iPhone Mounting on Ubuntu 18.04

iPhone clearly dying. Apple cloud account overstuffed. What about those pictures? How to mount an iPhone 6 on Ubuntu 18.04 with thanks http://itsonlycode.blogspot.com/2017/07/linux-mint-mount-your-iphone-like.html and https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-iphone-6s-ios-11.html.

1) Connect ithing 

2) On ithing screen trust computer

3:
$ idevicepair pair
SUCCESS: Paired with device ...

NOTE: If you forgot to step 2, you get: ERROR: Could not validate with device 175e0db3db5e06bf3bd0f4a2eb302200762aecd1 because a passcode is set. Please enter the passcode on the device and retry.

4:
$ mkdir ~/mnt/ithing

5:
$ ifuse ~/mnt/ithing/

6:
$ cd ~/mnt/ithing

7:
ls
Books  Downloads       MediaAnalysis  PhotoStreamsData  Radio
DCIM   iTunes_Control  PhotoData      Purchases         Recordings

No idea what DCIM means but that's what the pics and vids have been under on every ithing and android I've ever used. Once complete, don't forget to unmount:

8: 
$ fusermount -u ~/mnt/ithing/

The Petty Man

"The petty man ... is utterly disorderly but hates for people to criticize him. He us utterly unworthy but wishes for people to consider him worthy. His heart is like that of a tiger or wolf, and his conduct like that of beasts, but he ates for people to consider him a villain. To those who flatter and toady to him he shows favor, those those who would admonish him he keeps at a distance. Those who try to be correct he considers laughable, and those truly loyal to him he considers villains." Xunzi c. 310—c. 220 B.C.E. Quoted from Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy by Ivanhoe and Van Norden

Meritocracy or Aristocracy?

When the estate/death tax was being publicly debated some years ago, I had a politically active cousin ask me with wonder why I think it's a good thing. My answer at the time was because I don't believe in having an American aristocratic class. My cousin countered with asking why someone shouldn't be able to pass their hard earned assets on to their children. I responded with the that I'm not worried about their children being rich, I'm worried about their great grand children being rich through no virtue of their own, that I prefer we live in a meritocracy where people have a chance to get ahead. Neither of us saw a belief conversion that day.

My answers haven't changed and, while I don't agree with everything, this article lays out the argument better than I can. I think it makes much more sense to give everyone a their first three or four or five or six or times the poverty rate (or some other number that makes sense) dollars tax free and to tax all other income above at the same rate. And by all I mean everything. Interest, long and short term capital gains, income from all financial devices, salaries, inheritance-- any situation where someone ends up with money or assets counts as income to me.

Why? Without something more fair than what we have now, there will eventually be violent revolution in our future and I don't want anyone, especially my children or grandchildren, to live through that.

Pot Prohibition

“Using a drug to put your brain in an altered state is not recreation. That is self-destructive behavior and escapism.”

Reading books, video games, music, or movies spring to mind as common forms of recreational escapism. Pretty sure when you are experiencing them, your brain state is altered. What about roller coasters and water slides? Outlaw those too?

What about emotions in general? Why not forbid weddings or death? Certainly that would prevent changing brain states and even some self destructive behavior.

I don't use marijuana. When exposed to it as a young man it put me to sleep in minutes every time. Even so, I find this kind of intolerance for how other people want to live their lives offensive. Who the hell is Scott Chipman to try to tell me or anyone else how we should live our lives?

Ubuntu Brightness By Command Line

From:

user@laptop:~$ ls /sys/class/backlight/
acpi_video0
user@laptop:~$ cat /sys/class/backlight/*/brightness 
1
user@laptop:~$ cat /sys/class/backlight/*/max_brightness 
7
user@laptop:~$ sudo su -c "echo 7 > /sys/class/backlight/*/brightness"
user@laptop:~$ cat /sys/class/backlight/*/brightness 
7

Linux Search PDFs

Thanks Stack Overflow.

find /path -name '*.pdf' -exec sh -c 'pdftotext "{}" - | grep --with-filename --label="{}" --color "your pattern"' \;

Tuesday: Blizzard flight woes peak; 8,000 cancellations since Sunday

My expectations were about a World of Warcraft story where Blizzard angered a ton of customers when I opened this link. Turns out, no.