When my mom had cancer, I swear every relative and distant acquaintance came out of the woodwork trying to sell some kind of nonsense. It was already a devastating time, but on top of that it was insulting being forced to hear about all these delusional snake oil cures and conspiracy theories.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet - have a good backup solution. If there isn’t anything on your computer that can’t be restored, then you’re not going to feel as much pressure to protect things.

Of course there’s crypto miners, identity theft, botnet stuff, all sorts of things that run undetected and don’t simply render your computer unusable. But if you’re absolutely sure you’re not losing anything, then “nuke it from orbit” becomes a more paletteable solution for virus removal. A hassle for sure, but format and start over again becomes an option that results in no loss other than the pain of having to reinstall everything.

Seems to me there’s a concentrated effort to convince the public that there’s outrage.

I’ll say I have a considerably higher opinion of him now than I did in 2020. Then, I basically voted for a seat-filler, hold down the fort so the fascists aren’t in power. Now, I’m fairly impressed.

But the fact remains that the man is 80. Sometimes he looks like a canny old man, and I kind of like canny old men, those old guys who are sharp as a tack with a wit to match. And sometimes he just looks elderly. I don’t like the idea of the oldest president ever three times in a row. Frickin 80, he’ll be 86 by the end of a second term. That’s a problem. And while I don’t have any problems with Harris, a lot of folks do.

My best hope is that he’s saying he’s running because it’s politically weak if he doesn’t. And if Trump is convicted of something before 2024, he’ll bow out and there will be a democratic primary. Worst case scenario, I won’t feel bad about voting for him again.

Well maybe a little - the man deserves a comfortable retirement.

You know, I’ve heard it said that democracies founded in Europe after WW2 had an advantage because they could see the result of mistakes in the USA’s founding.

Like clearly X, Y, and Z was a mistake that they couldn’t have known at the time - but now we know better, so let’s not repeat that.

I just read a thing on the subject https://news.northeastern.edu/2017/07/03/how-do-lawyers-handle-jury-selection-with-high-profile-clients-like-shkreli-or-cosby/

Basically the selection process (voir dire) is more like an interview than what you’d see in your low level petit courts where they just ask questions to the room. They focus less on familiarity with the case and more on impartiality and dedication to rule of law. I’m sure they go through hundreds.

If that is the case, and it absolutely could be, blame the prosecution lawyers.

Striking jurors during selection is their responsibility, both defense and prosecution can say no to a juror selection until you get a jury that both have agreed is fair. Incidentally it’s how you get out of jury duty, say something crazy on purpose and they’ll throw you out.

The fact remains that this process can fail, you can still get a juror who will not hear facts and will not make a decision based on rule of law. But it’s supposed to work, it’s supposed to weed out any juror that will not reach a fair decision.

I wouldn’t call compressed air extremely dangerous, but more than you’d think.

It can hurt you in a lot of ways and it’s often played with like a toy. Like blowing air in somebody’s face, don’t do that, think of it like coming at them with a handheld drill. Treat an air compressor like any kind of power tool, not exactly dangerous but can hurt you.

Republicans don’t distinguish between undocumented immigrants and legal residents. Or between Mexico and the rest of central and south America.

They say “come here legally” and then when they do, the republicans are still mad.

Anybody who went to acting school has some background in music and dance. Obviously not their best talent or else they’d be a singer instead of an actor. I often consider that most people on television can sing and absolutely knows how to dance, we just never see them do it.

Sweeny Todd is a good example of this. You know almost the entire cast from something else and had no idea they were capable of doing music all this time. But, a classically trained actor has definitely been in a musical before, we just never knew about it. Alan Rickman wasn’t exactly a vocalist, but he could keep up with one.

I think that’s the best thing going for SNW.

Not every episode has to be about something. In fact most of them aren’t, they’re all one-offs. They go to a thing, some problems happen, they solve those problems. It can be thrilling, scary, intriguing, or silly.

None of these grand arc stories where every moment of every episode is so important that if you blink you’ll be lost for the rest of the show. None of these “very special message” episodes either. Just random space adventures most of the time. It worked in the 60s and it’s working today.

And you know, working from home I’m comfortable doing things otherwise I wouldn’t agree to doing - particularly coming online late hours.

They’re doing maintenance at 7pm, that’s no big deal, I’ll adjust my hours around and make it work. Not like I’m driving or just staying late, okay I’m not doing a 12 hour day at the office. And realistically 4pm-7pm would basically just be waiting. Guess I would if I really had to, but I wouldn’t be too happy about it. Heck just last week I checked to see if something applied correctly at 12am. No big deal, just log in and make sure.

And I fully recognize this could be exploited, become the norm. I’m careful to set boundaries, but I guess working from home has loosened my boundaries of what is and isn’t okay. Used to be I wouldn’t even answer my work phone after 5pm, but now it’s not so bad. Little annoying sometimes, but I’m okay with it.

I think that was Obama’s greatest failure - insistence on bipartisanship even when they didn’t have to. Pretty sure he actually thought they were negotiating in good faith for at least his entire first term, and they smacked him in the face over and over again.

Like they proved they can’t be trusted every single time, and he kept making sure they had a seat at the table.

Yeah by this reasoning no kind of crime that involves speech is actionable.

Yes, you can say things that are illegal, there are combinations of words that are criminal to speak. Like, I could tell you some of the classified system vulnerabilities I know about at work - but that would be really really illegal. That is not protected by free speech. All kinds of things are illegal to say.

This defense suggests that to not be the case.

I think there’s a place for both. But sometimes I tire of anti-heroes, sympathetic villains, bad guys who were right, bad guys who turn good in the end, that kind of thing.

Sometimes it’s refreshing when the villain is just evil for no reason. Just bad, that’s it, just a bad guy who is defeated in the end because he was bad. No redemption story, you don’t feel sorry for them, none of that. I’m thinking like Ernst Blofeld, the T-1000, Palpatine, Sauron, Wicked Witch of the West, Skeletor. Uncomplicated villains, their motivation is just evil for the sake of evil.

Time and a place for both, and sometimes it seems like we only get the one. Like I can’t think of a recently popular movie villain who was simply evil.

I swear, when I’m called into the office I get fuck all nothing done. Like once in a while there’s a reason for me to be on site, and I do that thing and nothing else all day.

Distractions, interruptions, noise, general discomfort. Seems every time I actually start making progress on something, a person stops by my desk and that basically erases whatever I did. So it always ends with “I’ll do it tomorrow when I’m at home”.

Anytime I see or hear the word “females” when speaking about a woman, I can’t help but say - feeee-malesss - in a hissing and lecherous voice.

Also I like this Patak brand of curry, and I think “p’takh” every time I open the jar.

Yeah even as a technician that’s one I run on the off chance that it actually does something.

Which, sometimes it does, just often enough that I wouldn’t call it useless.

Predatory loan practices, rate hikes, agreements where you can’t pay extra on the principal, can’t just straight pay off.

Like, I was lucky, I didn’t get screwed over too hard. But I was in school before it got really bad. So, my low fixed rate federal loans were sold to a private company after I graduated, and they raised the rates considerably. Not only that, but paying extra on the principal raised your interest rate. I got out of that by just paying interest until I had saved up enough money to pay in full. These days you would pay in full plus interest over the original life of the loan.

Friend of mine, her student loan’s interest rate is 18%. It was much lower when she took out the loan, but now it’s so much she can’t pay it off. Current plan is to pay interest for the rest of her life.

This shit should be illegal.

Yeah I hear that a lot in my own town.

“Kids these days stay inside too much” kids go outside and they’re calling the cops. Gee wonder why the kids don’t go outside anymore.

You know, nothing summed it up quite like the whole Pokemon Go craze. It was wild, people of all ages were out like it was a festival every day. I’ve never seen main street so active before or since, and the parks too. That was like the best four weeks, perhaps a feeling I haven’t had since being a kid on summer vacation, it really felt like summer meant something again.

And oh my god the old folks were livid. At kids playing. In the park. There are people in the city park, there aren’t supposed to be people there, it’s supposed to be empty and dilapidated.