The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Back-up solutions August 16, 2020

Anyone had the unpleasant sinking feeling you get when an external hard drive which you back-up files to falls off a desk? I’ve had that experience twice this year. The first when the drive was in operation and hooked up to a computer and where it failed outright once it hit the floor. The second only the other day when one fell to the ground perhaps fourteen inches onto a fake wood floor. It wasn’t on and survived to tell the tale – at least to judge from Apple’s diagnostic suite. Not that I’ll ever entirely rely on that drive again.

But I’ve found myself getting a lot more cautious about back up solutions in the last decade or so. From being something that I airily dismissed as necessitating only a high capacity USB with my most ‘important’ files to – having had a computer fail on me – and losing files through simple neglect (perhaps most stupidly picture files from research I had done), I’m now near paranoid with two 4TB drives that I back-up to regularly – at least once a week. Now in truth part of that is due to remote working and the need to be absolutely 100% on top of things but even before that I was getting more rigorous.

Still, the reason I bring this up is that drive that fell 14 inches or so. Anyone had that experience? I’m presuming the fact it wasn’t in operation was the key determinant for it surviving, that and sheer luck?

Cottagecore? August 15, 2020

Huh? Recently the creature offered the opinion that the interior of a house was brilliant because it was a cross between cottagecore and minimalism. WTF? I’d never heard of cottagecore, but it is most definitely a thing. Apparently it celebrates traditional skills and crafts…

According to wiki it is

 ..related to similar nostalgic aesthetic movements such as grandmacore, farmcore, goblincore and faeriecore.^[1]  According to its proponents, the ideas of cottagecore can help to satisfy a popular desire for “an aspirational form of nostalgia” as well as an escape from many forms of stress and trauma.^[1] The New York Times termed it a reaction to hustle culture and the advent of personal branding.

Okay I kind of like at least half of those ‘cores’.

Not only but also:

The movement gained further traction in many online spheres and on social media due to the mass quarantining in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.^{[2]  [3]} Accordingly, it has been described by The Guardian as a “visual and lifestyle movement designed to fetishize the wholesome purity of the outdoors.”^[2] It emphasizes simplicity and the soft peacefulness of the pastoral life as an escape from the dangers of the modern world.^[4]

That’s me and popular culture waving farewell. I am now well behind the curve.

Though one thing caught my eye, in the extended definition of cottagecore… “traditional skills and crafts such as foraging, baking and pottery,”are mentioned.

Foraging they say. Useful if the creature could be persuaded to do some of that.

Ahead of his time… August 15, 2020

TonyWilson that is. Reading this piece in the Guardian about his early 2000s online music venture, music33 where MP3s would be sold on the internet, it’s difficult not to concur with a quote at the end of the piece that notes:

Yet his pioneering role in the digital music adventure deserves recognition. For Allison, the spirit of music33 lives on in Bandcamp, not iTunes. “Because they’ve worked out a way for artists to keep their work and still turn a profit. Such business thinking didn’t exist at the time. Wilson was way ahead but there was no structure for his ideas. He was like Nostradamus.”

One does not have to buy into his often robust myth-making (on his own part) to feel that this was one time he was well ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, despite the logo (design by Peter Saville – natch!) and some money, the tech wasn’t quite up there with the ambition. The description of what was on offer is both charming and indicative of why it didn’t actually work.

Arriving in summer 2000, music33 developed a barmy way of protecting clients’ tracks. Songs purchased came in a PDF; users tapped in a password to play the music. “I’m still trying to understand it even now,” Clarke chuckles. Pre-broadband dial-up internet was so slow that “you’d plug in a modem to download one track, which could take 15 minutes,” says Clarke. Music33 featured a little robot avatar named Howie, who explained how to use the site. Wilson’s plan to get Keith Allen to do its voice never came off.

Worse there was no means at the time of making ‘micro-payments’ of the 33 pence a track might cost, and it took ages to download a music file, and there weren’t great MP3 players and on it went.

But the fact it was tried at all is fascinating (and of course it wasn’t the only one) and hardly surprising Apple with vast resources and know-how swept in on both the supply side and the player side relatively shortly afterwards.

But the point about music being payable to musicians is particularly well made. And a thought, on Wilson’s wiki page, this project wasn’t mentioned prior to the Guardian article. I have the vaguest of memories of it myself.

Signs of Hope – A continuing series August 14, 2020

Gewerkschaftler suggested this recently:

I suggest this blog should have a regular (weekly) slot where people can post happenings at the personal or political level that gives them hope that we’re perhaps not going to hell in a handbasket as quickly as we thought. Or as the phlegmatic Germans put it “hope dies last”.

Any contributions this week?

Returning to economic normality… in…er…2022 August 14, 2020

What a telling statement from John FitzGerald in the IT recently.

It is when the economy returns to more normal behaviour, hopefully by 2022, and households begin to spend their savings, that the economy will experience a delayed stimulus and the Government will see a delayed temporary revenue boost.

I think that’s realistic, but two years of this limbo-like situation? Again, it would be no harm for someone in government to be saying it like it is.

Just one other thought, as noted by Pangurbán, FitzGerald isn’t wrong in arguing that ‘expanding the cycle-to-work scheme to cover bikes costing €1,250’ is a bit of an absurdity. I had a bicycle stolen last year and found the sums being thrown around re a new one on the current standard a little absurd, potentially adding on entirely unnecessary €100’s to the price. As he says, you can get a good bicycle for city travel for a fraction of that cost. €600 or thereabouts is entirely feasible. And I think he’s right about another aspect, the money saved there would be much better spent on establishing ‘bike parks at commuter stations’.

That new dispensation in the North…. August 14, 2020

Have to agree with Newton Emerson for once, where in a recent column he notes that:

It is fitting that the North-South Ministerial Council reconvened in Dublin Castle last Friday for its first full meeting since November 2016.

Of all the institutions of the Belfast Agreement, the council most closely reflects John Hume’s vision. Stormont is the least relevant in this respect, despite its prominence in how the peace process is judged.

As Emerson notes, following the failure of reform in Northern Ireland internally, and responsibility which Emerson correctly ascribes ‘overwhelmingly’ to unionism, Hume sought not a local settlement but one which encompassed the whole island. Hence the Council of Ireland in 1973 and later the AIA and so on. Interestingly Emerson argues that of the three strands of the GFA/BA – the Executive/Assembly, the NSMC and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, the latter was meant to ‘fade away’ with Stormont acquiring more power and the NSMC also expanding its remit from the original six areas of cooperation. That said in the years since the GFA/BA was implemented (more rather than in full) little growth has been seen on the NSMC front.

And I cannot fault Emerson when he writes:

The danger of Stormont for nationalists is that it becomes the natural focus of all Northern Ireland politics, to the extent of creating an internal settlement.

If a fraction of the care put into maintaining devolution was shown to the North-South Ministerial Council, it still has the potential John Hume imagined.

It’s hardly a stretch to see a situation develop in the next ten years or so where that focus remains in NI and the NSMC has little particular life. Particularly given the aversion FF has to such matters. Yet the GFA/BA explicitly is about building on the NSMC.

BTW the EU has gone AWOL in Emerson’s analysis completely. Ah well.

There’s another point riffing on Emerson’s article that is perhaps pertinent. His point that the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference would fade away is perhaps worth reflecting on. Assume that at some point an agreed Ireland springs into being. How would that work and what if elements of political unionism were participating in that as part of an Irish government – say propping up one of the larger parties?

And speaking of the BIIC, check out the pattern of meetings.

Safety last: Health, wealth, workers rights August 14, 2020

Anyone following this story? That being the testimony at the Oireachtas Committee on COVID-19 and in particular the issue of meat processing plants? Prior notice for most HSA inspections until recently, an industry warning of price increases if testing isn’t quick enough, a workforce understandably ‘petrified’ of catching the disease, where 9 in 10 have no access to sick pay, where too many are forced to share accommodations, but also near uniquely unwilling to talk to the media or unions for fear of ‘retribution’. And the HSA is not notified as of a course when workers catch the virus. Could it be worse?

It could.

Mr Ennis also told TDs about some workers who were tested positive and brought to the CityWest facility in May, but who did not give contact tracing information because they did not understand what they were being asked or they were afraid they would put another worker out of the workplace.  

All told an exceedingly ugly situation where oversight appears insufficient and partial and it seems business is just business.

Where is public or workers health in all this?

Safety first August 13, 2020

Thought this was good, a piece on how safe or otherwise offices are. But note this:

How safe are offices? It depends on how they are laid out, cleaned and ventilated. The open plan office had a bad health reputation long before Covid-19. People working in them took as much as 62 per cent more sick leave than those in more private spaces, studies showed.

In some ways, like schools, part of the problem is where the status quo ante has left us. Wrong headed, almost punitive, approaches have left matters in an absolutely desperate place.

Part of the problem, and the article notes this, is that there’s so little we know, even now, almost half a year later. For example:

A recent article in the Lancet argued the “chances of transmission through inanimate surfaces is very small” before adding that “erring on the side of caution” was wise.

Big time.

I take the stairs every day when not remote working:

So far the stairs look safer. There is less chance of getting sneezed on and there is no need to touch buttons. But, happily for people in 30-storey buildings, there is some evidence the virus does not spread easily in an elevator.

Masks are very useful, but temperature tests are not. And the office canteen? Best to give it a miss it seems.

Brave new world of work.

Political structures struggle August 13, 2020

I’ve a little sympathy for the issue discussed here in the IT this last week. A piece that examines the divisions within the Green Party.

The mostly young members of the Just Transition Greens have been criticised for their unwavering commitment to their personal beliefs and written off by others as idealists – unwilling or unfit for compromise.

To many, holding true to one’s principles is a mark of admirable conviction and integrity, but as with most things in life, perception is subjective.

Instead of dismissing the voices of this next generation of activists and political leaders, shouldn’t we be asking why party political structures can’t accommodate them?

And yet I wonder is that quite the problem? Because on the face of it one would think the sheer spread of options for party political homes is now so varied that some formation or another would offer a congenial enough option. And if that wasn’t the case why not build something new. For all that one might complain about the lack of power of the left there’s plenty of room at this point for really a remarkably wide range of groups and parties to co-exist, right up to and including national level.

And not just parties. Emma DeSouza notes that she has benefited from not being party political herself in various campaigns. That option also exists too, right up to and including national level. Indeed one can be within electoral politics while being outside party politics.

And Just Transition Greens themselves are an intriguing hybrid. Of, but not in, the GP, and the broader environmental movement. Isn’t JTG itself precisely the sort of vehicle that offers one way forward? Perhaps.

I’m slightly less convinced that party political discourse is, as she argues ‘made up of slinging mud at the opposition’. That’s a part of it, but so is holding the executive to some account, even if that account is only rhetorical much of the time. That’s a necessary function in a democracy, never more so than now too. Of course one can do that as an Independent – though there’s an issue with Independents not being beholden to anyone but themselves. That’s problematic.

I’m also not sure how the following could be effected.

I hope that the departure of many committed young people from Ireland’s political arena will be taken as an invitation to reform party politics and institutions.

What precise reforms are expected? Think of Aontú that critiqued the supposed ‘groupthink’ of the other parties, particularly SF, but simultaneously places one issue at its heard in such a way that that issue cannot be touched in any manner. Or to put it a different way, ‘reforming’ party politics might suffer from unintended consequence.

There’s a broader aspect too, all too familiar to us on the left, which is that the world is, self-evidently, imperfect and that that will be reflected in social and political relations including those formations seeking to improve it (to whatever degree). We don’t expect the political world to be anything other than alienating – though paradoxically I suspect many of us have found engagement with that world central to a broader comradeship, friendship with others and our own well-being and sense of self. The challenge sharpens us, and is necessary. So perhaps it is a case of acknowledging the challenge, sometimes the sheer hopelessness of what we seek to achive but keeping at it even (especially) in the face of that.

I hope that those mentioned in the article are working their way towards a similar conclusion. There’s few enough contesting the currently dominant paradigms. We can’t afford to lose any.