The Meaningless Incoherence Of "LGBTQ+"
The trouble is that words have meanings, and the term “LGBTQ+” — like the term “Hispanic” or “Latino” — is not like NATO. It doesn’t refer to a single, identifiable group, experience, or community. It refers to multiple ones. And each is distinct, discrete and often very different. When you examine its component parts, you realize that the Ls and Gs and Bs and Ts, let alone the Is and the +s, differ dramatically in basic things like psychology, lifestyle, income, geography, education, and politics.
Lumping them all together and treating them as a single unit is like treating Jews and Arabs as the “Middle East community,” or Cubans and Salvadorans as indistinguishable “Latinos.” “LGBTQ+” is a term that obscures and misleads more than it enlightens and clarifies. And it has made any study or understanding of homosexuals as a discreet [sic] group close to impossible.
Protein biomarkers predict dementia 15 years before diagnosis
Of 1,463 proteins analysed, aided by with a type of artificial intelligence known as machine learning, 11 proteins were identified and combined as a protein panel, which the researchers have shown to be highly accurate at predicting future dementia. Further incorporation of conventional risk factors of age, sex, education level and genetics, showed for the first time the high accuracy of the predictive model, measured at over 90%*, indicating its potential future use in community-based dementia screening programs.
Shit.
I’m really, really fucking depressed.
Apple Watch Ultra succeeds where Watch Edition failed
The Watch Ultra is different. Its large screen, clear yet dense interface, and rugged yet refined physical design all suggest that it must be far more expensive than the rest of the Apple Watch lineup. Yet, at $799, it’s only a mere seven percent costlier than the $749 stainless steel model.
The Ultra is second only to my phone as my favorite piece of Apple hardware. For my lifestyle, habits, location, and interests, it’s close to ideal (though I’ll never say no to more battery life), and the goodwill inspired by its utility is notable.
Pricing it just above the stainless steel regular watch was smart — Apple convinced me the Ultra was a bargain, effectively obfuscating their infamous profit margin.
The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning
…while Americans have today given up the old dream of liberalizing China, they should maybe look a little closer. It’s true that China never remotely liberalized—if you consider liberalism to be all about democratic elections, a free press, and respect for human rights. But many political thinkers would argue there is more to a comprehensive definition of modern liberalism than that. Instead, they would identify liberalism’s essential telos as being the liberation of the individual from all limiting ties of place, tradition, religion, associations, and relationships, along with all the material limits of nature, in pursuit of the radical autonomy of the modern “consumer.”
Most Republican Senators Are Barred From Re-election in Oregon After Walkouts
Yes, and.
Indeed the will of the voters, but the divide between the east and west sides of the state is profound. Democratic legislators and the bulk of Oregon’s population on the west side of the state (majority democratic) don’t often represent the values of people around here. (Whether I agree with them or not.) It’s fostering real resentment, and I worry about what that means long-term.
Those that win elections should be as gracious as the losers, and in this state, that doesn’t always feel true.
(That said, I’d much rather live here than in almost any other state.)
Why Tim Cook Is Going All In on the Apple Vision Pro
This was as far from a VR headset as a kid’s Schwinn bicycle is from a Gulfstream G800 private jet. Just as when I scrolled my finger around the wheel of the first iPod or used my finger and thumb to zoom into an image on the first iPhone. With the Vision Pro, I could look at an app icon and simply tap my fingers together, and the app would open. And then it was hanging in front of me. In the clearest resolution I’d ever seen in my life. I could swipe through images with my hands, move things with my fingers. Unlike other VR headsets, where you have to use a controller that feels like you have lobster claws for hands, with the Apple Vision Pro your eyes become the mouse absolutely seamlessly. “It’s mind-blowing,” Cook said to me when I told him about my experience. “We live in a 3D world, but the content that we enjoy is flat.”
And here it is:
I know deep down that the Apple Vision Pro is too immersive, and yet all I want to do is see the world through it. “I’m sure the technology is terrific. I still think and hope it fails,” one Silicon Valley investor said to me. “Apple feels more and more like a tech fentanyl dealer that poses as a rehab provider.” Harsh words, but he feels what we all feel, a slave to our smartphone, and he’s seen this play before and he knows what the first act is like, and the second act, and he knows how it ends.
I am in a dark place.
I’ve been focused on other people, not myself. Lest this sound selfless, fear not — it’s a compulsive habit more than thoughtfulness. And now that I have a few moments of time to myself, I’m evaluating my life and don’t love what I see.
I’ve lost my sense of purpose. Work, i.e. staring at a screen and telling other people what they’re doing wrong, isn’t fulfilling like it once was, perhaps because it goes against the impulse of what I know I need less of in my life: certainty. I know, deep down in my bones, my life is a house of cards predicated on the illusion of certainty. People will die, I will age, things will change. The more I resist, the more control I attempt to wrest, the more miserable I will become.
Right now, I feel pretty miserable. I’m not accepting inevitabilities, being terribly honest or gracious or thoughtful. I’m afraid — of what, I don’t quite know — and the fear is shaping me into someone I don’t want to be.
I am, I think, sad.
I sit here on my perch, thinking about my relationships. I’m lucky to have so many, to have friends and acquaintances the world over, though these days, in the era of the internet, it’s not all that uncommon.
What does feel unique is the type of person I gravitate toward: older. I have always been drawn to older people, likely by virtue of being an only child. There was no one else my age around, so I learned to relate to older people.
When you’re raised by older people, you learn to raise other people. I’ve learned by watching those raising me to help other people. To most, this seems to be a positive thing, an attribute. And of course it is! But it’s become a compulsion, too, and I’m wearing myself thin from all of it.
I’ve noticed that I spend much of my time with others asking questions. Only recently have I come across that infamous Dale Carnegie quote, “to be interesting, be interested,” of which I’m slightly embarrassed given its context. But there’s truth in it. And for the last few months, I’ve been hoping to be asked those very same questions with reflected curiosity.
I haven’t felt terribly satisfied in my relationships. I haven’t felt seen or heard or ‘known’ in a way that feels deep and meaningful. I feel alone.
I wonder what I’m doing wrong. I’m quick to demur, to turn questions around, to ask about others. It’s probably deflection as much as habit, a learned midwestern behavior. But while I love talking about myself, I also feel terribly self-conscious when doing so. I worry people feel I’m taking up too much space. This is partly due to my experiences of the last few years, of being in groups where identity has paramount, where I am above all a very privileged white man. Why should I take up even more space than I already have?
(This is the corrosive effect of identity politics: it really does trap us in boxes, it limits our imagination, it separates us from others. But that’s a digression for another time.)
For now, I’m just feeling disconnected. I’ve ended a Relationship, and many of my close relationships are with people far away. I’m watching people I care about age a little faster than expected, though I’m approaching 40 and reminding myself it’s time to begin to be ready to usher out the previous generations. This is abjectly horrifying. In a few years, I will be alone.
This anxiety manifests in strange ways. I resent other people my age for making things look so easy. Careers, Relationships, children, the way they refuse to put their lives on hold for others. Putting my life on hold is all I’ve ever known, and while it’s born of fear, it’s also born of caring, of stewarding others. (Maybe so that I don’t have to steward myself?) I take on projects, as I’ve been told. Confused or angry young men become surrogate younger brothers. Clients and neighbors become wards. My ex-partner told me recently that he “wishes he had a partner, but instead what he got was a therapist.” He’s not wrong.
It’s this very thing that keeps me from others. I am happiest, most content, when things in my life feel complete, and nothing feels complete about the mess of most people. Their anxieties and the volatility that flows from them is deeply unsettling. Only when I’m around others do I feel as though I may be on the autism spectrum, as I just cannot seem to handle their complexities.
But I’m discontented with relationships. I want something more. I want someone to sit across from me and ask with matched intensity how I’m doing. How am I feeling? How does it feel to begin the process of preparing for the deaths of people I love? (Preparing for death is something most people never do.) How does it feel to watch so many people at once start the pivot toward the ends of their lives?
It isn’t easy.
NSA finally admits to spying on Americans by purchasing sensitive data
The National Security Agency (NSA) has admitted to buying records from data brokers detailing which websites and apps Americans use, US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) revealed Thursday.
‘Apple Shares the Secret of Why the 40-Year-Old Mac Still Rules’
Train Robbery for Amazon Packages? More Common Than You Think.
The Los Angeles basin is the country’s undisputed capital of cargo theft, the region with the most reported incidents of stuff stolen from trains and trucks and those interstitial spaces in the supply chain, like rail yards, warehouses, truck stops and parking lots. Cases of reported cargo theft in the United States have nearly doubled since 2019, according to CargoNet, a theft-focused subsidiary of Verisk, a multinational company that analyzes business risks, primarily for the insurance sector. On CargoNet’s map of cargo-theft hot spots, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta and Memphis show up as distinct, high-incident red blobs. But the biggest blob, a red oblong smear, stretches out over the Los Angeles valley like molten lava.
That photo is really quite something…
Israeli Soldiers Clearing Buffer Zone in Gaza Die in Blast
The deaths plunged Israel into a state of mourning as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces intensifying domestic divisions over how to proceed in the war as well as growing international condemnation of the civilian death toll in Gaza and the worsening humanitarian conditions there.
Israeli leaders expressed heartbreak over the deaths, but declared that the fighting would continue until Hamas was defeated.
What does that mean? How will we know Hamas is defeated? Hope does one defeat a political movement? Do you kill everyone that believes in that ideology? Once they are dead, once you turn the dead into martyrs, then what? How do you stop the ideology from spreading?
Bill Beard Was a Good Man. Then He Committed a Terrible Crime.
When Betty Friedan called attention in the 1960s to the lack of women’s rights, she described it as “the problem that has no name.” In a similar way, there isn’t a good term for the bundle of pathologies that have afflicted working-class Americans like Bill.
My “How America Heals” series has explored how to overcome these afflictions, which include stagnant incomes, addiction, homelessness, suicide, chronic pain, loneliness and early death. We still don’t fully understand how they are correlated or why most of them affect men more than women. I do believe that, as with Friedan’s probing of gender inequity, our explorations of these problems will help us chip away at them. That’s the reason for this series: A nation cannot thrive when so many have been left behind.
“A nation cannot thrive when so many have been left behind.”
If there’s any one sentence than could sum up my feelings about America, it is this one.
Here’s OpenAI’s big plan to combat election misinformation
Yesterday TikTok presented me with what appeared to be a deepfake of Timothee Chalamet sitting in Leonardo Dicaprio’s lap and yes, I did immediately think “if this stupid video is that good imagine how bad the election misinformation will be.” OpenAI has, by necessity, been thinking about the same thing and today updated its policies to begin to address the issue.
Ah, the internet.
What an interesting idea. (And what a nerd.) I’m in.
ps. Listen to Vulfpeck. They’re great.
I woke up this morning having had very little restful sleep last night. I can't pinpoint why beyond a lingering anxiety about the future.
Are we really about to face another Biden-Trump election? What the hell is wrong with this country? Yes, I'm horrified that Trump is running and somehow gaining in popularity, particularly among the young, but I'm beyond angry that the Democratic party — a private organization, remember — has somehow anointed Biden for another run. I don't give a shit how effective he's been (and I think he's been a decent president), he is too old to run. He might be mentally present, but he appears like a doddering old man. In relief, Trump looks downright virile. What do the Democrats think is going to happen in November?
Just a few days ago, there's a woman (though to call her such feels generous) walking down the aisle of the grocery store in her mid- to late-20s, purple hair, in a full-body cow onesie, complete with tail. She's pushing a cart while talking a little too loudly to her friend, clearly desperate for the attention of passers-by. What type of person is this? I don't know her or anyone like her, and yet there she was, in real life. And in a small town, no less.
Contrast that with some of the gun-totin', bible-lovin', lifted-truck, fuck-all-taxes conservatives I'm surrounded by. What fantasy world do they live in? That without government, without pesky taxes and laws, they'd ride around in their gas guzzlers and, what? Survive off the land? Bullshit. These cowboys are just as delusional as Cow Girl, they're just far more common.
I try not to use the word 'hate' too often, but gosh, some days I get a little too close to hating people. It's a terrible place to be — corrosive, insular, and a delusion of its own. But I no longer know my place in this country. I go to Portland and I feel horribly out of place. I come out to the rural spaces and I feel more at home, but surrounded by people who are struggling and suffering, all while pretending they aren't, afraid to be vulnerable. They’re all — country folk _and_ city folk — propping up these insane delusions, the biggest being the most dangerous: that we can't trust other people.
This country is such a mindfuck, and the ever-increasing pace of technological development is making things exponentially worse. The anxiety we all feel from no longer having a tomorrow we can reasonably understand cannot be overstated. I often think of my grandparents, of how in their lifetimes, they had what all humans have had thus far: some certainty that tomorrow will be like today. Of course there were exceptions, but these days, with AI and social media, even knowing what is true and real can't be taken for granted, let alone what tomorrow might bring.
How will we survive this? In my circles — my hometown, the small town where I now live, some of the surrounding rural areas — talk of civil war isn't out of the question. Sure, the talk of one has died down since the fever pitch of 2020, but it hasn't gone away. In some way, I understand it: while most people haven't a clue what war looks like, there is some purpose to be found in a potential conflict. I was never more certain of my purpose than when I was living in Palestinian refugee camps, and if we've gotten to a point in this country where the Right and Left feel that each is an existential threat to the country? Well, then defending your way of life is a hell of a purpose. This should not be underestimated.
Some days, this all leaves me feeling helpless. Tiny and helpless.
Corporations Are Not To Be Loved
Apple’s positive effect on my life should not be underestimated. My Mom once (lovingly, teasingly) said to me that my alternate career, had all this never happened, was “criminal genius.” Which might have been fun too, but possibly more stressful than I might have liked. At any rate, Apple has saved me from a life of crime, and I should love Apple for that.
But I need to remember, now and again, that Apple is a corporation, and corporations aren’t people, and they can’t love you back. You wouldn’t love GE or Exxon or Comcast — and you shouldn’t love Apple. It’s not an exception to the rule: there are no exceptions.
Emphasis mine.
I have long "loved" Apple. My first Mac came at a very lonely time in life (first year of college). Before then, computers were work, literally: my first job was at the local internet service provider in my small town. I had my own desktop at home where I'd play games, but thoughts about drivers and memory and storage and sound cards were never far from my mind.
With a Mac, that all changed. Apple created this functional computer in a beautifully designed enclosure. The Mac OS X was whimsical and fun in a way Windows never was (and never has been). Most of all, Apple was attentive to detail. Sure, it couldn't do everything a Windows computer did, but it sure did what it could do much more thoughtfully.
I've been in the Apple ecosystem for nearly a two decades. More than half my life. I have few regrets about entrusting the company with my data. Hell, their devices enabled me to have a career while living out of my tent. Apple devices have enabled an unprecedented amount of freedom, and for that, I'm grateful.
I am also an Apple shareholder. I became one shortly after the first iPhone was announced. That investment was, back in 2007, risky and ill-advised. But it has paid off, literally, and again, for that I'm grateful.
But Apple is still a corporation. Their computers are just things. iPhone, as central as it is to my life — to my ability to have the kind of life I live — it merely a thing. An incredibly powerful, almost god-like tool, but still just a thing.
People accuse me of loving Apple. At times, I'm ashamed to say I have. But they are a corporation. Their only loyalty is to profit, to the financial benefit of their shareholders. Corporations do not give a shit about anything other than profit.
Do not forget that.
Facebook’s ad targeting gets help from thousands of other companies
Researchers found that, on average, Facebook received data from 2,230 different companies for each of the 709 volunteers. One extreme example showed that “nearly 48,000 different companies were found in the data of a single volunteer.” In total, Facebook data archives showed that 186,892 companies had provided data on all of the study’s participants.
Surveillance capitalism. This should horrify us all.
I struggle to tell people in my life the extent to which they are being tracked. They think Facebook is it, "and what could they know about me?"
People don't realize that thousands of companies feed data to bigger tech companies like Facebook. Property records. Purchase histories. Tax payments. Health records. Online browsing history. Everything. Facebook merely collates all that data.
That this doesn't bother the hell out of people always mystifies me. When did we give up on a reasonable expectation of privacy?
The Genocide Charge Against Israel Is a Moral Obscenity
It’s obscene because it perverts the definition of genocide, which is precise: “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Notice two key features of this definition: It speaks of acts whereas part of the genocide case against Israel involves the misinterpretation of quotes from Israeli officials who have vowed Hamas’s elimination, not the elimination of Palestinians. And it uses the term as such — meaning the acts are genocidal only if they are directed at Palestinians as Palestinians, not as members of Hamas or, heartbreakingly, as collateral deaths in attempts to destroy Hamas.
If Israel were trying to commit genocide, it wouldn’t be putting its soldiers at risk or allowing humanitarian relief to arrive from Egypt or withdrawing many of its forces from Gaza. It would simply be killing Palestinians everywhere, in vastly greater numbers, as Germans killed Jews or Hutus killed Tutsis.
He has a point. Definitions — words — matter. I do not think Israel is attempting genocide in Gaza.
But what they are attempting is still egregious. Nine thousand dead children.
Adobe’s latest Premiere Pro update automatically cleans up trashy audio
These updates aren’t intended to automate audio editing entirely, but to optimize the existing process so that editors have more time to work on other projects. “As Premiere Pro becomes the first choice for more and more professional editors, we’re seeing editors being asked to do a lot more than just cut picture. At some level, most editors have to do some amount of color work, of audio work, even titling and basic effects,” said Paul Saccone, senior director for Adobe Pro Video, to The Verge.
“Sure, there are still specialists you can hand off to depending on the project size, but the more we can enable customers to make this sort of work easier and more intuitive inside Premiere Pro, the more successful they’re going to be in their other creative endeavors.”
Oof. This one’s going to hurt. Most of my audio clients prefer Premiere (I’m a Logic Pro guy) and Adobe is using AI to automate away many of the tasks that take up the bulk of my time.
How Many Children Is Israel Willing to Kill?
The endgame is unclear. Reoccupation? Mass emigration? Who can say? Yes, Hamas can be physically destroyed. But support for it has soared since the war began; and I know of no person more committed to revenge than a parent whose child has been murdered. We were right to note how tight-knit Israeli society is, and how deep a trauma October 7 was for so many. Can we even imagine the psychological impact of 9,000 dead children? The Gazans are humans too. Am I being too sentimental in talking about infanticide rather than just civilian deaths? Not when the vulnerable population is so disproportionately young; not when just war theory would demand safety for every single one of them.
This is how it is when wars are launched swiftly, overwhelmingly, and in an understandable spasm of justified rage. Think of the position of Israel on October 8. The true evil of Hamas was exposed; most of the decent world grieved with Israel. Think of the long-term goals the Israelis could have achieved if they had taken a breath, thought deeply and strategically, and acted deliberately, in consort with their recently acquired Arab interlocutors.
Now look: a wasteland of death, a charge of genocide at The Hague, a huge propaganda loss in the wider world, 132 hostages still out of reach, and no coherent idea of what to do the day after, if the day after ever comes.
Andrew Sullivan, doing his damndest to answer my question, "Who do I want to be like when I grow up?"
This war between Gaza and Israel has been brutal. Old personal relationships have resurfaced, only to be ripped away. The subject feels incredibly fraught and tender, full of strange bedfellows and unexpected allegiances. My long-held opinions have been shaken as I watch people who had no interest in the region suddenly espouse strong and often vitriolic opinions of their own. Like anything in America, the Middle East has become a proxy for our culture wars.
A hundred days in, I find myself back where I was immediately after the attacks: Israel cannot call itself "civilized" if it permits the people of Palestine to suffer as it does. Really — what did Israel think would happen after years of an active blockade of Gaza? Sure, Egypt is party to blame, but come on. Let's not bullshit each other.
Over the last hundred days, I've been more persuaded by the principles Zionism than ever before. When I once thought the pluralism of America was proof enough that Israel did not need to exist, I now see that very pluralism threatening to fade away. And in a world with plenty of nations are explicitly and officially Muslim, why not one that is Jewish? Yes.
But this status quo cannot hold. Israel is losing — and perhaps has already lost — any moral high ground it had on October 6th.
To be able to die at peace, a philosopher needs to die to his attachments to the world. This, for Montaigne, is “true solitude,” where one’s thoughts and emotions are reined in and brought under control. “To prepare oneself for death is to prepare oneself for freedom. The one who has learned to die has unlearned to be a slave.”
To die to the world is far from straightforward. “People do not recognize the natural sickness of their mind,” says Montaigne, which does nothing but “ferret about in search of something, ceaselessly twisting, elaborating, and entangling itself in its own activity like a silkworm, until it suffocates there like ‘a mouse in pitch.’ ” We rush around in a compulsive flight from death. “Every moment,” he remarks, “it seems I am fleeing from myself.” No matter how many laws or precepts we use to fence the mind in, we still find it “garrulous and dissolute, escaping all constraints.” This flight is chaotic and aimless. There is “no madness or lunacy that cannot be produced in this turmoil. When the soul has no definite goal, it gets lost.”