Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Don't Try Walking - It Never Turns Out Well

Do you use an android phone or tablet?
Here's the ultimative (sic) collection of free and open source android apps.
The main way to go about this is to install F-Droid. It's an alternate store for android apps. They're all free and open-source. They don't host shitware and they are very reliable and safe. I think F-Droid is available via the Play Store. The list lists the best of the F-Droid software.



  • Ubuntu invites Win 7 users with linux switch guides
  • how-to for people who haven't



It's 22 years after the Phoenix Lights.
In 22 years, we have no solution to the case.
Twenty Two years.
If something that large hovered over a city, most would consider it rather important and possibly a threat to national security. No word on that at all.

There was a 1-2 mile craft hovering over the city of Phoenix, with thousands of people as witnesses.

The military bases in the area all claimed they had nothing in the air.
Later on, one base 'remembered' they had planes dropping flares. These were found to be dropping flares over the Barry Goldwater range. These was the official excuse for the Phoenix Lights. The problem here is that flares don't fall in locked manner that looks like an object, over an area that wasn't the Barry Goldwater range. The lights were from the 1-2 mile craft.

In theory, our monitoring technology (radar, etc) should have seen this craft, from the moment it appeared, whether from space (NORAD) or locally. Did they detect it? Are the radar results available via asking or FOIA (Freedom of Information Act)?

Also mentioned was a feeling of calm. No panic, during or after.
It happened twice.


22 years.
That seems like it would be important, as National Security goes.
Assumptions: it was a test of our technology; it was not seen on radar; it was from Elsewhere and they are afraid to release any info.


I wonder if it would have been handled differently had it appeared over Washington, DC.



Dear lefty

  • Why do you continue to do this?
  • my page hits went from 6 to 30 or 128.
  • to get chicks




  • David Hogg should marry Greta Thunberg.
  • Ultimately the marriage would fail when they realize they're both white, therefore part of the problem.



As bad as the Ring camera privacy debacle is, their app sends your data up the line too. Don't install this crap. WWLD: before you install anything, ask yourself What Would lefty Do?




  • Nearly half of Americans didn't go outside to recreate in 2018
  • Let's get that good old American spirit going to best this in 2020! We cannot afford to fail on the world stage.




Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) called on Tesla to adopt "common sense recommendations" in Autopilot driver assist to "guarantee the safety of its technology."  Hopefully "common sense recommendations" aren't the same ones going up against the 2nd Amendment. I think the man is unreasonable, demanding Tesla inform customers that it is self-driving, and to install a driver-monitoring system.

The govt never met anything they couldn't make worse with legislation; usually involving monitoring.

Allow me to state a universal axiom of marketing: sales will go to hell if your product literally drives people into walls.  As everything on Earth somehow relates to Monty Python, there's the sketch about the Whizzo (chocolate) Assortment, where the police come to a confectioner to discuss Crunchy Frog: "But if we take the bones out, it wouldn't be crunchy."



  • The Electronic Frontiers Foundation is fighting a law that would make it a felony to encourage illegal aliens to enter or remain in the US. The definition of free speech includes speech with which you disagree. Although I disagree with illegal aliens, it's still free speech. If I don't fight for their free speech, there will be nobody to fight for mine.


The other night we had our single splurge for the week: our favorite restaurant. As you can tell, we spend tons of money on luxuries. While perusing the menu, the waitress came up and said hello. She sounded nice. When I looked up from the menu, I noticed the waitress had a full beard, which is one too many beards for any waitress. I didn't see that coming. After dinner, Mrs lefty said she thought the same thing upon hearing his voice. Great waiter.



Watching tv online is always interesting and frequently surprising. I found a Smithsonian channel, which is a great one to watch. Upon watching, the Smithsonian staff had done wonders with their uniforms. Someone mislabeled the channel: instead of science, it looked like a very intimate Sports Illustrated bikini shoot. Impossibly perfect women, wearing impossible small garments for the viewers' impossible satisfaction. Each was more attractive than the previous one. It actually hurt to watch it, so I went back to looking for science channels.


  • Faceyspaces rolls out new privacy tool
  • Hopefully it works better than the NSA's


Today I identify as   Wite Out

Wite out was invented by Mike Nesmith's (The Monkees) mother.



Remember when Baltimore was hit badly by ransomware?
Legislators will legislate, and there's no exception here.
Maryland proposed legislation will outlaw the possession of malware and prevent researchers from reporting it.
The stupidity is awe-inspiring.
They're passing a law to stop ransomware. Let's examine this, shall we?
It's months ago and ransomware has infected Baltimore. Backups were non-existent, due to incompetent planning and staff, rendering their data gone.
If this law were in place at this time, how would it have prevented the infection?



  • If you use Labcorp or Quest for your bloodwork, check your credit card statement. Labcorp just had its second breach.
  • Blithering idiots.




Much has been written and said about sleep, most of it wrong.
Ever since I was a little monster (I'm a bigger monster now), I tried to find out how sleep worked. It generally worked wonderfully - I hit the pillow and slept til I got up. Then I noticed that I always woke up tired, regardless of how much sleep I got. I asked friends, family, doctors, and pr0n stars; all had different answers, none seemed correct.

Now that I'm married, the search goes on, interestingly enough, with a woman who has the mother of all sleep disorders. Neither of us can figure it out. Because of her sleep disorder, I developed the ability to sleep through a small nuclear detonation, a 44lb dog standing on my chest and circling around, a 23lb dog licking my face and and stealing the covers, and various sentient entities jumping into and falling out of the bed. We both seem to come up with the same conclusion: the less we sleep, the easier we get up and the better we feel. Naturally this is counter to everything we've been told.

If I get 7 hours, I'm tired. If I get 5 hours, I'm ok. On the weekend I can get between 6 and a lot more hours of sleep, and the more I get, the more tired I am. Sometimes it's all I can do to get from the bed to the couch, then I'm ready for my first nap of the day.

We also noticed that at no point do we feel like getting up when the alarm goes off. This is a universal truth. After all this Science, I discovered one truth/trick that is 100% effective, regardless of how much sleep you get: waking up to discover you're a few hours late for work gets you right up out of bed, with no time to be tired (or yawn). It even puts off the need for coffee, for a good few minutes or so.



  • The Great Surveillance Society continues its march to 1984: 40 colleges using phone apps to track students.
  • In 10 years, surveillance will start in kindergarden, with chips implanted in the kids' heads.




SJW Stirrings

"Please only fill out this survey if you identify as a Person of color," it read. Answers "will be used to inform our white colleagues about privilege and microaggression."   - Pete Buttigieg campaign staff


Yale will eliminate a beloved introductory art class for being too white, male, western.

A loyal reader suggested we can't make this stuff up. The people who do throw darts at subjects and string them together to come up with new stuff.


Reminder that private messages of support is another form of white supremacy.  -  @sairasameerarao







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