Awkward technology moment: It’s getting more frustrating to use my iPad relative to my Microsoft Surface for general tasks and I’m contemplating letting the iPad fade away.
Speaking as someone who’s used the iPad since its release and upgraded numerous times of the years (and enthusiastically so), feels odd to be finding it more and more unhelpful.
Still can’t be beat for touch interface, creativity, and media consumption – But a lot of everyday tasks don’t seem to go smoothly. :/
Okay, geeking out here a little on political governance –
And Sarah Isgur (among other stellar things, editor of SCOTUSblog) skillfully untangles, in a fresh and witty way, the loosely 100-year distending of our U.S. political system in about 10 minutes of conversation.
Have a listen as she speaks to the trio of The Fifth Column podcast (YouTube channel) which “The Algorithm” served up recently:
Be content that you are not yet a saint, even though you realize that the only thing worth living for is sanctity. Then you will be satisfied to let God lead you to sanctity by paths that you cannot understand.
-Thomas Merton in New Seeds of Contemplation (chapter 8)
Definitely intrigued by this new entrant to the RSS Reader app world – Current.
One of the core tenets of their philosophy:
“You step in whenever you like, read what catches your eye, and step out when you’re done.”
One-time purchase price of $9.99 across all Apple platforms – May have to check it out.
This looks interesting: Theoretical physicist Brian Greene explains “time” at five different levels of understanding:
One of the most pernicious side effects of video-review challenge culture is its effect on school and youth sports. At the highest level we have reinforced the idea that every call is important, or worse, that the standard should be 100% accuracy, when not even the robots themselves are 100% accurate.
The pursuit of perfection flies in the face of a critical lesson sports should teach. Which is: In competition, stuff happens. Sometimes people get it right, sometimes people get it wrong, but it usually evens out. Learning to accept this rhythm is a critical part of being an adult.
from WSJ, Who Will Yell at the Robot Umpires? by Jason Gay, 26 Mar 2026
Great to start off with a series win, and also to see the new team pull together in good ways: Not giving up from trailing 0-4 in the 4th, stringing together hits that lets a three-run homer narrow the gap, good fielding, Baz settling in as starter after rocky beginning, picking up another rally kicked off by Alonso, and a closer who could keep it tight. Seeing (to my limited eye) good decisions and timing on Albernaz’s part. Still early, but maybe good things ahead for this season. 😃⚾️
Random factoid for today:
“Across 24 studies, college students who took handwritten notes were 58 percent more likely to get A’s in their courses than those who typed notes on laptops.”
The Screen That Ate Your Child’s Education, by Jean M. Twenge for the NYT.
(via Field Notes blog, 11 Feb 2026 post)
Orioles Opening Day Lineup
Orioles Opening Day Roster
All writing is re-writing.
Heard recently, can’t remember from whom. But great reminder.
Apple’s new MacBook Neo - A smart product play for them, and I gotta say I’m partial to citrus. ;)
Although I’ve only followed him tangentially, each time I’ve come across a recording or a writing of Ben Sasse, I’ve always found something highly thoughtful and incisive.
With this video, I learned he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer last fall and his life is being only prolonged by the clinical trial he fought to be enrolled in.
But his observations do not disappoint, on death, on where America is today and what it needs, on how to live and not live, on regrets, and on aspirations.
Lifting you and your family up in prayer Mr. Sasse, and us all into the eternal hands of the Father.
So the world of personal finance apps (and our use/ dis-use of them) has evolved over the years. I used to be a HUGE fan of Mvelopes, but they sadly didn’t make the transition out of Javascript. And I really wanted to like YNAB after that, but as powerful and streamlined as their approach seemed to be, after countless attempts, I just couldn’t get to the finish line with it.
Right now Monarch has got my attention – perhaps this one will actually deliver on the promise.
And I just recently discovered that Quicken did make the leap to the cloud, though I’m not an Intuit fan and not anxious to send money their way. (I feel like Intuit was originally expecting Mint to take over from Quicken Desktop, but I guess they decided against that.)
The story continues … and may post an update here once formed opinion on the above.
From WSJ 22 Feb 2026, “Wall Street’s Latest Bet Is on ‘HALO’ Companies With AI Immunity”
After a three-year love affair with anything related to artificial intelligence, U.S. investors are flocking to the factory owners, fast-food restaurants and commodity companies that have seemingly strong odds of surviving the technological revolution intact.
Call it the AI immunity trade, HALO—for “heavy assets, low obsolescence”—or just another iteration of the jitters that have periodically rippled through markets since the AI investing boom began. The winners include McDonald’s, Exxon Mobil XOM 2.36%increase; green up pointing triangle and tractor maker Deere DE -2.36%decrease; red down pointing triangle. Left behind are the perceived potential victims of the AI revolution, a list that has ranged from wealth managers to software firms. …
The Oura Ring provides you with a “sleep score” so you can track how well you, um, slept (yes, you read that right). But before you shell out $500 (yes, you read that right), there’s another way to approach this head-scratcher. It’s called “seeing how you feel.” Here’s how it works: If you wake up in the morning and feel like roadkill, you didn’t sleep well; if you feel like dew-kissed grass on a bright spring morning, you did.
Strapping a FitBit on your wrist is like slapping reading glasses on the James Webb Space Telescope — it’s a solution in search of a problem. Our bodies have been honed over millions of years, stress-tested over millennia in every conceivable way. We’re good here, folks.
The health tech crew has found a way to monetize our heartbeat, God b less ’em. But there’s another way. Nicholas Thompson writes about his experience turning off his smartwatch during an ultramarathon: “I stopped worrying about everything I normally worry about and instead tried to imagine that I was a young boy, bounding through the forests of New England, where I grew up. I let go of my concerns about time, my heart rate and cadence. I didn’t worry how many miles had passed or how many there were to go. … I knew I had learned an entirely new way to run.” Turns out, it’s the old way. And it sounds a lot like freedom and fun.
Zach Przystup in Baltimore Sun in 19 Feb 2026 op-ed
Okay, think I’m gonna try the new MASN streaming service to catch the O’s this season ⚾
And if I’m reading right, signing up by Mar 22 also gets you MLB.TV, which would be great – the Season Pass plan is $99 and can be activated from the MASN subscription page.
Let’s Go O’s! 😀
Reposting this from @manton:
Stunning quote in this report from The New York Times about Meta’s plans to add facial recognition to their Ray-Bans: “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”
😦
How is it that Thomas Merton could have in 1961 so accurately nailed modern society?:
The great temptation of modern Man is not physical solitude, but immersion in the mass of other men … escape into the great formless sea of irresponsibility, which is the crowd. There is actually no more dangerous solitude than that of the man who is lost in a crowd, who does not know he is alone and who does not function as a person in a community either.
Where men live huddled together without true communication, there seems to be greater sharing, and a more genuine communion. But this is not communion, only immersion in the general meaninglessness of countless slogans and clichés repeated over and over again so that in the end one listens without hearing and responds without thinking. The constant din of empty words and machine noises, the endless booming of loudspeakers end by making true communication and true communion almost impossible. Each individual in the mass is insulated by thick layers of insensibility. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t hear, he doesn’t think. He does not act, he is pushed. He does not talk, he produces conventional sounds when stimulated by the appropriate noises. He does not think, he secretes clichés.
(from New Seeds of Contemplation, in chapter titled Solitude is not Separation)
Biscotti are my kryptonite … although I’m not sure what that makes my superpower … :/
Do some main character stuff …
