Status update: This post was not properly scheduled because, once again, Microsoft STOLE my computer and played with it for a couple of hours last night. We need laws preventing Microsoft's "updates" from HIJACKING computers. They didn't do this when they were paying for computers in public-access computer centers. No, it started in 2020 when COVID caused more of us to be paying for private or at least neighborhood connections, in private homes or non-computer-centric businesses, where most of the computers are owned by individuals. Even if my computers are gifts from grateful clients and my connection time is sponsored, it's still being paid for by individuals who are not Microsoft...and those individuals are being ROBBED. Microsoft needs to be paying for time STOLEN by these "updates." No less than US$100 per incident, compounded per minute of productive time lost...and Google, Mozilla, Youtube, Amazon, et al., need to be traced and held responsible for any time lost to their "updates" too, though Microsoft is by far the biggest offender.
Birds
These Michigan geese and herons probably never met even the great-great-grandparents of the ones I used to watch in Maryland. Nice photos, anyway, and fine birds.
Fiction
I suspect it's fact-based, but it works as fiction. Reminds me of the patient whose house Mother bought, who wanted Mother to stay with her because she was a fellow celiac, but became too ill too fast and had to go into a very nice, very expensive nursing home. Where the staff ignored her dietary needs, and when Mother brought her gluten-free food, some of the staff would steal anything left over for themselves. Hakuna matata, indeed.
Fun Facts
What's height got to do with presidential elections? Well, for what it's worth, one of our best Presidents was the shortest...and possibly the worst was the next to shortest. And all the recent ones, whom history has yet to rank in order of awfulness, have been tall. (At 5'9.5", Jimmy Carter was shorter than average for a POTUS. Did anyone ever think he looked short?)
Literary Criticism
Some people just can't keep from calling attention to their own deficiencies. Children need to know that it's possible, even fun, to live without "smartphones" and GPS. They need to know that in some ways life is better without these things. And yes, of course Calvin (the cartoon character) was a little brat whom nobody liked, not even his own parents; that was why he spent so much time being funny with no friends but his stuffie, which is a lesson children need to drink in. If you throw snowballs at unsuspecting people whom you secretly like, of course nobody's going to want you for a friend. If you throw softballs where other people can swing at them and have a game, you can have a crowd of friends like Charlie Brown.
Music
Deeply silly...Thanks to John Scalzi for sharing.
Politics, Election 2024
"Liberal" is not a political party. It's a general, and laudable, personality trait. It's the one I am demonstrating by sharing this link and admitting that I laughed...even before the part where he invites readers to follow him "at local pub crawls." Like I'm sure smart-alecky young men want to be followed on pub crawls by other people's aunts.
How accurate is he about us Independents? I don't think he would have said some of those things to Adayahi's face, if Adayahi were still with us. When the young aren't busy conforming and self-censoring they can be very rude indeed, but I don't think he would have said them to Oogesti either. About some younger, flabbier I's...I think he underestimates the fear factor in their voting patterns. Over and above wanting to vote for the triracial man who identifies as Black or for the woman, what I saw on their blogs and tweets was a fear of John McCain as pro-war, which was carefully inflamed and aggravated into full-blown Trump Derangement Syndrome. I mean to say...for anyone who's ever lived in the same city it's dead easy to dislike Trump, but people who do seem to think and vote like lifelong summer children (as in high school kids admitted to special summer courses at colleges) have let themselves be told that Trump was likely to harm them, personally, in ways other politicians aren't, and actually, if anything, he's probably less so.
Meanwhile, Skeet doesn't look as if he's lived long enough to know many grown-up Independents, but yes, we do wait till the last minute, partly just to yank some people's chains, and partly because, in order to support any candidate, we'd have to see evidence of that candidate's commitment to items on our agendas, and partly because, having lived in one or more of the same cities with him, we really, really, really don't want to admit that Trump might be the least of the available evils. We may vote against someone else, and if it's the current administration we will, but we would never vote for Trump. Even if it comes down to marking the square that's not marked "Biden and Harris" as the alternative to writing in "broccoli."
Politics, Philosophy of
Young, cute Swede corrects widespread misunderstandings in excellent English:
Politics, Practical
This is a long read. It'd be awkward even on Blogspot; oddly, though it's awkward on X, the vampire form of Twitter now offers formatting the author has made work for this full-length research article. I've not been following the story enough even to judge whether somebody is doing an awesome job of journalism, or Losing It and about to be sued. I do want to give a shout to NCRenegade for sharing it, and to Bad Kitty Unleashed for doing it. You can scroll down and see...they did a lot of work.
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