No Idea

GZA’s Liquid Swords is one of my favorite albums of all time.

Baseball will be back this year! Opening Day is April 7. Looking forward to some slow moving sport this summer.

The iPad Air with the M1 for $600 is interesting

These oil paintings by Agnieska Nienartowicz are truly fantastic.

Simply stunning work.

I’m at the beginning of thinking that I’ll buy a MacBook Air sometime this year. I don’t have any real use case for it other than to dip my toe into the Apple world.

The question I have is should I get the 8GB or upgrade to 16GB of memory if it’s just a general machine?

I’m currently using a Pizelbook for my laptop, a PC I built myself 5 years ago that will eventually be upgraded, an Amazon Fire 10 HD as a tablet and reading device, a Pixel 4 for my personal phone, and an iPhone SE for my work phone.

Reminder

This week I was using my Kindle Fire HD with Google Play added on and thought to myself

I don’t really use a lot of the apps from the Play Store on this device. Maybe I should reset it and use it only with the apps available on the Amazon store.

So, that’s what I just did.

Started reading Snow Crash last night. Love the idea of the Delivinator at the beginning of the story.

Currently reading: Snow Crash: A Novel by Neal Stephenson 📚

Finished reading: A Sky Beyond the Storm (An Ember in the Ashes) by Sabaa Tahir 📚

An exciting ending to a really great series. Excellent writing, great characters, and solid world building. I really enjoyed the whole series and kept looking to continue the story throughout.

Today’s breakfast was French Toast and eggs with coffee.

I should have taken a photo, but it was devoured too quickly for that.

Just added to my Want to read list: The Justice of Kings (Empire of the Wolf, 1) by Richard Swan because of this The Big Idea post. 📚

Friday night activities.

Listening to the Dune Soundtrack and building the Lego Taj Mahal.

I think I’m adulting right tonight.

Speaking of notebooks I don’t need.

I went ahead and bought the Nolty notebook from earlier this year and it looks as amazing as I thought it would.

I am on the fence if I will actually use it it

No, you just bought a notebook that you don’t need.

It definitely wasn’t me. Nope. Not at all.

I want to see Microsoft relaunch Windows Phone and become a mobile OS provider again.

They don’t have to start out competing with Apple and Google for control of the mobile space. Give people an option to try. Start with a mid range phone.

Want to read: Snow Crash: A Novel by Neal Stephenson 📚

I think it might be abou time to revisit one of my favorite books.

Finished reading: A Reaper at the Gates (An Ember in the Ashes) by Sabaa Tahir 📚

Another enjoyable entry in the series. The story continues to be engaging and the chararcters continue to grow and are not stale. Looking forward to the conclusion of the series.

Cal Newport

A life spent subservient to that small glowing screen is not a life where you’re living up to your potential.

My idea of how to best life my life has nothing to do with other people’s thoughts about “my potential”.

I’m not living my life for you.
I’m living my life for me.

In her 2020 essay, The price of America’s quest for an external enemy Morgan Godvin made a good point.

We can use this as a catalyst for positive change. Instead of constantly searching for threats from without, this is an opportunity for introspection. Healing comes from within.

Along the way she pointed out some basic facts of the American Experience.

American history class, after all, is used to promulgate a particular and pre-approved world view.

We are far more experienced at chasing boogiemen than we are at actually protecting American life.

Of course, America did nothing. We can not agree on the facts of anything anymore. The voices shouting about placing blame on China will be reported as if they were the majority when, in fact, they are the minority. The voices trying to move the giant health care industry away from private insurance will be derailed in their fight because of a million little things.

America will not change because we, as a country, can not pause for honest introspection. We are a country of us versus them, of right vs wrong, of good vs evil. We are a country that does not believe in the fact that the world is not divided along a line.