Notices by Merlin Mann (hotdogsladies@mastodon.social), page 4

It was a different time.

Ca. 1994, there was an older fella in the Tallahassee Mac user group who could be a good resource for troubleshooting newbie problems that weren't tackled by the BBS.

He was nice enough, but he was definitely a weird, crotchety old guy.

Point is, at meetings, he would often make a rather belligerent point of reminding everyone to never call him before noon.

Because "that's when I do my downloading."

I still think about this, and it's a phrase I often consider adding to my own vernacular.

@Antiqueight

Also to your earlier point, I know he has a VERY strong point of view in everything he does (it’s specifically why I love his work), but I also think this one is unusual in how it frames what he has to work with.

Which is a mountain of uncanny “b roll” footage that, in retrospect, reveals so much about the lives of ordinary people just trying to do ordinary people things.

@Antiqueight

I so agree.

The way they follow people like the little girl and the abortion-seeking woman and the woman on trial has so much more impact when their stories are interleaved with other stories.

@Antiqueight

I dunno how deep you’ve gone with Adam Curtis’s stuff (there’s a lot of it), but at the risk of saying the most obvious thing imaginable, don’t miss “HyperNormalisation” (2016)

https://youtu.be/yS_c2qqA-6Y?si=5KSKGogMUOOslOg9

@Antiqueight

I mean. Editors make decisions and that’s how we tell stories. But I get you.

I’m also just a big fan of footage people shot but never expected anybody to see or use.

Still. Could have used more Yeltsin dancing.

@Antiqueight

Apparently was way worse than any of us realized.

And the crazy part about the series, it’s almost completely BBC archival footage, and no voiceover – just LETTERS on screen

It's astonishing what Adam Curtis can accomplish by starting with nothing but archival footage.

What a terrific storyteller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_1985–1999:_TraumaZone

I feel like iCloud Drive and I have very different interpretations of the word "sync."

Troubleshooting, summarized:

If, for some reason, iCloud Drive seems not to be syncing correctly, all you have to do is log in and out of iCloud, run some commands in the Terminal, re-download or re-upload many gigabytes of files, and then simply do it again whenever you want it to actually sync.

It's basically like having a hard drive. Only the hard drive is a Fiat someone drove into a river a couple times.

Several people are typing.

First.