Microsoft being determined to continue DOWNgrading my laptop, I spent the weekend making essential technological upgrades--getting an Internet-free desktop computer running again, digging out a typewriter, and ordering a laptop with Linux. I also spent some time connecting with real-world people. Not much time online. And if Microsoft deliberately foul up that router that was deliberately chosen to maintain a connection for Microsoft that's not connected to the company the sponsors pay, again...I might get another phone and do some telemarketing in aid of a Microsoft Electronic Waste's Immediate End campaign, urging people to refuse to buy computers with versions of Windows later than 7. If Microsoft wants to remain part of the Internet, We The People can force them to work with the versions of Windows that actually worked for us. And NO "updates."
By "worked for us" I mean that computers should obey ONLY keyboard commands while they are in use (any "security updates to the Internet access codes" blah blah can wait till the computers enter hibernation mode) and that all standard keyboard commands should be obeyed at the speed at which people type. A command like "print all of the documents in the Downloads folder" might be expected to take a few minutes, but "open file," "save document," "copy and paste," etc., should never take so much as half a second. And Microsoft should agree to be bound by a contract under which they owe us serious money, which they can of course recover from anyone who loads Windows down with spyware, if even commands that take time to complete take longer than an eye-blink to be clearly recognized. Windows worked at the speed people typed twenty years ago; Windows should be required to work at the speed people type now.
Mental Health
Mona Andrei on successful writing and single-mothering...I particularly like the tip about grocery shopping with friends. And, as a Senior Citizen, may I add: Some stores have "senior discount days." If you are a young single parent, you might be tempted to feel that that's discrimination against you. It is not. It is encouragement for intergenerational connections. It helps non-drivers, whose same-age friends lists include more non-drivers every year, to find car pools. Here's how it works: You give the senior shopper the approximate amount of money you intend to spend. You put your purchases in the same cart with the senior shopper's. You pay attention when person asks for the total for your purchases and pays that first. If you go through the checkout line together like good car pool buddies, you can say "Do you have enough cash?" and settle any differences on the spot, without anyone having to run out to the car or put something back or write a check or otherwise inconvenience people waiting in line. After shopping, you settle any differences between the amount you intended to spend and the amount actually spent. You get the 15% discount on everything. Somebody like me gets the free ride to the store. Everyone wins, even the store.
It is perfectly legal for aunts, uncles, or grandparents to buy a child's entire school outfit, if we so choose. Many aunts, uncles, and grandparents don't look at all like our nieces, nephews, and grandchildren. Skin colors and primary languages don't have to match.
Minneapolis Update
He didn't do it because he'd tried "transitioning to female" and failed. He didn't do it because he was "a loner." He didn't even do it because he was a Christian-phobic bigot with Trump Derangement Syndrome, although he was and although that influenced his choice of target. He did it because homicide-suicide is the way some people react to antidepressant drugs, which are handed to "trans" people and "loners" as if they were aspirin. This story is becoming so familiar as to be tedious. It's a side effect the SSRI drugs have for some people. When those people don't have access to firearms, they find other ways to act out their homicidal-suicidal-delusional drug reaction syndrome.
She might just possibly have a case against the doctor or the drug manufacturer or both. It would be a kind of progress if she actually prosecuted such a case; it would be such a relief from the tedious "debate," always pressed by our foreign enemies and always welcomed by firearms dealers because it stimulates sales, about the supposed "need" for unconstitutional bans on firearms.
"Oh but can't we ban this kind of gun because it was used in a murder..." makes as much sense as "Oh but can't we ban this kind of car because the driver killed himself and/or another person, or persons, driving it," or "Oh but can't we ban escalators because a person who fell down one was horribly mangled before person died," or "Oh but can't we ban mint candies because some people choke on them." Objects do not get up and kill people all by themselves. And whatever our foreign enemies may wish were the case, we have a Constitution that says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, we have a clear majority of the population who uphold the Constitution, and we need to have a law imposing fines on the tools of foreign interests who keep babbling about gun bans. You want gun bans, you go to a country that has them; you stop marketing the objects you claim to hate and fear so horribly. We need to stop debating about this.
And I think decent human beings know that people with mixed DNA have enough to deal with already, without our confusing Prozac Dementia with "transgender"-ing as such. It's the drugs. Those who cling to the idea that homicide-suicide is a "trans" thing are ignoring the history of homicide-suicide and may be doomed to repeat it. Possibly at the hands of their children, who were never given the chance to explain that they felt bad about going to school because they'd dropped a cafeteria tray and people had laughed at them, but instead were fed drugs they didn't need until the homicide-suicide thought pattern set in.
North Carolina Update
You thought those people had gone back to work now, and all the rest of us needed to do was to be good tourists and help pay for rebuilding, right? Wrong. Once again, although FEMA backed leases for flood survivors to be sheltered in apartments through next March, a small group of survivors are facing eviction this week. Texas had its flood problem this summer and is looking at more potential floods approaching, and FEMA want that money back. This administration can hardly authorize raising taxes to cover both flood zones' needs. What they gonna do, what they gonna do...FEMA gonna white-eye, that's what. They're gonna flake off like cheap paint. "We said we'd pay your rent through March but we're going to stop in September. Because we can. Because we're the unelected bureaucrats who are being allowed to make decisions without consulting Our Sovereign Lords and Masters the Taxpayers, that's why."
Wouldn't it be great if North Carolina people rallied to the cause and told FEMA to stuff the money up their noses? They still owe the money, and they should still pay every penny...but wouldn't it be awesome if that whole group of survivors just moved into people's rental properties, or basements or attics if need be, and FEMA had to pay them cash?
I know the logistics can be problematic. There are probably reasons why this has not already happened. In my neighborhood we have had since the 1960s, when rocks and earth were packed in across the existing road to support the four-lane highway, a miniature flood plain. It's not enough land to park a trailer on. It's enough to raise a few vegetables on, enough to leave an old shed that made an adorable playhouse for children, but people never have taken the risk of storing anything like boxes of winter clothes in a building that, in case of very heavy rain, may be under water. Until this summer. Now people are living in it and keeping animals around it. And they seem acceptable as neighbors, nice people who try to rescue as many of the most difficult dogs and flea-bitten kittens as they have room for, but guess who has the floor space to keep them if their house is under water? Your Auntie Pris has. And the humans smoke like bad chimneys. And the dogs are still difficult. Aaaack.
Sometimes people just have to grit their teeth and do the right thing. Find homes for the flood survivors privately, for now. Be prepared for more bad news from Texas, and for the usual hurricanes in Florida and fires in California. Stuff happens. This year. And next year we let Trump tell FEMA they're all fired, and when those people apply for unemployment benefits or retirement pensions we let those government departments tell'm, "What goes around comes around. Taxpayers are not funding any benefits for white-eyes. Whatever role the Taxpayers vote to allow the federal government to have in emergency response, it is for people who keep their word."
You might call me a dreamer, but wouldn't it be grand?
(I waited and waited and waited for updates on Twitter about this story, which was reported by a NBC-TV news broadcast. No word.)
Poetry
It's a metaphor of course. Please, if any Seventh-Day Adventists are reading this, don't feel the need to explain church doctrines about precisely what happens when spirits are released into the air.
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