Christian
Cybersecurity
How this laptop is coping with Microsoft's ceasing to update it? No change. Microsoft isn't ceasing to update it. Microsoft is as annoying as it's always been.
We still need laws requiring one basic security upgrade for all computers: If they're owned by a company with a special license for COMPANY use under which anyone using them is being paid by the company, then the company may interrupt what the computer is being ordered to do through the keyboard. If they're sold to private people through retailers without that special license for COMPANY use, then, starting one second after a keystroke (or mouse click) and continuing for one hour after the last keystroke (or click), they must sort input as coming from one of three sources:
1. First party input comes from the keyboard (or mouse) and must be OBEYED INSTANTLY.
2. Second party input comes from an interactive site recognized through keyboard (or mouse) commands and may be processed efficiently until the site is closed by the first party through the keyboard (or mouse). Second party input may include advertisements (some people, like our Yona, work for retail stores and actually like studying TV commercials) but they must be controlled by buttons computer owners use to filter out ads in obnoxious formats, ads for unwanted businesses or products, or repetition of the same ad on the same computer.
3. Third party input comes from any other source, such as Microsoft, Google, or other corporations, and must be kept on hold for one hour after the last keystroke (or click), during which time the FCC may inspect it for anything suggesting spyware, such as (in the US) any fields containing strings of 9 or 10 digits, any command that could allow a third party to activate a camera or microphone, any type of biometric information, any "cookies" that do anything beyond storing the history of visitor activity at a site, etc., and penalize the company if anything resembling spyware is found. "Updates" may run when the computer is inactive provided that they contain no spyware.
4. Any company that stores or scans individuals' content, public or private, for use in what we all need to start calling PLAGIARISM PROGRAMS, is automatically required to pay the producer of the content a reasonable fee per word or pixel. This information would be automatically collected by the FCC. There would be no appeal. Companies' only recourse would be to pay up front for anything they want to feed into plagiarism programs. (And let's all stop calling those things "artificial intelligence." They may be automated, but they are plagiarism--the camouflage of stupidity.)
There should be a clear intention to reward companies that publicize their products through individual interactions among humans, and penalize those that spew out TV-type advertisements or use bots to imitate human interactions. Companies should receive a consistent message that the way to use the Internet to boost sales is to show more, not less, respect to the individual customer.
And I'd like to add a provision that corporations that have failed to support absolute freedom of speech, specifically including online "speech" that might reduce product sales, should be banned from having any identifiable corporate access to the Internet for seven years. Employees of those companies could surf the'Net from home and have anonymous social media accounts, but nothing that could be used to promote their companies or products in any way. And this would include the Democratic Party--and, if they don't condemn censorship unanimously and vigorously, the Republican Party too.
Marketing
It should be established by now: Go "woke," go broke. Commercial viability has a precipice, and the Loony Left have lockstepped over it. However, things are less clear in Europe, where feudal barons' heirs are still floundering desperately for control of their peasants, and, tragically, most of the major commercial publishing houses in the US are now controlled by a corporation based in Germany, where Nazionalsozialism may be dead but tyranny unfortunately is not. This means that censorship is being done by publishers themselves, and, though done in the name of demographic "sensitivity" rather than "modesty" or "chastity," the corporate publishers are no less censorious than they were in Boston in the 1850s.
Here's how to sell "poetry" to the big publishers these days. It was prose in German and it's not been translated into very good English; it doesn't sound like much of anything in any language, but it's the thought that counts. "Governments with international supervision" is music to their doctrinaire ears. And then they wonder why people don't pay for "poetry."
What can be done about this? Oh, it'll be fun. In the name of opposition to censorship, we stop buying anything new from the likes of Penguin, Random House, Harper, Doubleday, McClelland & Stewart, Bantam, Dell, Atheneum, Delacorte, Simon & Schuster, even Rodale Press, and buy only books from small independent publishers and self-published authors. We can still get the big publishers' books from public libraries. The books we buy new should come from writers who dare to speak their truth. Every character doesn't need to be a fan of Musk or Trump or even Milei; characters can live in worlds like ours where people of different political stripes may or may not win games or solve mysteries or find Romantic Love. The best writers who mention politics, like Giovanni Guareschi, can convince us that even the character created to spout bad ideas is a good person. Still, points if characters are religious, are entrepreneurs, are classicists, and extra points if they observe that the corruption of government increases with the size and so global government will never deserve serious consideration, or that nobody "becomes a woman" without having been a girl, or that when an idea bankrupts everybody who's tried it the logical response is not to screech that that's because everybody needs to try it and all go bankrupt together. Let the big publishers sit on their truckloads of "woke" books nobody wants to read. And sit. And sit. And sit. And, if they have any intelligence at all, admit that it takes more than a potty-mouth voice to write uncensored books that interest adults in the free world. Admit that that just might be why so few European writers, even if translated, are actually read in the US.
"But aren't books more interesting when their modern city scenes are as 'diverse' as the populations of modern cities are, and doesn't that mean, in the name of authenticity, consulting readers from different backgrounds to help us get the 'diverse' characters right?" Of course they are and of course it does but that's no reason to send every story to Loony Left La La Land. Choose your "diversity consultants" from people you know. Compensate them well, in cash, barter, or favors as they deem appropriate. If you don't have any friends who belong to a certain demographic, it might be best for your speaking characters not to belong to that demographic either.
Mental Health
It gets better. These Brits cite studies that show that feel-good pills don't do significantly more than placebos, or counselling, or nothing at all, does for "mild depression." That doesn't mean the pills don't make some people feel good. They do, although they make other people feel terrible. It means that most people with "mild depression" are going to feel better, soon, in any case!
This has not actually changed since I was in college, but doctors paid per prescription by pharmaceutical companies have found it profitable to publicize the rather small possibility that "untreated" depression may "worsen."
It doesn't. "Mild depression" is a symptom of a physical condition that's not what it should be. When that condition worsens, nearly all patients consult a professional who's not a psychiatrist and, even if the real problem isn't solved, they focus on their physical condition rather than the "depression." In most cases, people simply feel better.
Every undergraduate used to be taught that.
Politics, US Generally
Poor old Senator Fetterman! He disagrees with Trump like a good party-line Democrat, but he's out of favor with the Loony Left because he doesn't hate Trump enough. He can tell that Trump's not Hitler. He's not in favor of murder. He's a D, and a representative of the Uglo-American community, and a good example of working around physical disabilities...but he's just too decent a human being for the Loony Left.
Meanwhile US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has a point, but she just lost a bunch of Southern Lady points by making it in such an egregious and, yes, ugly way. It is not as if the world had seen R men in Congress crying and trembling at their constituents on Twitter when they had an opportunity to be seen defending their elders. We saw Ds do that during the Censorship Riot but, if Rs didn't form a solid ring around the senior Ds the rioters had specifically threatened, at least they were quiet about it. I don't recall hearing about Rs acting particularly cowardly the day Senator Scalise was shot, either. I don't know firsthand but I think Congressman Griffith would be of some use in a crisis. But why call them weak, dear Mrs. Greene, when nature so obviously intended you to guide and goad them to be strong?
Weather
Chilly mornings...Serena is enjoying the status symbol of coming inside for part of the night. Sometimes she wakes me. More often she lingers in the warm office room. She has her heat-soaking spots in the not-a-lawn; feels no need to come online with me, but she seems to like the luxury of getting up, looking toward the door, then going to another snoozing spot and snoozing for another five or ten minutes in a different position. And another, and another...
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