Why Apple’s New Font Won’t Work On Your Desktop.

Link actually goes to a comment on how to switch it back to a less shit font which is not easy in the Apple world.

Even Apple is “optimizing” the desktop for phones and tablets. Why do this?

This is a great line about John Dewey.

In fact, he believed in liberal education. This is something that has largely been abandoned in the modern debate about education. Now it is all about how we can create more STEM graduates, as if all we need is better technology and the rest of our culture can just rot.

Of course this attitude extends from the plutocratic focus of our society, but it has been fully imbibed by nearly everyone so it’s hard to see, much less question.

STEM is non-threatening (as it has no ideology, nor the real possibility of one) so that is the main reason it is championed – that, and it leads directly to profits for those already wealthy.

The humanities, however, are dangerous to the elites so there is much propaganda about their uselessness and soft-headedness.

Funny, though, I bet if you ask people what the best time they’ve had in their lives, the vast, vast majority of those experiences would be pegged firmly in the realm of the humanities.

But we’ve chosen what kind of society we will have, and that is a faux laissez faire fascistic dystopia.

For the most part, and even though I’ve done some of it myself, I think this sort of bashing of the Baby Boomers is over the top.

However, one thing about that cohort is true: they grew up in the time of greatest prosperity the nation had ever seen, decided that it was good enough for them – and only them – and then pulled up the ladder behind them.

That is the inexcusable part, and it is generational as far as I can tell. The stats show this.

That ladder-pulling I can’t grasp, as it harms their very own children and grandchildren.

Saying, “I deserve my Medicare and Social Security but my daughter and son do not” is the worst kind of selfishness, but seems very common – in statement or in action – in that generation.

I’m not a dog person. I don’t really understand them and will never belong  to the club of people who feels much of anything in common with dogs.

But what’s great about literature is that it can make you feel and be things that would never be possible if you didn’t read.

Literature humanized me. Reading did that. Without that, who knows what I’d be. Probably terrible. Or at least more terrible.

Reading this, I understood what people get out of dogs, what dogs mean to them.

I wouldn’t add it to my ten best, but it is a great essay, and does all the things that great essays do.

Recommended.