Giving Darwin a Little Push

So I'm driving along, minding my own business, and everybody else's because none of them can drive, and there's a biker, biking in my lane, outside of a bike lane. I would be the bad guy if I ran him over.

A little later there was a person walking in the street on a tiny two lane road. I remember thinking it was getting late and maybe he should have tried in an hour, when no one could see him. I would not be the bad guy then.

• If you're a Snapchatter, and who among us is, you should turn off SnapMap yesterday, especially on your children's phones. It's a new location tracker, letting everyone know where they are. You know.. everyone. Friends. bullies, neighbors, child abusers, etc...

Ever have an earworm? No, not that thing in the Star Trek movies that eats into your brain. An earworm is a song that gets into your head and won't leave (kinda like that thing in the Star Trek movies). 

You know you've raised a great kid when they come up with creative, personal gifts for your birthday. My friend's son picked up his ukulele (stop it) and belted out a Foo Fighters song, her favorite band. She was joyful and sent copies to everyone. And now I've got "Learning to Fly" stuck in my brain. On ukulele.

• I stll can't type.

Among the most interesting(?) facts I learned in the past few days is that Patti Smyth ("Goodbye to You") married John McEnroe and gave up music until recently. In addition to being a great lefty tennis player, he's a lefty guitar player. Another fact is that he said Serena Williams is a great tennis player, but would be ranked 700 on the men's circuit. I smell war.

• A Southwest Air flight was diverted after a passenger tried to open the door while in the air. She was subdued. Those of us who have seen a season or two of Air Crash Investigation know it's physically impossible to open a plane door in flight because of pressurization.

My laptop power cord has a problem with me: second day in a row, it has disconnected itself. Either that or it feels it's due a vacation. I wouldn't want me pounding on me either.

• We are enduring some sort of cosmic mess starting with plumbing. The small lake in the basement was caused by a broken pipe. A temporary patch was applied, with the warning that we really need to get the pipe replaced. So we're saving. As we get close to the Magic Number, Marshall's vet bills and the new windshield arrived.
• The new small lake in the basement was caused by a brand new break in the pipe, about a foot or two down from the first break, whose repair has held up wonderfully.
• The toilets are no longer talking to each other, but have developed an allergy to solid matter being flushed. 
• I was looking for an excuse to stop eating fiber and now it's here!

You heard it here first: the National Endowment for the Arts is spending $20,000 on a film about an illegal immigrant lesbian who falls for a TSA agent. I'm against federal funding for all arts, but this time the Motion Picture Agency of America is on my side, of all people. They are terrified of the public discovering that movies can be made on a $20,000 budget.

• The University of Arizona wants to set the record straight: they have no relationship with a visiting scholar from France who identifies as a hippopotamus.
• To set the matter even straighter, the hippo is an alter-ego.
• This week I identify as a fire truck. Let me know what you identify as...

Last week, Johnny Depp asked when the last time an actor assassinated a president was. This week on the Presidential Hit List, John Cusack put up a graphic that states "You are dead. Get yourself buried."

You know me - I hold freedom of speech sacrosanct. I don't want to imply they shouldn't be allowed to say it. It's just pretty ugly. This didn't happen when Hollywood's Hero, the Obamachrist, was in office. I sure didn't wish for his death in public (or private), although I don't exactly have the reach of celebrity.

Predictably, the right is going mental about actors issuing death threats.
Predictably, the left is as quiet as the press was on Obama.
Do I believe that actors are issuing death threats? Please.
Do we need to look at what's happening upstream and who's trying to divide us? You tell me.

• Mozilla has a new privacy-focused browser called Focus. It was already available for iOS and now you can get it for android, both from the usual places. It's a very fast, stipped down browser that blocks ads and all sorts of trackers. If any of this breaks the site you're viewing, you can turn it off.
• I just installed it. It's very fast. Give it a shot.
• Having said that, I'll have to look into how this is different from Firefox with proper blocking extensions installed. I'm guessing the extensions are just integrated.

This is why we can't have safe things: Britain's latest aircraft carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth (3.5 billion pounds, which is Very Heavy in dollars), is vulnerable to cyber attacks because some of its systems run Windows XP.  The latest aircraft carrier. Runs an absolutely ancient version of an operating system. That operating system is Windows. Do you see where I'm going with this? Isn't it obvious to any first grader that you don't use ancient, no-longer-supported operating systems for anything, no less a new aircraft carrier? The ship actually has a team of people checking for cyber attacks. HMS stands for Hack My Ship.

It would be much easier to just paint HACK ME, I USE XP on the sides.