Month: December 2024

Home automation and smart thermostats

Several years ago, when I first set up Apple Home, I saw it as one of those useless things that nerds do only for the entertainment of playing with gadgets. But I’ve changed my mind. It’s convenient, and it greatly adds to one’s security and peace of mind.

A few months ago, I replaced my two 15-year-old thermostats with smart thermostats. I anguished over the cost — about $650 — but I soon realized that I’d made a good decision. The heat pump works much better now. Temperatures in the house stay at the exact level at which the thermostats are set, rather than wavering two or even three degrees higher or lower that the thermostat’s setting. The new thermostats are much better at knowing when to use the heat pump’s electrical coils when it’s so cold outside that the compressor is inefficient.

But, best of all, I can see what’s happening at home when I’m away from home. On my recent trip to Scotland, I was away from home into early December. There were several nights when the temperature was as low as 18F, cold enough to freeze water pipes in an unheated house. Using the Apple Home app on my iPhone, I could see the temperature upstairs and downstairs in the house and confirm that the heating system was keeping temperatures above the 50F setting.

I have several electric heaters, the type that look like small radiators, both upstairs and downstairs. I can turn them on and off from anywhere. If I leave home and forget to turn them off, then Apple Home turns them off for me, with a trigger called “when the last person leaves home.” It’s also nice to have Apple Home turns some lights on when WIFI sees that my iPhone has arrived in the driveway, with the trigger “when anyone arrives home.” Some things are on timers. Apple Home turns on some lights in the morning and makes sure that certain things are turned off at bedtime.

The WIFI light bulbs and WIFI switches that work with Apple Home aren’t all that expensive. And of course the Apple Home system is a built-in part of the Apple ecosystem. To make it work, one needs an Apple device that is always at home and always plugged in — either an Apple TV or an Apple HomePod.

The CEO shooter

While a tsunami of healthy, hilarious, and ever-so-understandable schadenfreude broke out in social media after the shooting of a predatory health care CEO, the punditry scolded us and clutched their pearls, warning us of the dangers of political violence.

But 48.36 percent of the population — those who didn’t vote for Trump — are not as deranged as the 49.97 percent who did. Having lived through years of MAGA political violence, the glorification of MAGA political violence, and the return of a MAGA criminal to the White House with a cast of MAGA goons having a net worth of $340 billion, at least 48.36 percent of the population can distinguish between political violence that serves justice and political violence that serves fascism and oligarchy.

I have argued in the past that, as Putinization comes to America, there is a limit to what Americans will put up with. If the people of South Korea, Belarus, Georgia, Peru, Slovakia, and even Russia will take to the streets in a heartbeat because they hate being kicked around, then Americans, in a country born out of violent revolution, will take to the streets in half a heartbeat. The grassroots political instincts that MAGA tapped and perverted to serve fascism and oligarchy are just as present in those who hate fascism and oligarchy. The CEO shooter reminded us of that, and no doubt terrified those who will do everything possible to retain for themselves a monopoly on violence.

So, mystery shooter, whoever you are and wherever you are, you’re obviously the hero and inspiration that a lot of people need right now. The punditry, clutching their pearls in their corporate gigs, would have us believe that all political violence is equally bad. No it isn’t, because of the difference between justice and injustice. It’s safe to assume that that neutralized CEO, indirectly, out of corporate greed, caused the premature deaths of tens of thousands of people. We can confidently say that he deserves our contempt, even if saying that he, or anyone, deserves to die is farther than we want to go.

They’ll probably catch this guy and make an example of him. But if they take him alive, we’ll get to hear why he did it. America’s CEO’s, and those who are preparing to Putinize America, won’t like that story one bit, because it probably will be a story about predation, exploitation, and the greed of the powerful. And it probably will be a story about one of the many powerless people who died because of it, someone whom the CEO shooter loved.