Much has been written in the last 75 years about how the U.S. gained an edge in the Pacific in World War II when the Japanese code was broken. In recent weeks it turns out I may have been trying to recreate that feat, and have begun to understand the challenges those skilled codebreakers faced.
Standardization is a good thing. Forced standarization can appear beneficial, too. But the two are not the equivalent. Consider the increasingly ubiquitous USB Type-C cable.
This will be short because everything it says is so obvious. Do you follow the news? The allegedly shoo-in candidates for their respective parties’ presidential nomination have less principle and morals than a mosquito.
I’ve always been a fan of smoking, as long as that refers to smoking delicious meats. Barbecuing and related culinary feats let us taste summer. This year, though, is a year of strange smoke.
We are now an entirely gossip-based society. My old friend Mark pointed me to the latest outrage.
T-Mobile managed to do what a massive rebrand and years of advertising couldn’t do. They’ve managed to make the thought of dealing with my cable company, Spectrum, seem appealing.
It is my fervent hope that Our Lord’s admonition to love our enemies does not apply to corporations. If it does, I’m sunk. There are things I hate as much as I hate the entity that calls itself Frontier Communications, but there is nothing that I despise more. I suspect that the company is corrupt; I know it is incompetent.
One of my favorite products is, of all things, a small piece of fabric. This strip of material I ran across during my jump into the Mac world two decades ago is something I now use every day. As ridiculous as that may sound, RadTech’s Optex products tend to sell themselves: usually if I show someone what it does and how well it works, RadTech ends up with another customer.
Climbing up the hill in 80-degree heat and impressive humidity today, I couldn’t help but think how today felt like this time 49 years ago. Most of you won’t remember it, but that was a time when the air was electric with news about Richard Nixon, and doubt whether he would be president of the United States much longer.
Twitter has changed its name to “X.” The way that change reverberated from newsrooms to dining rooms was revealing. It shows how dangerously dependent our society has become on this one, privately owned soapbox.