It’s gonna be a long day. A travel day for me, made extra long by Southwest’s inscrutable new schedule of flights from the Left Coast to Louisville. This summer, you pretty much can’t get to Louisville from CA any earlier than 9pm. I’m landing at 1am local time, after balancing total travel time, cost, connections, and arrival time. Way past bedtime in either time zone. But SW’s macro-schedules are like the seasons…just wait 3-4 months and they’ll change.

Surveying the news this morning things sure seem grim. Are grim. Republicans plotting revenge on the Jan 6 Committee – they’re very angry at truth being told, at being called out. Russia and Ukraine locked in a deadly war with no end in sight. Republicans hate Democrats who hate them back. The American economy struggling to find a new balance after 2+ years of pandemic disruption, with most Americans blaming anyone in sight for troubles that took years to develop. More mass shootings, every day. Another young black person unnecessarily gunned down by angry police (what would have been wrong with just letting the guy run away after he left his vehicle?). Liberals and conservatives each convinced that the others are monsters based on their beliefs about conception and body autonomy. Trump and his unhinged followers waiting in the wings for the next elections, lurking like some ancient evil eager to be unleashed on the world.

I could go on, but that’s plenty. Has it always been this way, or is this just a particularly rough time for the world? Each of these conflicts, each issue, seem intractable by themselves. Taken together they’re overwhelming.

Trying to think clearly about all this, the smart thing to do is disengage from the bad news stream and focus on what/who I can affect positively – myself and just a few others around me. Disengaging from the news is harder than one might think – I’m an info junkie, prideful about being well-informed. But all that news is driving me into a dark place.

I suppose the bottom line is that even while the world seems hell-bent on self-destruction, I don’t have to follow suit. Hunker down, do something creative and fulfilling, try to make a small positive difference and let the rest go. If the world’s chaos and conflict come to my little corner (as they have to the Ukraine), deal with it then. It’s not much of a plan, but it’s what I’ve got.

It’s the 4th of July weekend and the beginning of a birthday week/month for me. With all that to look forward to, I can’t seem to get motivated to do…anything. I had a productive day yesterday, but today is a bust. Total couch potato.

The weather in Socal is perfect right now. Sunny and cooler than normal for July. Still bone dry, but at least cool. Even so, no fireworks in Fallbrook tonight – have to go to the coast to see those. Too much fire danger inland.

I’m getting burned out on reading – maybe I need to start writing again. Next weekend’s Imaginarium conference oughta be a good catalyst.

I’ve been looking forward to my trip to Louisville. Then I looked at the 10-day forecast. Yikes.

That’s ugly. 90+ degrees and 70+% humidity every day.

Had an interesting discussion about bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general with a couple of friends last night. It got a little tense, as the only way I could answer certain questions was with deeply technical concepts. I mean, how do you explain that this particular cryptocurrent (bitcoin) isn’t really encrypted, but uses the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) to sign (assign ownership) a coin? Anyway, this morning I found a good article that lays it out in mostly-plain-English terms. Bitcoin and crypto have become semi-religious topics for a weird mix of conservatives, criminals, investors speculators, and anti-government types. They believe, but they don’t understand the details. For me, the only detail worth remembering is that cryptocurrency (especially bitcoin) is a Ponzi scheme, suitable for speculators (gamblers) and not much else.

Speaking of technical, I really enjoyed this article comparing the Apple M1 and M2 CPUs. 20 billion transistors for the M2 – that’s incredible. When I entered digital tech in college, we worked with the Motorola MC6800, with a whopping transistor count of 4100. The M2 has five million times (!!) as many transistors as my old 6800. Makes me feel old…but proud of my fellow engineers.

Let’s start the day with a political cartoon. I can’t wait until Life imitates this particular Art.

As if the Supremely Wrong Court isn’t doing enough damage lately, Arizona just decided to kill all the public schools in their state. AZ will pay families $7000 per child if/when they’re pulled from public schools. Insanity. How long will it take for a pack of for-profit non-schools to spin up, ready to take the money and not teach the kids much of anything? Or for poor families with 3-4 kids to do the math and say “pay me”, then send their kids to a low-cost day care rebranded as a school? Or just keep the money and homeschool them via Youtube or Masterclass. Nice job, AZ. I can’t think of a worse way to harm the next generation, so I guess you win the contest for “worst decision in the world today”.

I’m thankful that I’m reading a good book today. I need the escape.