■

I was playing around with the new macOS Sonoma aerial screensavers.

I noticed there doesn’t seem to be an official way to remove downloaded screensavers (about 500MB MOV files each, give or take). The only way is to go to the system folder where they’re stored and delete them manually.

I guess it’s time to dust off the wiki and wire these things down 📖

■

The World-Cancelling Sony WH-1000XM5

Last week, I got the Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless Noise-Canceling Headset 🎧. Nat works at a headset store, so deciding where to go was easy. I got to try on various headsets with two kinds of music I listen to often: Electronic and Classical. The Sony’s won by a large margin.

I still can’t get over the noise cancellation, which I now call “world canceling.” How good are they? Well, after a night out last weekend, I took the subway from New York Penn Station, a very busy transportation hub, back home. The “world cancellation” was so good that I couldn’t hear trains most of the time, only when they slowed down near the station. People moved their lips, but no voice came out. A homeless person gave me a jump scare by waving his hand in front of my face (I was looking at the tracks and didn’t see him). This was a bit unsettling, so I turned around to be more alert, using my eyes.

The headset is phenomenal. It cancels out firetrucks, yelling kids on a break from the nearby elementary school, and Obnoxious construction noises. It comes with an app that seamlessly allows switching from my iPhone to the Mac, depending on which device I’m using. I sure don’t miss having a messy long wire one bit. I’ve been spoiled, and I’m not going back 🎶.

The Sony WH-1000XM5. An all-black, over the ear headset. My hand holds it by the head band, my screen blurred in the background.

■

Before I got my new MacBook, one of my worries was having it plugged to power 24/7. I do most of my work on it from home, and it’s plugged into a KVM switch to my external Monitor, Keyboard, and Mouse, along with my Windows PC.

a macOS window showing that the battery charge is “on hold” and the battery is holding an 80% charge. Below, a couple of more options to choose from, including battery settings.

Today, I noticed the above window for the first time (it shows up after you click the battery and charger icon in the top menu), and it was odd to see my battery is only at 80%. Alarmed, I checked Apple’s documentation about this. It turns out not only there’s no issue with leaving the battery connected to power 24/7 (per research I did previously), but macOS expects it from my habits and allows the battery to discharge to a certain level to keep it healthy.

■

Two in one, or as a previous manager used to say: “two for five!” finishing the photoblog challenge, a bit behind.

September photo 📷 challenge day 29 Constrast A black and white photo of a New York City office building at night, with some windows lit and most dark. A fluff of smoke is caught in the foreground.

Above: Taken in manhattan, caught some smoke as well in the picture.

Below: our “treasure:” chocolate covered orange peels, espresso beans, cherries, and almonds. Life Forst Gump, we never know what we’re going to get when we have one 🍫

September photo 📷 challenge day 30 Treasure A glass jar filled with chocolates of different flavors, as expressed above. There’s a lamp in the background next to a Snake plant, providing yellow-orange light

■

September photo 📷 challenge day 28 Workout

Since COVID, I’ve started to exercise in my room. I’ve been exercising way more often this way than I ever did at the gym.

A dum-bell at the front, with another one close by. In the background, an orange yoga mattress. Even further away, against the wall, an over-the-door pull-up bar.

■

September photo 📷 challenge day 27 Embrace

After several days without sun, I was ready to go for a run and embrace the sun yesterday.

Crossing a metallic bridge, with the sun at the upper left. The railing are curved and stylish. A woman is walking ahead.

■

An Ordinary Wednesday

Good morning. The sun is finally out, after being out of sight for the last… I don’t know, four days? I actually got excited yesterday when it came out just in time for sunset in the evening. And to think I’m trying to get into Cyberpunk Red now, a game that is all about gray, depressing vibes…

Sipping my coffee in the kitchen at my usual spot (see day in the life) I was thinking about how much work I have to do, the usual sense of not doing enough.

It doesn’t matter how much I worked yesterday and to what extent (I was drained toward the evening); the self-judgment is still there. The guilt. Feeling like I’m a phony. If I dwell enough on these thoughts, they’d borrow in with flashes of the past.

I’m learning to make peace with these thoughts and try to let them be. There’s no satisfying them, so instead, I try to give them a nod of acknowledgment and do my best to ignore them for the rest of the day. Some days it works better than others. I think that being open about those thoughts might help: if I put these emotions out there openly, I can’t be a liar. I’m not really hiding anything.

That’s enough for now. I think I’ll get myself to go out for a run, get it out of the way, let the skin soak some sun, and take a refreshing shower afterward.

Happy Wednesday!

■

September photo 📷 challenge day 26 ** Beverage**

What, no coffee? I actually have a couple of favorites. Pictured here, is pomegranate juice, slightly carbonated. Perfect with a spicy grilled chicken sandwich.

In a jar, red liquid. It is pomegranate juice with a few bubbles from carbonation in it.
■

September photo 📷 challenge day 25 Flare

New Mexico, before the hot balloon ride, 2021.

### A man aiming a hot air balloon tortch into the inflating balloon to the right; there’s a big flame coming out bigger than the man itself. Another man is kneeling on the ground next to the balloon, holding it. The scene takes place in the desert. ###

■

Golda, 2023 - ★★★½

I read a review somewhere that Mirren can play many roles, but Israel's Golda Meir is not one of them. Bullshit.

Mirren is the gem of the movie. If you disconnect yourself from the history lesson angle and embrace the movie as a portrait of one of the strongest world leaders (say what you will, but she was the leader of a country during one of its worst wars), I think you'd appreciate how both women - the actress and the woman - mesh well together. It's the cast around Mirren (Heuberger specifically, as well as a couple of others) that don't rise to the occasion as I felt they should.

As an Israeli with an uncle who is a Yom Kippur war veteran and his big sister as my mother who lived through this war, I can tell you the movie doesn't stray much from facts. The yellings of the troops, the news blurbs, and even the curtain at Golda's apartment (my grandma had these) are real. Lots of details and effort were put into the movie to make sure it's as close to reality as possible.

I came out of the movie asking myself, who's this movie for? It's too real and too Israeli for the majority of the American public to relate to. It's too American and "Holywood" for Israelis to take it seriously. Perhaps the Jewish-American audience, who's looking for heroism from a passing era. Sad, but true.