I know, I says to myself, I'll update my Mac to Catalina. It's been out for a while, and lots of bugs likely fixed by now.

Right?

Mail.app is a shitshow. Data loss with empty message bodies. I've never been more annoyed at an OS update in my life. In a nutshell, I've experienced what is described here. Perfect storm of Microsoft Exchange and a local Mail rule to move messages to a local folder.

The "fix" is to move away from local folders and rules. Instead, create a rule on the Exchange server to move the email to a folder before Mail.app downloads anything. If I hadn't stumbled across that, I would have thrown my laptop in the ocean restored Mojave from backup.

So there's two hours of my life I'm never getting back. Thanks Apple for the stellar quality control.

A couple weeks back I mentioned our summer heat. It's been particularly warm even for us. And then yesterday we broke the record for July 30th, tipping the mercury at 118°. What is even happening?

They say your Bond is the one you grew up with. And for me that's Roger Moore. Bond movies of that era really are a time capsule. The scripts might not always hold up but oh boy are they still a fun ride.

Walking around Prescott, 2020. Love abandoned & decaying buildings.

This past weekend was the hottest so far this year.

Summers in the desert. pic.twitter.com/gL4OgAjyw3

— Kevin Spencer (@kevin_spencer) July 11, 2020

Not having any humidity is the key. For while it does hit you like an oven, you can stay outside for longer than you'd think before starting to sweat. Compare that to the East Coast and, really, I don't know how people in Florida do it. Instantly drenched when you take three steps.

When it gets this hot, there are some fun outdoor cooking stories of course. This Reddit thread from r/phoenix has a couple good examples. From frying eggs in a pan, to baking cookies on your dashboard. The first one I've done, the second is a bloody fantastic idea.

While it's supposed to be our Monsoon Season, we haven't had any rain since April 11th. And no fun lightning storms to watch.

North Mountain, Phoenix.

John Gruber had a post on Woodrow Wilson's racism.

It’s absolutely flabbergasting to compare these basic facts to what I learned about Woodrow Wilson in high school, which was more or less just the facts of World War I and that Wilson’s spearheading of the League of Nations was noble.

What we're taught in school vs reality is something I've thought about for a while. In England it was no different of course. No mention of the negative side of empire building. No mention of atrocities, no mention of the role in the slave trade.

A few weeks back the statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colsten was torn down. My immediate reaction was "who?". Which is a terrible thing to admit, but that part of history was just skipped over in the classroom.

Years ago I read Howard Zinn's A People's History Of The United States which paints a rather different story of how America was settled. The genocide of the Native American people in stark contrast to the glorification of history in print and on screen.

Learning about what actually happened is really important. The more of this we can teach in schools, the more each generation can tear down monuments both figuratively and literally. Public holidays, building names, flags, and statues celebrating crimes against humanity should not be tolerated.