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Suddenly Missing Mikhail Gorbachev
This morning while reading the news, I suddenly remembered about Mikhail Gorbachev. He’s still alive, which I didn’t know. His birthday was March 2th. He’s 92. I vividly remember his presidency and what he brought to Russia and the world. One big and hard lesson we’re currently learning is that we cannot take anything for granted regarding democracy. Does he know what’s happening in Ukraine? What’s his take on all this shit? I would love to see him in an interview. He certainly wasn’t perfect, but Russia seemed to have a much more prevalent “human side” under his tenure. Under Putin, I just want to puke. 🤮
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On West Europe Surprising Weak Stance
🧐⁉️ It’s surprising to see European countries’ weak stance against Russia and the dire situation in Ukraine. I mean, world war II is not that far in history after all. Doesn’t Germany remember anything from fascism or Hitler? What about Austria? Their inaction speaks for themselves. I would have thought they would be more proactive in supporting Ukraine and trying to prevent another European war, if not another world war. What will it take to make them change their action cadence? 😮
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About TAGS
🤨 Question of the day: are TAGS a sign of bad or weak content indexing in any computer-based systems? TAGS should be inferred, no?
#thinking #musing
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The Price To Pay
“(…) And we’re likely going to see skyrocketing prices if we did put a complete ban on oil.” — US treasury secretary
Well, what is the price of thousands and thousands of people dying, tortured, raped? I can live with rising energy prices. For fuck sake, support the oil and coal embargo against Russia NOW! We cannot escape any impact of this war without some form of sacrifice.
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On My (Lack of) Medium Readings
📖 This week, I received my revenues report from Medium for last year (for taxes purposes). I made less than 500 CAN$. It reminded me that I was a much more active publisher last year than now. My last publication on Medium was on February 12th.
This morning, I spent a few minutes on Medium. I can’t remember when was the last time I visited the homepage. I was curious about the web experience changes introduced since my last visit. Another reminder is that I don’t spend as much time on the platform as I used to.
I’m wondering if I should keep my Medium account. 🧐
#medium #reading #writing
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Two quick questions: how do you cope with what’s happening in Ukraine? Are you watching the news?
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When Apple Pivoted
Thanks to MacRumors, as reported today, I didn’t know today was the fifth anniversary of a special meeting between Apple’s top brass and select journalists to talk about Apple’s plans with the pro users and their commitment to the Mac.
At the time, we didn’t know how serious Apple’s upcoming pivot would be. In retrospective, Apple delivered and then some. It is simply a tour-de-force to flip the Mac product line upside down and bring power efficient, mighty and beautiful Mac designs. The Mac transition to Apple Silicon is probably the most important change to come to the Mac line since its inception in 1984.
I can’t wait to see what the next ten years will be made of.
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Europe's Future
“…the fate of the whole Eastern and Central Europe and the Black Sea region is being decided on the territory of Ukraine. Therefore, to protect the freedom of Ukraine and Ukrainians is to guarantee the security of Europe.”.
Nothing more to add, your honour.
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How Low Can They Go?
🇺🇦 What is it that Russia doesn’t like about life, love, freedom, everything that makes us humans? 😞
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It’s Was So Fun
This weekend I did some cleanup in my old papers and documents. I found an old bank account statement where I can see a withdraw transaction to help me pay for my Macintosh 128K in 1985: 3460.75 CAN$. 🤑 Ouch. I did some research to better document the time when I had a Macintosh SE while studying at the university and remembered about using Think Pascal, Prototyper and ResEdit to build a floppy disks indexer. That was before the Internet. It was so much fun. It’s gives you an idea how old I am. 😜
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On Ukrainian's
💥Today’s news about a possible attack by the Ukrainian army on Russia’s land is potentially game-changing in this war between Ukraine and Russia. A few thoughts.
First, Russia doesn’t have the exclusive right to use “Special Operation” when referring to war-related actions. Second and more seriously, Who did this? If indeed it is Ukraine, was it to test Russia’s defence? If so, Russia again failed miserably from a military perspective at protecting its territory as, surprisingly, helicopters didn’t face any shots from the ground. Is someone paying attention to the sky in Russia? Another point goes in the column of “weak army.” Mind blown. Or is it that Ukraine wants something else: drag Russia into war and force the West to intervene? Is this scenario too twisted?
What if it is Russia? I wouldn’t be surprised at a deliberate act to help build even more momentum and justify what they are doing against Ukraine. This momentum will be needed when Russia returns on the east front once they finish regrouping and replenishing their units.
The next few hours will be interesting to watch. 📺
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Already a Routine
🇺🇦 For over a month, Ukrainians have been fighting to defend themselves against the invaders. This is a watershed moment in history, happening just before our eyes. Sadly, we can already see the routine of war being in place. Emphasis on the events during the news bulletin is decreasing already. We are so easily bored. We will move on to the next crisis unless there is a significant turn of events. I’m so sorry for that. 😞
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🇺🇦 Another edition of my free monthly Introspection newsletter is out NOW. Get it here! Talked about themes are Apple, photography, privacy protection and climate change. This month, though, to help build awareness, I have many war-related tidbits on each of these themes. 🇺🇦
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Keep The Pressure on Putin
🤨 As diplomatic talks progress, don’t be fooled by Russian words. The only viable solution is for them to leave what was known as “Ukraine before 2014”. Nothing less. We must keep pressure on Putin and our respective governments! Oh, and why do we feel so bad about recent Biden’s words about Putin? I mean, a lot of people wish for much more than simply “not staying in power.”
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Killing Quality
🧐 Thought of the day: the narrative about having to publish on a regular basis to build an audience is killing content quality.
#musing #writing
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Is the Wind Slowly Turning?
💪🏻 Stalled or retreating troops. Low morale. Decreasing attacks. High casualties and losts. Retaken cities by Ukrainian troops. Odessa and Kyiv free with minimal damages. I’m not a military expert or a military pundit, but these signs point to a turning point. Let me hope for even brighter days ahead. 🙏🏻✌🏻
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Venting My Frustration About Microsoft Teams
It’s March 2022. Spring is finally here. Moreover, among us, Apple Silicon, first announced in June 2020 and massively available since November 2020. Furthermore, also available is Center Stage, a new feature introduced with the 2021 iPad Pro and now available on the MacBook Pro and more recently the Apple Studio display.
Here’s the thing. Microsoft Teams, currently at version 1.5 still isn’t supporting Center Stage and worst, Apple Silicon. Running Teams on any recent Mac is an execrable experience: slow, bad image quality (compared to Zoom for example) and consume far too much memory. How is it possible for a company the size of Microsoft who’s so slow to move and fix Teams? I don’t buy the argument about Teams being built with the Electron framework. The latter already supports the M1 chip. Microsoft is supposedly working on Teams version 2.0 which will be presumably built on WebView2. They’ve been working on this since June of last year.
It’s highly frustrating. Sorry for the bad mood, but Teams is one of the most used application for work giving me the right to vent my frustration.
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Feeling More Optimistic
😀 After reading the news this morning on the situation of the war in Ukraine, I feel more upbeat than usual. It appears that Russian advances in recent days and hours are very limited, except in the sky, but they don’t have sky supremacy yet. Far from it. Ukrainians are simply incredible at fencing one of the world’s most powerful (well, that’s what we thought) armies. 🇺🇦
It will take ages to recover from this mess, but I’ll take any ray of light in a heartbeat.
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Dear Mobile Apps Developers
Dear iOS developers, dear @Substack, when building screenshots for the App Store, show us your software, not the device on which it is running. Thank you. With love. The Direction.
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Discussing War Matters
🇺🇦🍽 I had this dinner yesterday night with some friends. The war in Ukraine subject came up. In fact, I brought it up, on purpose. As you might expect, I was adamant about our lack of support for the Ukrainian people. My point is that we must do much more even if we have to pay a price. I was emotional about it. Sure, it made my friends feel uneasy. I cannot envision a discussion about Ukraine without being passionate and emotional. 😒🖤
