Very excited… have confirmed that hashtags placed in notes in Kindle import to Obsidian smoothly… a game changer for organizing highlighted material when imported!

First notes…

228.4 lbs

… read two depressing articles in The Economist yesterday… one a broad discussion of how the United States might loose its democratic government, the other a discussion of how 45 stands a good chance of becoming president again, should he decide to run… i imagine he will… he has too many scores to settle… and, just like that, we are an authoritarian government… the news out of the Biden/Harris administration isn’t good… one wonders if Mitch McConnel will step in… perhaps he will help with voting rights… i struggle to maintain hope that things will turn out well…

… yesterday i began, after first notes, by reading a book rather than articles in my feed… it was a much more satisfying way to begin the day and i will do it again today…

… i have made the change over to Obsidian as my main writing app… i am refining my use of drafts as a note taking throughout the day app… yesterday, i reorganized the location of apps on my phone to reflect the apps i most use… i am feeling i have a near perfect suite of tools…

… we watched Don’t Look Up… it seemed an utterly useless movie… i understood it’s satire, it’s metaphor, but i suppose it hit too close to home on the stupidity of humankind and the present moment without offering anything that might compel change… i don’t find the present moment in time a laughing matter… H really liked it and claimed i don’t understand satire, and, as she often does, that i have no sense of humor… i have a good if somewhat dry sense of humor, but humor isn’t really what is called for in this moment…

… probably many of you, but not me… i have figured out how to get the best of both worlds and it involves a feature of Obsidian that i just stumbled on, which is ‘open in default app’… yesterday, as i was poking around, i clicked on it and low and behold, Ulysses opened up and was displaying the page i had just been working on!… i must have been asked what my ‘default app’ should be when i first installed Obsidian, but it was a complete surprise to me to discover the connection… so now, i start a page in Obsidian… open it in Ulysses and type away… post to Micro.blog when i am ready, tag it, etc… it continues to reside in Obsidian which becomes the archive upon which all the mapping magic can happen… what bliss!…

… i am sitting here contemplating the use of Obsidian as the primary journaling and note taking app, cutting and pasting over to Ulysses when i want to publish something… the reason to do this is to make use of Obsidian’s ability to interconnect things and display a map of those connections… this in turn will make it easier to see relationships in the stream and develop them into… what?… more full blown and refined writing about the relationship nodes… a journaling process meant to surface connections and relationships that are easy to follow… i do this in Ulysses through tagging… the question becomes, is it worth the extra steps to cut and paste into Ulysses for publication to Micro.blog… and, is this part of a shift away from the journal to blog direct posting and towards more considered and complete articles or posts?… what would be the value of this?… fewer posts?… more interest?… and there it is, a shift being contemplated partly because i want to see the structure of my meandering and partly because i want to arrive at content production that will be more interesting to others…

… and then i discover how hard it is to insert a link to a web page… it can be done with proper syntax but it is not an intuitive or easy process…

… i really want to find a use for Obsidian, but it just seems unnecessary complication for the thinking, reading and writing that i do and the way that i do it…

… sticking with Ulysses for everything for now…

… halloween… we are ready for the trick or treaters, except we never get very many… we bought good chocolate so we would be willing to eat what is left over… a stash that could last the year depending on how many come to our door tonight…

… no HCR meter this morning… she decided to take the night off… in her place i read a couple of articles in The Bulwark… the first is about standing up to bullies… Fox News and FN personality, Tucker Carlson are the bullies… Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger are viewed as standing up to the bullies… is it doing any good?… the good that needs doing is to ween the too-many-people swallowing Carlson’s bullshit off of the bullshit… really, at some point, the whole concept of opinion news built around personalities needs to be reigned in… news needs to go back to being news with standards of truth and fairness… personality opinion needs to be kept off the news so that it is not mistaken for news… i am sure this is free speech problematic, but there has to be away to reign in the flow of bad information and incendiary personalities…

… [the second](https://www.thebulwark.com/when-jesus-came-to-q/ “Lecaque, Thomas, When ‘Jesus” Came to Q, The Bulwark, October 29, 2021") was about a crazy Qanon conspiracy speech given by the actor who played Christ in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ… a film widely viewed as anti-Semitic as is MG… the degree of crazy in this country, at this moment, is astounding… i am very worried we are on the path to authoritarianism underpinned by this crazy… if it comes to pass, there will be chaos and abundant lives lost…

… a frustrating day yesterday… after having spent the entire day before cleaning the house and making dinner for K and D, i looked forward to Saturday being a me day where i got things done i wanted to do… it didn’t turn out that way… H wants to get a second wire crate so we could leave the dogs in crates and attend, last night, a birthday party… then there is setting it up… then there is laundering the dog beds… when i get down to the laundry room there is lots of water on the floor… drain pipes from the kitchen have sprung a leak… should i fix it myself?, or should i call the plumber… i decide to call the plumber because, the plumbing is a mess and needs to be done properly… shouldn’t cost that much and we will then be good to go into the distant future… but, because the plumbing is a problem we can’t do dishes and thus can’t cook, which means we have to order in for the weekend and the pot roast i bought on Friday needs to go into the freezer until we can cook a more elaborate meal…