fact. I’ve written and published over 2000 words this week on my newsletter and written something like 7000 or so on a research report for a client.
Depends where you look.
19 November 2019 — French West Indies
Ouch, 4 days!
Dear oh dear! 4 days without an update despite me promising myself and anyone who read this, that I would update daily.
It’s actually quite a hard challenge for someone like me who is actually fairly private and doesn’t share too much of his life, even in the real world. But the idea was to provoke writing, and writing about anything. Perhaps even helping develop some creativity.
I’m still waiting for the creative juices to start flowing 😢
19 November 2019 — French West Indies
Clean Shoes
I love having clean, freshly polished shoes. It just shows the commitment and effort required to look after objects.
I just wish I had more time to give them the attention they deserve.
15 November 2019 — French West Indies
Social Sewage
I originally published this nearly a year ago. I still think it holds up and is relevant today, if not more so.
From The Rise of Populism Is Hurting Journalism : Monday Note
Just subscribe to some Facebook groups supporting various populist factions and you’ll be appalled by the mixture of fake news and putrid ideologies, in which the claim for a more equitable society is practically anecdotal. Facebook has become the dumpster of free expression with a significant casualty: facts.
The whole article is depressing reading but worth reading, particularly if you are trying to unravel and understand just what is happening at the moment. It has suddenly — it at least appears that way to me — become more complicated and difficult to understand just what, who, how and why. Just look at the train wreck that is Brexit, none of the existing rules apply when reporting, discussion and debating the subject.
The consequences are extremely frightening, but I’m trying to avoid attributing causation. We can’t tell for the moment if this media sidelining (to put it mildly) is a symptom or one of the causes.
I took a conscious decision a couple of years ago to wind down my binge reading through Twitter and read more long form, either in the guise of newspapers/magazines or online publications (like the referenced Monday Note), and I can tell you quite simply, a considered and delayed point of view is almost always better. Real-time news is just that — a live stream of information, mis-information, supposition, cack-handed analysis that eventually leads to a better understanding. But do we need to see the insides and risk wrongly informing people whom are predisposed to not make to the end (TL;DR) ?
14 November 2019 — French West Indies
An enjoyable experience without the BS
I like photos and photography in a casual way. I’d love ot be a better photographer but I’m not sure I have the energy or the time to put in the required work to get there.
For now I’m content to take a nice photo now and again, but more importantly, to marvel at the wonderful photos being shard online by very talented artists.
A natural fit, you would think, for me to get an Instagram account. I had one once, when they were independent, but closed it the same day of the Facebook take-over. I’m glad I did. But I missed scrolling through others’ photos, be them filtered to death or badly composed, there was something quite personable about them, and that’s what I enjoyed.
Instagram today, is just a cesspool of hatred, sneering, judgement and worst of all, ‘influencers’. Not to mention the crossing-the-creepy-line of advertising that doesn’t in any way, share or form bring value to the experience.
Recently, I’ve gone back to browsing some of the fantastic work being shared on photography platforms. My favourite for grazing is 500px. It’s better than the Instagram experience and it comes without all the BS. You should give it a try, you might find that you’re better off for it.
13 November 2019 — French West Indies