Microposts

20 Macs for 2020 was a fun series and, overall, I agree with the ranking.

Strictly for nostalgic reasons, I would have included the PowerBook G3. This was the first Mac I ever bought and I spent a lot of time with it in the first few years of grad school.

I ran the public beta of Mac OS X which was both incredibly slow and amazingly interesting. My recollection is that I only used AppleWorks and Audion. But, it led to a long interest in and use of open source software like R and LaTeX that continues to this day.

The Value of Everything by Mariana Mazzucato is an effective description of how our economy is constructed by decisions and assumptions over time. By defining value as the same as price, we confuse value creation and value extraction, which leads to many of the problems we see in today’s economic structures. Her proposals for change would help us achieve the world we’re striving for. 📚

Quite disconcerting that I don’t know how or when I cracked the screen on my Apple Watch. The top left half still works, so not completely broken 😢

A smartwatch with a cracked screen is worn on a wrist.

I’m catching up on 20 Macs for 2020 and just listened to the episode on the iMac G4. Brought back vivid memories of two intense months of finishing the writing of my thesis. I was sequestered in a small room with the lab’s iMac G4 and still remember how great it was to be able to move the screen around so easily. Super helpful when sitting at a desk typing for hours on end.

I like the approach that Sean Carroll describes in this episode about being a science advisor for a movie. Rather than telling the director that their time travel theory is wrong, you treat the screenplay as data and concoct a theory to fit. Much better for collaboration.

We need a better system for our masks. We start the week off with a nice, clean stack and then they disperse all over the house throughout the week. We spend much of Sunday tracking them down and cleaning them. Only to start all over again #mbnov

I really like the imagery of the idiom “on the horns of a dilemma”, especially since it emphasizes the point that both choices are undesirable #mbnov

I never want to answer a call from someone I don’t know. So, I really like the “silence unknown callers” feature in iOS #mbnov

DayOne continues to be an excellent way to capture my daily thoughts. Documenting each day’s achievements has really helped me keep momentum on projects #mbnov

I wanted to avoid using the word border in a political context and was reminded how much I enjoyed Borderline by Mishell Baker #mbnov 📚

I really enjoyed To Be Taught If Fortunate by Becky Chambers. A little jewel of a space exploration story that really captures the spirit of scientific exploration 📚