I have lost many computer hours this weekend to real-life odd jobs. I look ahead to the property tax bill that will undoubtedly be in next week's mail, and the backup computer that needs repairs, and the backup heater the office should have before winter, and think this loss of computer time has been a good thing. Serena, who is much braver than Samantha was but does know cats are safer when their humans are nearby, thinks it's been disgraceful. She's already given me the little bump with the flat sides of a couple of teeth that says "I ought to bite you for this."
Drug Education
Ambien does not cause racism. Like all sleep aids it impairs judgment and allows people to pop out "jokes" that aren't funny and that may sound racist--if they are professional comedians who normally think in jokes and normally know that some jokes aren't worth telling. But who knew it was a gateway drug that could set people on the way to SSRI dementia and, possibly, homicide-suicide?
Microsoft
Are you, too, seeing spam about how Microsoft is going to "end support" for computers that are over ten years old--they only admit trying to force people into Windows 11 or Windows 365, but for all practical purposes that means Microsoft wants to block all computers that are over ten years old from the Internet, creating another tsunami of toxic waste from people who don't realize that a Net-free computer settles down and becomes a nice data storage device.
Of course, nobody should buy Windows 11, or any other computer program that comes with a demand that you sign a contract authorizing the company to plagiarize your work free of charge. In fact we could use a law requiring anyone who subjects your work to "artificial intelligence" programs to pay you...since this administration doesn't like pennies and is doing nothing to restore a penny as the price for things like postcards or chewing gum, say five cents per word. "Microsoft Coauthor"? The hubris of even naming a program that should make headlines: "Microsoft Broken Up, Like Bell or Standard Oil, and Its Assets Distributed Among People Whose Work It Has Plagiarized."
Microsoft has deliberately built obsolescence into computer software for a long time...but in the 1990s, even into the 2010s, the people affected were mostly large businesses with a small vocal fringe of hobbyists, which is what the government classified Internet writers as being, and the number of computers that became toxic waste was small.
We need laws about this. And those laws need specifically to ban any attempt to market "new, smaller, more recyclable devices," smirk smirk wink wink, the way the kitchen appliance industries have been doing. They need to require, specifically, that in order to stay in business Microsoft, and also Google, and Verizon, and Amazon, and all other companies involved in the Internet, must not only keep the Internet accessible from devices currently in use, but proactively recondition and reclaim from toxic "recycling" all intact electronic devices for their original purposes. If anyone's kept one of those giant-egg-shaped Wang word processors? Make it process words. Those cabinet-shaped video game machines? Make them play games. For a quarter.
What's the best way to recruit the companies' cooperation with these laws? Unplugging all "smart" machines altogether would be the best way. Oh how I hope we don't have to go there. I hope we can just give Microsoft the message by, on the day they "end support" for disgusting Windows 10 and until the day they return Windows 97 to the market, going with Linux. I've made the commitment to do that and hope youall are bold enough to do likewise. Linux will run Libre Office, which is designed to be almost interchangeable with MS Office, and Chrome, which handles pretty much everything else including lots of games; once it's loaded with those basic software packages, the complexity of further programming won't be a problem for most workers in "the laptop class."
"But what becomes of scientific progress if people who work with machines aren't free to tweak and tinker?" Oh, they should be free to tweak and tinker. At their own expense. Just not at anyone else's.
Not at, especially, the taxpayers' expense. Microsoft is reportedly in hot water for security issues in programs Microsoft sold to the federal government. Hello? The federal government should not be using anything that connects to the Internet for government work. What does need to be done electronically should be on a completely separate line. Most information, especially information about taxpayers, needs to be processed by humans, on paper. That's the only way to keep critical information from being hacked.
Before turning on a computer, it would be helpful to remember the Basic Rules of Cybersecurity:
1. If it's on a device that connects to the Internet, it will be hacked into.
2. So you should never put your real-world name, contact information, or banking information on any device that can connect with the Internet, not even an old computer that won't connect you to the Internet but that still receives harmful "updates" like that one that turns what you're working on sideways. You should never discuss personal matters via e-mail, chat, or social media.
3. Though you absolutely should discuss anything you might be planning that might be considered a crime, like reclaiming the money a bank has stolen from people with "inactivity fees." That's an excellent way to do some firsthand research on where our government stands on the legality or legitimacy of your plans!
4. Phones were useful, and a good bargain, once. Now they're not. If your employer still requires you to have a phone, that's like a parent requiring a high school student to wear tacky underwear: nobody has a right to ask.
5. Never, never, never touch a screen. Computers (including spyphones) don't come with the software to allow everyone to do this, but they're designed to enable those who've paid to scan every fingerprint on the screen. It's like throwing your bills, accounts, and credit cards on the ground because you felt like littering. People are actively working on ways to hack around expensive, dangerous biometric devices.
6. Avoid all "adult content," especially content of interest to actual adults, like medical information or information about life insurance. Your cyberspace persona isn't you, and s/he should always enjoy such perfect health that s/he is not motivated to have any kind of insurance. You can avoid being specially targeted for the most obnoxious ads.
7. Generally avoid being a troll. For example, if you're undersupplied with mirror neurons and thus laugh about the murders of real people who were young enough to have living parents, you need a Brain Disorder Management Plan that involves, among other things, someone making sure you're not exposed to the Internet. If you don't know the difference between Republicans and Nazis, or Democrats and Soviets, you should sign up for an intensive course in the history of political thought in the United States and, until you've passed the course, stay off the Internet. If you hate any religious group or the whole idea of organized religion enough that you compulsively pick fights with religious people, you should talk to a counsellor about the root causes of your feelings, and stay off the Internet. Censorship is much worse than any kind of offensive content, but why add to the total level of nastiness in this world?
Misogyny
People who deny that rape is a mechanism of bigoted oppression and abuse of all women weren't watching the news two years ago. Maybe they should be required to watch the videos Hamas goons posted, with pleasure and pride. Then they will agree, whether or not they have any foreign policy as such: No nation should recognize or trade with Palestine or with Palestinians until every one of those men has been publicly executed, all of the bodies have been kicked into one pit which has then been filled with raw sewage, and all surviving Palestinians have cursed their names and apologized to the world for any association with any Hamasi they ever had. (If people had stood firm and united on this matter of moral principle, the thing would have happened by now.)
They shouldn't be asking for statehood. They should be asking for jobs...for micro-loans so they can buy Pupper Pooper Scoopers and earn honest coins on city streets, say. In another two or three generations it will be reasonable to consider whether their descendants have been able to form a civilized nation.
This web site does not officially endorse the spiritual presumption of some people, at a forum I visited this weekend, in telling God that God should damn politicians who have, by paying too much attention to the Loony Left, inadvertently blundered into a statement that rapists should be treated as peers by any civilized person. But it does sincerely pray that God will forgive this presumption as an emotional reaction that is natural, predictable, in people who appropriately abhor rape-terrorism.
Meanwhile this web site observes that there is one reason to consider a Palestine that is still infested with Hamas goons as a nation. That is in order to enlist UN support for declaring war on it. Whether that is what certain political leaders intend to do, this web site has no idea. That it's what some of their supporters intend to find someone else who will do, this web site has no doubt.
Politics, Applied, Virginia Election 2025
If you go online in any part of Virginia you have undoubtedly heard that Abigail Spanberger's public campaign for election as Governor consists of sponsoring endless video ads in which she repeats, "It angers me" at least three times. (It's easy to lose count since the ads interrupt long "vlog" posts more than once in a half-hour.) You may have started to think of her as Angry Abigail Spamburger.
The position of this web site is that, hello, Barkley fans, remember Barkley's successor--not mentioned in the book, but the star for years at TheBookOfBarkley.blogspot.com--Abby, the Yellow Labrador Retriever. Yellow Labs are paler than Golden Retrievers. Of course Abby was an old dog when adopted, the idea being to rescue a needy dog rather than try to replace the irreplaceable Barkley, and like the proverbial old dog she never seemed to learn any tricks. Well, the only person likely to vote for this candidate identified so repetitiously with her anger would be a "yellow dog" Democrat, someone who will always vote for anyone branded with a D even if all that party had to represent them was a yellow dog. So the candidate's name is Angry Abbylab Spamburger, or Spambucket, as you prefer.
She has been campaigning as if, assuming she wanted people to vote for her, she's dumber than a box of rocks.
I don't think politicians should be expected to become close friends with every blogger or even every widely followed reporter, but the ones who are smarter than a box of rocks know enough not to miss a chance when ANYONE asks their campaign web site what they've achieved and what they'd like to accomplish. They have stacks of pre-stuffed envelopes, and the digital equivalents thereof, ready to address and send at any time.
So I asked Angry Ab's site those questions. There was no direct reply. So, Angry Ab has learned nothing from Kamala Harris's failure. What she did show people like me was an X page consisting of insistence that, despite one of her campaign staff hauling a sign that read "Black People Can't Use My Water Fountain" at an outdoor gathering of 99% White people, Angry Ab herself was not worried about the possibility that the one Black man seen pushing the wheelchair of a White male fan at that gathering might have drunk from the same water dispenser she used. Probably because everyone, including the wheelchair assistant, had brought their own bottles anyway. They did not look like the kind of crowd that drink tap water.
It gets worse. Angry Ab was elected Delegate once, not twice. So she ran for Congress and was elected once, not twice. So instead of trying to run for reelection to Congress, she thought she could run for governor. Against an incumbent whose politics sound tediously Republican, I will grant, but whose biography is...interesting.
Winsome Earle came to the United States while very young and decided to earn citizenship the hard way. By enlisting in our military service. As a Marine. She didn't have to do that. Everyone "knows" the Marines are the toughest branch to get into. Women are usually attracted to the Air Force. Men often try to join the Marines, are told they're not qualified, and join the Army instead, or failing that the Navy. But young Winsome got into the Marines and worked her way up to corporal as an electrician. Her college degree was in English, and she has taught and written a book as English majors are supposed to do, but after college she earned her living doing electrical, plumbing, and household appliance work. After marriage to Terence Sears she added his family name to her own. She had a successful career as Ms. Earle, but does not object to being called Mrs. Sears. She has children, all private citizens.
She's Black. She doesn't even have to tell people she's Black; they can see it. She is over age 60 and has grey hair but has the smooth skin, bright eyes, and pleasant smile that go with...good health. Some people in their twenties wish they were so well preserved. She is a Christian, and has managed a homeless shelter.
Though Angry Ab's campaign ads are the "negative" kind--"Vote against her because she doesn't hate Trump enough"--Angry Ab apparently knows what kind of middle-aged face people like to look at. Her ads don't show the world her face. They show our future Governor's face. Angry Ab is at least fifteen years younger than Winsome Earle-Sears and not really bad-looking, but her face is less well preserved. A collection that's actually entitled "Worst of Winsome" shows better looking face photos than the Spammer's best.
Stress shows up more on pale skin. Angry Ab can't help being pale, having the sort of ash-fair hair that lightens rather than really "graying" in middle age, and the hair is pretty in a collegiate sort of way, but she could try giving more attention to other things besides her anger and see if it helps her face.
I was starting to wonder whether the Angry Abbylab Spamburger campaign was showing real racial guilt, whether Angry Ab thinks she ought to throw the election to a Black candidate who doesn't need that kind of help to win elections...when the news broke that Angry Ab had dutifully supported one of those "trans" guys who want to use the girls' locker room at high school sports events.
Maybe you were picturing some poor little atrazine-damaged fellow with a squeaky voice and those awkward vestigial breasts boys grow when their hormones have been messed up, afraid of the bigger, more masculine boys who might have teased or bullied him in the boys' locker room.
The one with the mask is Angry Abby. The one with the similar hairstyle is obviously not a high school boy. He's a full-grown sex offender on whose behalf Angry Ab sponsored a bill in Congress, which failed, to ensure his admission to women's restrooms. In which he has been seen intentionally exposing himself to disgusted females.
We are going to have our first Governor who is obviously Black. (Doug Wilder identified as Black but he had to tell people.) Angry Ab the Pervert's Friend could just go home, letting us draw the curtain of charity over her misjudgments, and concede the election now.
But no. She's finally released a "positive" ad (one that talks about what the candidate has done or, failing that, what the candidate hopes to do). Angry Abbylab Spamburger wants to...throw more money at the public schools! And we all know how well that's always worked.
Politics, Philosophy of
