"[Browsername] Is Installing Updates And Will Crash In A Few Minutes"

      Any more, I approach browser software updates with trepidation.  About half the time, the improvements break or substantially change functions I have become used to.

     The one I use most often is in some kind of slow-motion war with Windows; I paralleled it with an in-ecosystem browser I don't like as well, so that I'll have something as an immediate backup, with my Macworld devices (used mostly for writing and other fun) as the reserve.

     MDM730 or Telix, it's not.

"Robin Hoodie" Was Never Going To Be A Folk Hero

     It wasn't in the cards.  The UHC CEO assassin wasn't going to be a folk hero or even a comic-book (graphic novel!) vigilante.  Sane people, good people, don't shoot another person in the back unless that person presents an imminent threat to human life.

     Americans kill one another quite often, and on little provocation.  We're doing so less these days -- but we're still doing it.  And if it seems even a little justified -- how many stats have I seen about insurance claim denial rates in the last few days, with United Health Care heading the list -- a lot of us will chime in, or at least nod, or maybe just shrug.

     The fact remains that you've got to be seriously off-axis to commit that kind of murder; in fact, being some kind of nut (not to get too technical) appears to improve the odds of success, as I have written about before when discussing political assassination attempts.

     Did the killer's actions hold up a distorting mirror to the feelings of many Americans about the health-insurance industry?  Undeniably.  Just don't confuse the myth/legend/story with the facts.

     Murder is wrong.

     Running your business in such a way that a plurality (at least) of the people who hear about your murder express positive or neutral feelings about the crime is wrong, too.  It doesn't justify the murder -- but it ought to be food for thought.

He's Doing It Again

     In a recent TV interview, his first since winning election to the Presidency, Donald Trump opined that the members of the House January 6 Committee ought to be in jail for "what they did."  When pressed, he accused them of destroying evidence.

     That would indeed be awful and potentially unlawful behavior -- if they had done so.  In fact, they did not.  You can go browse most it for yourself.

     Some things are under review and may be redacted -- in addition to the public spaces, the U. S. Capitol building is a warren of back corridors, unobvious private offices, hidey-holes, connecting tunnels and so on, including the places where members of Congress and staffers took refuge on January 6, 2021.  There are obvious security concerns with publishing specific data.  Many people still don't realize how close we came to having a Congressperson, staff member or even the Vice President beaten up or strung up that day, but there's nothing to be gained and much to be lost by providing a map for the next attempt.

     Pardoning the rioters is undeniably one of the powers of the office of the President.  I think it would be regrettable, but it wouldn't be illegal.  Going after then-members of the U. S. House of Representatives for doing something well within the powers and purview of their branch of the Federal government is a very different matter.  You may find the J6 Committee infuriating, heroic or boring, but it wasn't illegal.  They didn't kick down any doors, break any windows or take a steaming dump on a House member's desk.  None of them assaulted Capitol police.  The J6 rioters did that, at the instigation, if not the direct behest, of Donald Trump, who was at the time President of the United States of America.

     Pretending otherwise is a fool's game.

One Down, 87 To Go

     It depends on how you count them, but there were almost 90 autocratic governments on Earth yesterday, and today there's one less: Assad isn't running Syria any more.  (Present whereabouts unknown; a plane carrying him may have gone down, and no one is looking very hard.  Update: The Russians say he's been granted asylum in Moscow.  He was their boy in the Middle East for a long time, so it's not unlikely. )

     What comes next?  It's hard to say.  What newscasts are calling "Syrian rebels" is a a polyglot bunch, and the largest bloc, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has palled around with both the "Islamic State" and al-Qaida in the past.  They haven't run with either since 2016; guessing if that was a matter of wanting less crazy or more is an exercise for pundits and intel professionals.  Junior partner is the Syrian National Army, a collection of at least twenty-eight groups;* some sources say at least twenty-one of them have received U. S. assistance in the past, against IS and related threats, but we've been known to hand out goodies to almost anyone who'd smile and promise to fight Communists, Islamic extremists and the like.†  Some of SNA's roots go back to the "Free Syrian Army," and Turkey has been one of their main sources of support, despite the occasional armed squabble.

     You can tie yourself up in knots trying to sort all this out, and by the time you have, the situation will have changed.  None of them liked Assad, or the way he was running the country, and it appears that became a strong enough motivation that they were able to work together.

     It's an open question if they'll be able to continue working together, but we can at least hope.  If you're expecting the Syrian James Madison will come running down from the hinterlands, waving a draft Constitution well-suited to the people of that nation, don't hold your breath.  They might -- and it would be good news if they can -- manage to cobble something together that will hold long enough to make serious inroads against the starvation and misery that part of the world has become famous for.

     It says something about our species that the very cradle of human civilization has become a nightmare of failed states and warlordism, with refugees as the prime regional export.  It says something about us, and it's nothing pleasant.
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* At this point, the better-informed might be wondering, "What of the Kurds?"  They're wondering that, too.  They appear to have very little presence in the SNA.  Kurds are about ten percent of Syrian population and are likely to get what they usually get: short shrift.  The French, the British, the various Allied and UN powers, the local potentates and so on all overlooked them when they drew lines on maps, and it's one more smoldering problem in a place that has an oversupply of tragedies.
 
† And that's nothing new -- go read some early 19th-Century Letters of Marque issued by Congress for examples. A proxy war is a cheap war for everyone except the proxies.

Grist For The Mill

     I'm not alone in suspecting the extinct megafauna of North America were delicious -- and that humans may have played a part in making them extinct.  There's new evidence that tends to support the notion that big critters were what's for dinner.

     Woolly mammoth, giant sloth -- you get just one of those, and you've fed the whole tribe, and probably gained enough leather to clothe half of them or make a new tent.  Lots of useful bone and sinew, too.  Those hunts may have been our first team sport and maybe that's why spending a weekend afternoon watching the Big Game is so appealing to so many people.  Almost as good as a big hunt with all your pals, and the feast afterward.  Go team mammoth-hunter!

Packrattery

     A recent article about famous (infamous)* SF writer and screenwriter Harlan Ellison included a few photos of the late author's home, "Ellison Wonderland."

     Between that, the Bradbury Center's re-creation of Ray Bradbury's workspace and few pictures I have seen of Doc Savage creator Lester Dent's Missouri "House of Gadgets" home and Theodore Sturgeon's place, I'm convinced writers are packrats, gadgeteers and book accumulators.

     And if that's a requirement, I'm well on my way.
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* Ellison was a man of prodigious gifts, stunning feuds, deep friendships and absolutely over-the-line behavior.  He had a great many fans -- and so many sincere enemies that they formed an actual club.

So, About These Picks...?

     Is it just me, or is the incoming Administration largely a government of drunken (etc.) frat boys?  The Press keeps telling me they're "loyalists," or "Trump conservatives," but the real unifying factor appears to be a willingness to drink heavily, and to disregard social norms as applied to themselves while being harsh enforcers of conventionality for everyone around them (at least until they make unwanted advances on women, at which point all notions of modesty and fidelity cease to apply).

     This is a crew that gives every sign of believing Eddie Haskell was the real hero of Leave It To Beaver.

     Look, you may find elitist technocrats and nose-in-the-air PolySci wonks offputting, but a large proportion of them are earnest strivers, who put in a full day's work, a little overtime and keep thinking about the job on their commute home and all through dinner.  They're morally consistent.  When your staff has to carry your inebriated self back to your hotel room, fending off your pawing hands all the way, you're probably not Cabinet material -- in fact, you're probably not Assistant Manager at the corner store material.

     I guess we'll find out how things work with leering, "beer o'clock," C students at the helm.  P. J. O'Rourke tried to warn us.

"Num-bah, Plea-yiz?"

     I have had occasion to use my employer's fancy in-your-computer telephone system a few times recently (instead of my own cellphone, for which they pay a nice chunk of my bill) .

     It is about as unlike using a telephone as using a telephone could be.  I grew up on rural telephones, not too far removed from party lines.  I grew up with limited bandwidth, optimized for speech; with a certain amount of whooshing white noise in the background, not to mention blips and bleep from crosstalk, sometimes even distorted speech from another call muttering quietly.  And I grew up with "sidetone," the faint sound of your own voice from the earpiece of your phone, which you don't notice until it's gone.

     Every bit of that is gone with the app they use.  You can bring up a conventional keypad on the screen to dial numbers with, but the sound from the headset is pure hi-fi.  And the connection is so quiet that if you're in a still-enough place, you can hear your own heartbeat during pauses in the conversation.  What you won't hear is your own voice.  Maybe there's an adjustment for that; I haven't looked, but if I'm going to use this thing much, I'd better, because it's distracting.

     Living in the future is okay, but I'm glad I'm not a big desk telephone user.  The modern version is making me feel like I may have time-traveled a little farther than I'm comfortable with.

Colorful Alerts?

     This morning, I went to the Indiana legislature website, to see what they're going to be up to next year.  Remember, this is the deliberative body that toyed with setting pi to three; they're something like a too-trusting elderly relative, who must be diverted from answering the door when traveling salesmen come to call, or you'll find out the driveway has been "top-coated" with used crankcase oil or the front steps have been repaired with a mixture of sand, flour and water.

     It's too soon for the 2025 litany of pork, posturing and puffery.  Looking over what they tried and sometimes pushed forward in 2024, I came across a well-meaning example of...something.

     The idea behind it has merit, but it suggests we ought to step back and take another look: the legislature's got a bill in progress to introduce a "Green Alert" for missing veterans and service members.

     You might ask, why not?  We already have Amber Alerts for missing or abducted children, Silver Alerts for missing, at-risk seniors (and it's sometimes used for other people who need care) and Blue Alerts for police (no, I am not making this up -- presumably it's for hostage situations).  Most of these are embedded in the nationwide EAS system that goes over broadcast stations and the WEA (Wireless Emergency Alert) system that communicates with cellphones.  They use three-letter "Event Codes," generally defined by Congress, like "CAE" (Child Abduction Emergency) for Amber Alerts.  CAE is the oldest code of this type, and it works; it's helped locate many missing children.  One of 26 letters in three positions means there are a lot of possible codes.  Not all are mnemonic.

     Some of the proposed codes are intended to make a point: missing people get disproportionate media attention if they're young, white and female, so "Ebony Alert" and "Feather Alert" codes have been proposed.  This can be read as government signalling to media, more than joggling your elbow: when it lights up an EAS codec, radio and TV stations have to either pass it along automatically* or actually sit down and read the thing before making a decision about sharing it, an effort that often results in a news story, and the specialized code is intended as a reminder.  How you or I -- or a news editor -- react to it is highly subjective, and this might not be an area for subjectivity: lost, at-risk individuals deserve to be found, period, and that is worth lighting up your phone for half a minute or airing a twenty-second broadcast news story, no matter who they are.

     As a practical matter, all that is needed are alerts for "lost child" and "lost adult."  Details should go in the accompanying text message, to tell you and me if we should be looking for a four-year-old Native American child or a 60 year old law enforcement officer: it's supposed to be way to help out, not an overloaded "thin blue line" flag with a special stripe for each and every sliver of the population who might be at risk.

     P.S.  There are highly-specific geocoding numbers in the systems, too, which as a practical matter are steerable down to the level of counties.  (The code gets even more localized but cellphones and EAS codecs generally do not.)  Just like weather alerts, alerts for lost and missing persons are supposed to be coded for a limited area.  This helps reduce people getting alerts that don't apply to their location.

     P.P.S.  I am reminded that the Federal guidelines for issuing this type of alert on EAS or WEA are specific and strict, so while your Mayor or local law enforcement may hold a news conference and say they're issuing a gray and yellow-striped alert, a genuine, official version with its own event code is supposed to be a rare thing that had to meet well-defined criteria before it was sent.  Will that stop state and Federal legislators from making up new ones?  I sure wouldn't want to bet money on it.
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* Remarkably few EAS event codes are required to go on the air automatically, just national-level emergencies, a system that has been used for a "live code" test or two but never in earnest.  Most of the boxes treat national-level tests the same way, but the rest of it is set up for a human to look at and decide -- if there's a human around to do so.  If your local radio station is running every darned beep-beep-beep alert that comes across, there's probably a robot at the wheel.

Sandhill Cranes

     Of course, the cranes I heard Sunday were the Sandhill Cranes that pass through every Fall.  They stop for several weeks at the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area before continuing on from Wisconsin (etc.) to Florida.

     The Wildlife Area is up north of Lafayette, so the ones we see in Indianapolis have probably started the next leg of their migration.  From the posted DNR numbers, they haven't reached this year's peak population yet, so if you live around here, listen for their song when you're outdoors -- and look up!

Politicommentary

     You probably think I have something trenchant and/or pithy to say about Mr. Trump's picks or Mr. Biden's pardons, but here's the thing: it's all sideshow.

     These things don't have anything to do with the day to day running of the country right now, and even the parts that could affect it in the future are only possibilities.  I could probably start a nice helmet fire about all or part of it, but what good would that do?

     Time enough for the Senate to show me how they're going to react.  Time enough to find out who's going to pardon whom and how that's going to work out.

     Right now, the House needs to start looking under the Federal sofa cushions for spare change before the current piggy bank goes dry.  They've got to get it done before Christmas, or they're going to be sending out cards to their constituents in the dark.  I'm pretty sure the Pentagon has a back-up plan before they have to start working by candlelight, and I'm hoping the over-the-horizon radars and earth stations for the DOD spy satellites have all got fat UPSs on standby.  But you'd never know to watch the news: it's all clowns and animal acts.

Brunch Again

     Today was Brunch With Siblings day, and I'm pleased to report they are both as sibilant as ever.  We went to Good Morning Mama's, which for my money has better coffee and better service than where we'd been going, and a more interesting menu -- but I'm biased in favor of a place that serves home made corned beef hash.

     On the way home, I kept hearing what I'm pretty sure were cranes, a high-pitched, fluting, musical call, and could not spot them  Finally saw them in multiple vees and strings high, high overhead, so far up they were little more than dots.  But their song carries for miles, a marvel of the late Fall.