Rich people, which do you prefer: (1) a democracy with occasional desires to raise your taxes; or (2) an oligarchy with occasional desires to throw you in prison ( Read more... )

It took weeks of research, more than one try (each taking hours), a bunch of troubleshooting, and there are still a small number of errors and duplicates to clean up, but I have successfully transferred my 10,000 song | 100GB | 16-year-old iTunes/Music library to my new laptop ( Read more... )

My new Windows gaming laptop is definitely powerful enough to play the older games I already own, without breaking a sweat. I've already bought a bunch more legacy games from GOG, some for as little as $1.49, so now I own 30 legacy games via GOG. I'm going to play my old games!!! I'm so happy!!! I can actually play them ( Read more... )

I remember a sleepover in the 1980s, in my friend Paul's garage, with my crush/best friend/sexual obsession Kevin,

and boys were being cruel, and I said, "I can make myself happy,"

a liberation, a provocation, a societal breakdown, I can make myself happy,

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use a new technology called "messenger RNA" or mRNA.

They've manufactured these little bits of RNA that look like they've been created by human DNA with a little message attached to each bit that signals to the cell's factory: build this protein, please.

The protein the factory builds looks like the "spikes" on the ( Read more... )

You've heard of DNA, the genetic code inside each cell that is used to replicate proteins, the genetic code that we pass down to our children via the sexual combination of female egg and male sperm.  RNA is a simpler version of DNA that can also replicate proteins, but with a much higher error rate.  RNA lacks the ability to proofread the ( Read more... )

I went ahead and tackled the rats nest of electronics and cables inside the TV cabinet.  Wow, so many cables, so much dust, from however many years since the last time somebody cleaned it up.  I put away every last unnecessary cable, verified that the Blu-Ray player still works and then unplugged it, and then updated the ancient Xbox 360.  I'm ( Read more... )

I don't think I've had 72 hours to self since before Quarantine, I don't think so, I've always felt the need to share condo time with K, and to respect T's need for companionship during Quarantine ... and even then ... before Quarantine T hadn't traveled anywhere in a while, and when he did travel I'd have people over to the house every few days ( Read more... )

I first learned to program in BASIC back in the 1970s on my father's TRS-80 Model I personal computer, when I was about 10 years old and we lived in Wichita, Kansas.  I taught myself this programming language, budding polymath that I was.  It's amazing how much you could do with 4kB of RAM back in the 1970s!  You could play Chess in 4kB!  (The very ( Read more... )

All the broken laptop's logic board temperature sensors are back online, and now the CPU is running at full blast!!

I'm glad I held off on ordering a new logic board.  Now I have two very similar laptops, LOL.  Mine has twice the RAM (16GB) and twice the hard drive storage (1TB), but T's old laptop is perfectly fine (with 8GB and 500GB).  Otherwise ( Read more... )