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I Hope I Don’t Live To Regret This

CAUTION: Geek stuff ahead.

Every year, like clockwork a new macOS appears at WWDC. And every year I swear I’m not going to install it until the final version is released to the public. At that point it’s generally assumed that all the big bugs have been worked out—although this isn’t the Apple of fifteen years ago and there are always seem to be glitches now.

Based on everything I’ve read online since last week, the latest iteration macOS, aka Golden Gate—even Developer Beta 1—is incredibly stable right out of the gate.

It purports to address all the complaints that have plagued Tahoe since it was released a year ago, kind of how Snow Leopard concentrated on fixing everything that was wrong with Leopard.

Naturally curious—but cautious since I’ve been burned too many times in the past—to play with a new OS, I created a new container on my Mac and loaded Golden Gate there. Yeah, this route is safest one possible short of installing it on an external drive and lets me play with it without putting any of my data at risk (I backup my entire drive every night to external storage, so even if something gets screwed up I can always wipe and restore everything from the night before). The downside is that this is basically a virgin installation and none of my apps are accessible (although even that seems to be working for the first time with Golden Gate), rendering the whole exercise kind of immaterial for personal real-world testing.

In a fit of madness last night, I threw caution to the wind. I made a full backup of my Tahoe installation, created a new USB Tahoe installer(in case I needed to wipe everything and reinstall that OS and then restore from my backup). And installed Golden Gate on my main drive.

After installing, the machine rebooted and…well, it worked.

I checked all my apps and everything functioned normally. (I know, I just jinxed it by writing that, didn’t I?)

16 hours in, and I’m pleasantly surprised. It’s far more responsive than Tahoe ever was, and for the most part all the graphic glitches and inconsistencies that Tahoe gave us are finally gone. Maybe the change of the head of software development at Apple is actually bringing about real change.

The only thing I worry about is that as the development cycle continues through the summer toward the release of the finished product in September or October is that in the past, each new beta—while squashing bugs in the previous release—often introduced new ones, rendering the whole installation unusable, or at least severely compromised from the previous version.

To that end, I’m going to keep my backup from yesterday intact, but I will also create another backup on a separate external drive of my new install and continue to back that up nightly so if—in case the unthinkable happens and some future beta fucks things up—I can still go back to Tahoe and restore any new material I created under Golden Gate since upgrading.

I’ve also learned to keep copies of the installers for each beta iteration so I can go restore to the most recent unfucked one instead of bailing completely and returning to the previous OS.

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First The Kennedy Center, Then America

Are you feeling this, America?

What is unfolding at the Kennedy Center:

This joyous subtraction.

This glorious removal.

This is the collective jubilation of watching a vile disfigurement reversed, a terrible stain erased, a brutal injury repaired.

With the smallest restoration of justice unfolding on a massive wall of white marble, we are experiencing on a microscopic scale what it feels like when a tyrant falls.

And this is just a heartening foretaste of what is coming if we choose to manifest it together.

It can be a harbinger of what is possible; the nation we might still fashion out of the hideous bastardization we have become, but only if we remember who the hell we are and what is still within our hands.

We can be blamed for our shared amnesia.

For a decade, we have been living inside a malignant narcissist’s fever dream, never getting to fully exhale from one unprecedented violation of Democracy or humanity or legality before being thrust into another. The relentlessness has been both by design and effective.

We’ve begun to believe that this lawless authoritarianism is our fate, that our termination has been ordained, that the funeral for our Republic is inevitable. We’ve allowed ourselves to be gaslighted into apathy and beaten into resignation, believing that our agency has all but evaporated.

But those twelve letters ripped from their unearned spot on hallowed ground remind us that we can always reverse our course into the abyss in the way that so many other beleaguered nations have done before us; by wielding the weapon of our collective humanity like a wrecking ball.

We can, and we will tear it all the hell down, demolish every garish monument to his vanity. We can, and we will, take back every undeserved spoil, rebuild every bulldozed bit of history. We can, and we will, rewrite the pathetic fiction he has spent crafting where he is noble, revered, or beloved.

Like those letters, his efforts to craft his legacy will all fall. The raking light of truth will eventually burn away all his desperate myths typed out in midnight all-caps diatribes.

Before this is over, We the People are going to take that vile, traitorous sex offender’s name and handprints off of every part of this nation that he has poisoned and polluted over the last decade.

He and his cadre of racist, phobic, sycophantic enablers are going to be made legally and politically accountable, and together, we are going to course correct from the greatest shared error in our 250-year history.

He will not write our epitaph.

We will outvote and outnumber and outlove his cultic disciples and tear down every remnant of him and of his disgraceful movement.

First, this single wall of marble and then our beloved nation, both can be freed from the sickening stain of his cancerous presence once and for all.

May all decent, patriotic Americans be heard and counted in these moments.

May the demolition of his inhumanity begin.

 

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Then And Now

1984
2003 
2026

One of the apartments I lived in…

It was brand new when I moved in. I was the first resident, something I always strove for when moving. In fact, I waited several months for construction to be completed while I remained in the townhouse I shared with my ex and a mutual friend.

The complex fell into complete disrepair in the early 2000s. It was kind of disheartening to see what a disaster it had become. The first word that comes to mind is “ghetto.”

But sometime since then, it was purchased by a different company and completely renovated. Based on the website, I’d say the transformation is stunning.

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Nowadays…

There would be no separation between the Living Room and Kitchen/Dining. I like the idea of walking in and being able to see all the way to the back of the house.

Also, that Jack-and-Jill bedroom/playroom arrangement wouldn’t fly. I can think of nothing worse than growing up and having to share a room with my sister. I mean, I love her to death and all, but c’mon.

At least this one has a chimney! 🤣

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What I Believe

Despite me posting copious amounts of atheist memes that for the most part I agree with wholeheartedly, I would not describe myself as a strict atheist. If anything, I would label myself “atheist light” or even agnostic if forced to put a label on my beliefs. If all I need is a total disbelief in a supreme being, then yes…I am a strict atheist. If, however, a belief in something beyond this life is also included, then I most certainly am not.

Admittedly, even though I have no evidence whatsoever to back this up, I believe that we are eternal beings, something that exists beyond space and time. Ultimately what powers us is totally separate from what we call “reality.” Further, we aren’t actually souls trapped in these bodies, but rather the energy piloting these bodies—our avatars—from beyond this physical reality. Why? To learn and grow. And possibly, just because from that external viewpoint and no matter how many horrific things may happen in our lives—for the pilots, our real selves, it’s ultimately fun. Think video games, or even a variation of The Matrix, but with each of us in control, not strapped in a pod somewhere against our will. We create the goals—be they for learning or just for fun—for each “game” before entering it, and once those goals are achieved, it’s time to move on to a new, different game.

Reincarnation? Absolutely, although viewed from the above lens. Reincarnation based on your deeds? Just like the proverbial heaven and hell, absolutely not. Reincarnation because—as I stated above—life is ultimately fun when viewed from this perspective. What curious, creative entity would not want to experience every possible variation available to them when there is an endless universe out there to explore?

Death—when it occurs—is the end each particular game, nothing more. You—or rather your pilot—is still you. (Perhaps minus the personality you took on for this particular life.) Take a break, come back, and try a new one.

The other day in therapy, the subject of suicide came up. I volunteered that I had frighteningly considered it once about thirty years ago. I had been out of work in SF and no matter what I did—despite being a seasoned tech worker—I couldn’t find a job and the walls were closing in around me. I thought how easy it would be to just take a drive own the coast highway (I was thinking Devil’s Slide in particular) and just drive my car over the cliff.  I told her the only thing preventing me was the knowledge that it was a coward’s way out and I didn’t want to have to come back in a new life and a new body and I wanted the choice to do so—and at the time I believed that a suicide would strip that ability. My worldview was a little different back then, but this is ultimately what I still believe. Think of it this way: suicide is the only guarantee that you will come back to this exact same game again and again until you reach those original goals. It’s like throwing down the controller mid-game and walking away, except when you return you can’t start up where you left off—you have to restart the game from the very beginning and all your previous successes are wiped out. She laughed when I said, “Can you imagine having to go through high school again?” She agreed that would be reason enough not to kill yourself. I mean, really…who wants to go through that again?

Granted, like with all belief systems, there are gaping holes in this philosophy, and to be honest, all this only gelled into the semi-coherent mess it is for me in the last few years, but it brings me solace when faced with the absolute shit-show that has enveloped my life, both personally and world-wide.

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“The Dome” designed by Paolo Soleri and Mark Mills completed in the summer of 1950 receiving international acclaim.

Soleri’s dome parallels work by Buckminster Fuller between 1949 and 1952 … and later Norman Foster and Fuller’s Autonomous Dwelling in 1982 which was to have a double skin dome, half glazed and half opaque, with inner and outer skins rotating independently.

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