Bill Svec

American exceptionalism: 4% of the world population 26% of world COVID cases 23% of world COVID deaths

The @GeologyNick media juggernaut continues! 😀 Nice to have a new podcast episode just in time to mow the lawn.

COVID Sunday #3 - Making a batch of Chili, watching my son draw pictures, drinking some Coronas, listening to some great tunes. Most of all appreciating how lucky we are. Hope everyone else is well.

Been a Cub fan for 4 decades, but I’m totally disgusted with the Marquee Network. Front office doesn’t spend any of that money in the offseason and I can’t even watch any games anymore. Plus its run by the right wing Sinclair Broadcasting. Screw all that, I’m a Sox fan in 2020

Hey I hear Webster is revising the definition of “Faustian bargain” to include the App Store. nytimes.com/2019/05/30/techn… Right or wrong, the App Store is Apple’s playground. They can shut you down basically whenever they want and that’s what you agree to when you sell apps there.

These are the very same agencies that law enforcement says we can trust with a “master key” to unlock all our devices. nytimes.com/2019/05/25/us/ns….

App developers are sharecroppers on Apple’s farm. At the height of its power in the 90’s even Microsoft didn’t have this much power over its developer “partners”. nytimes.com/2019/04/27/techn…

Face ID on my phone is generally amazing. It recognizes me in all lighting, with or without glasses, from a fairly wide angle. But the one thing that is guaranteed to mess it up is raindrops on my glasses. I can take the glasses off and it works, but with drops? Forget it.

Ok, I’ve been basically boycotting Twitter for about a year now, but I had to tweet this. I asked Siri to play “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King by Dave Matthews Band” and this is the response I got 😂

Encrypted iTunes backup helps a lot, but in spite of that it’s not a pleasant process. It doesn’t spare you the 40 times you need to enter your Apple credentials. Plus all the flaky crap that happens after the restore with various apps.

The new XS Max vs the old 8 Plus. Physically the XS is slightly smaller but with a much larger screen.

“If your job listings look like a Markov chain from the front page of HackerNews, what kind of developer is this attracting to your organization?” — LOL blog.0x74696d.com/posts/soft…

I don’t disagree, but this is just too rich coming from someone who was hounding Rod Rosenstein a couple of weeks ago to end the Mueller investigation. politico.com/story/2018/07/2…

WTF @amazon? The Kindle app on my MBP causes the discrete GPU to turn on. It hasn’t even got a fancy page turn animation so why would this be necessary. Basically halves battery life for no good reason. Therefore, I bought the book from the iBooks Store instead 👅💦.

(2/2): that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

The oath of office for Congress (1/2): I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;