melchar

Just paid some attention to the plot, such as it is, of 'The Last of Us' - and I'm annoyed. The game - & apparently the series adapted from it - use the 'magic science' approach to immune response. A fungus infects victims, colonizes them & is an excuse for predatory zombies. [Sure, why not.]

But the problem is that when someone 'infected' with the fungus doesn't convert to fungal predator, the kid is called 'immune' - and is sought to provide BRAIN MATTER to search for a cure.

So - science magic. Wave the words around & provide Joel [the MC] with an ethical choice of letting the kid be murdered, or kill all the ones who want to murder the kid. And it is MURDER, since evidence is there that this 'scientific' approach has been used before to unknown numbers of OTHERS exhibiting fungal resistance and failed to produce a 'vaccine' every time.

What SHOULD they have done? NOT murder another victim, that's for damn sure. So - false choice for Joel. 100% save the kid/kill the threats.

Magic science COULD have done useful things. Like - keep the kid healthy & do intensive egg harvesting / embryo implantation in hopes that the kid's offspring - along with sprogs of OTHER, NON-MURDERED resistant folk - show the same resistance to the fungus.

OR be terrible & imprison the kid - along with other resistants after the failure of prior vaccine attempts. The logical inference of why vaccines showed promise & then failed is that it takes living blood / white cells / 'X factor' or some other 'life goo' to keep the fungus at bay. So imprison the resistants - keep them very healthy - and do transfusions from them to those in power.

Heck - even try to make an actual vaccine or effective fungicide without using lethal amounts of brain matter. Use non-lethal methods to harvest blood, bone marrow, bile, tiny amounts of cerebral fluid from LIVING resistants & keep trying other methods until they find something that works.

But the cycle of capturing and killing resistant individuals eliminates the chance for humans to breed for resistance or immunity - and this annoyed the holy living heck out of me. Because you can TELL that the prepared operating theater & 'doctor'-shill was using the lure of the 'magic cure'/vaccine to gain protection - and they had done this before and failed every time. It was the 'medicine is magic' promise that motivated everyone NOT a doctor to willingly die, enabling the continued lie.

Today was ... 'special' = my keyboard cord, which was a little frayed - snapped. Digging out the replacement keyboard [ALWAYS have the next keyboard & mouse - & headphones - ready to hop in] - but it seems to be a LAW that this takes at least 30 minutes

Plus finally was able to see the animated film 'Flow': pretty animation, nice music, very satisfying & I very much enjoyed it

Being sick sucks. This is the first day - in almost 2 weeks - that I have felt somewhat marginally better than I did yesterday. GETTING sick was easy. RECOVERING from being sick just takes so freaking long. I'm lucky that this was 'just' a miserable head & chest cold - but DANG I hate being sick.

This week was a gut-punch, as a proudly uninformed public voted against sanity, safety & self-interest.

On a personal note, at today's doctor's appointment/check-up - I have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. I suppose it was inevitable. I also suppose that - with a history of asthma in the family** - also getting diagnosed with asthma was also inescapable. So now I have metformin & an albuterol inhaler added to the allergy meds, levothyroxine & topical gel for rosacea in my daily routine.

[** my parents both being alcoholic chain smokers from before I was born until they died likely was not good for my lungs***. Oddly, neither of them died of lung cancer or liver disease, although mom died last year of emphysema at 86.]

*** cleaning their multiple ashtrays every day DID inspire me to never smoke & I'm fortunate that I hate the taste of alcohol.

I'm rating this week as '1 star, would not recommend'.

Yay - happy birthday to me. Born on a rainy Hallowe'en morning while my dad listened to baseball on radio. Until I was 5, I thought people dressed up & gave away candy because it was my birthday.

Really good birthday present was an 11th gen iPad - which is the year's culmination of presents [Xmas, Valentines, anniversary & now birthday] - and worth it. However, after the actual BUYING the 'geniuses' at the Apple store were useless at setting it up or transferring the data from my current [6 year old] iPad. Wasted 2 hours there with them unable to install the needed update to the pad, much less do the data transfer.

Back home, Trey spent an hour fixing what they messed up - essentially scrubbed it back to factory specs. Then he spent another 90 minutes doing a fresh install, then update to the current OS & then did the full data transfer. He was helped by our wifi being roughly 4x as fast as that at the Apple store. He was [& IS] awesome.

I had an interesting 'conversation' with someone passionately, violent opposed to industrialization today. They wanted humanity to 'go back to nature' and get rid of all the machines, since machines were causing global warming. They made my head hurt.

Commenting just about the climate-change part, I did agree that industry & humanity has absolutely affected the Earth's climate & help cause some of the overall warming, but not as much as vulcanism.

But ... it was hard to get across the idea that 'warming', in general, is not a completely bad thing. Back in the 1970's - when I was studying geology in college - my teacher's HUGE worry was that the earth is WAY overdue for another period of glaciation. Interstadial periods - the time spent between Ice Ages - have averaged between 10,000 and 40,000 years long. The current interstadial period that we are now in is the longest one on record.

So we are overdue for an Ice Age. Currently, estimates are that the Earth can support up to 12 billion people - as long as we can keep producing food at our current rate. BUT - if there is a glaciation, then the MAXIMUM number of human beings that can live on Earth is maybe one billion - and those only at equatorial regions.

Humanity can survive global warming, albeit with quality of life degradation for some of us. Personally, I HATE hot weather. There will be more disease. Melting glaciers will cause sea levels to rise - which will cause huge problems in low-lying coastal regions.

There is the speculation that melting glaciers will make the ocean less saline - and cause ocean currents to move & change. If the Gulf Stream shifts too far then it is likely that the British Isles will get MUCH colder: like Iceland cold. Plus more brackish water means that there is less fresh water. And I've read that the worst case scenario could be a sea level rise of more than =*100 feet*= in some areas! At THAT rate - as examples - much of Florida & Louisiana would be underwater ALL the time. The Central Valley of California floods & can't be used for agriculture. That's pretty bad for the U.S., but there are Pacific Ocean island nations that may cease to exist.

That could be bad, but if there is an Ice Age most of us will die. Since I don't live in an equatorial region - and neither did the person I pointed this out to - that would include us. They didn't want to admit this, so that led to a huge argument about people dying off from starvation & disease, if 'industry' was prevented from using machines, since those self-same machines are how food & medicine are now produced.

I don't think I really got my points across well and just feel frustrated that there are people who think 'X' can be fixed by stopping other people from 'doing a thing', without thinking about the consequences.

As stated elsewhere, I would be much happier if all Micro$oft execs were forced to do all of their computing on Recall first. Then, once THEIR information became public/was exploited & the like, maybe they would understand the concerns of other people.

Also - just saw this:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/04/microsoft_analysts_recall/
and this:
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/06/windows-recall-demands-an-extraordinary-level-of-trust-that-microsoft-hasnt-earned/

We originally had 2 old-style, boxy, cathode tube TVs - one 30 inch, one 16 inch - both heavy ... until ...
about 15 years ago when our larger boxy TV was replaced by a big-screen 40 inch plasma TV Xmas gift. It lasted about 10 years, then died & my sweetie's sister gave us 2 46-inch LCD TVs. [She was paid for veterinary services in 5 LCD TVs].

One LCD replaced the dead plasma TV & the other replaced our smaller boxy tube TV. The OLD plasma TV went into our 1-car garage for our car to nuzzle up to every night. Both old tube-TVs worked, so were donated to GoodWill. The new 46" LCDs were nice, then one died after about 2 years & ANOTHER friend gave us their 50 inch LCD they just replaced. So a 46" went into the garage.

That 50 inch replacement began dying a month ago, making 3 dead big-screen TVs. They count as 'hazardous electronic waste' & require special disposal. A different friend is doing major housecleaning & has been making many disposal runs. She took ALL 3 of the big ass TVs along with her yesterday. [This saved us $400 that a haulage company would have charged.] Disposing of the plasma TV cost her an extra $25, which we paid - but we also promised her a NICE dinner for her wonderful help.

Yesterday we also went out to CostCo & bought a new 55 inch LG LCD TV [$350! TVs are so much less expansive now] - plus got 2 standing fans & a small box fan to prepare for summer. It was a big shopping trip for us - even though all 3 fans cost only $90 more.

Tonight we took our friend out to dinner. She chose Red Lobster. The food was delicious & had a marvellous time.

the tl;dr version = there was a garage fire near ours, but we're okay.

Longer version = Spent time outdoors in 38 degree [F] weather from 4am till almost 6am on Tuesday morning because of a structure fire. Our condo is the upper, end unit of a building on the west side. The north side faces closed detached garages with roughly a 20 foot gap between the buildings. Under our building are also garages - [3] 2-car garage sized & [2] 1-car garage size.

These garages open to the north & across from them is the single long row of detached garages in a single floor building & are also [3] 2-car garage sized & [2] 1-car garage size. At the far east side of the 1-story garage area is where the dumpsters are. Sometime very early Tuesday either the furthest east of the 2-car garages in the single floor garage building or one of the dumpsters behind that garage caught on fire.

Just before 4am I heard sirens & there was a pounding on our door as the local police went door-to-door waking folk up & having everyone to leave our building. I woke my sweetie up - myself being awake & online - & grabbed my purse & a blanket. We went outside & had to stay outside until the fire was knocked down.

Showing how sudden stress works, I was not wearing shoes & forgot to grab my glasses. [Being near-sighted I can work on the computer without them just fine & am only blind beyond about 5 foot.] All in all we were fortunate. The dumpster area is a loss, as are the [3] 2-car garages in that 1-story garage building. The 1-car garage NEXT to that seems to be okay & that's where our car is. When we are allowed**, we'll be able to learn if it sustained harm.

Of our condo building - the condo across from the fire had one of their windows crack, but that appears to be the only damage our building took. So NOT an experience I hope to repeat anytime soon. It was quite cold outside.

Time spent today was finding that fire & police investigators determined there was no crime involved in the fire, so the investigation is done. [**We were asked to not open or enter our garage until the investigation was over.] PG&E has said power will not be returned to the building until the Homeowner's group finishes repair. Homeowner's group did start tearing down the dumpster area. By this point it was the afternoon & a light rain was falling.

So Thursday will be when we pull the emergency manual use-once cord to open the electric garage door when the power is out, so we can assess our car's condition. Crossing fingers that everything is well - which is probable since the 2-car garage next to us, with its ruined door, did not sustain fire damage - except by proxy, since the firefighters had to tear its door off to get water in there to dowse the fire in the garage beside it.

Tangental observation = the notes written in equipment about each of the companion's underwear is hilarious!

All 4 of these are hilarious = worth listening 2-3x to = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YG0Fd63_70

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAjwwubCygo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g5VvEPFucE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGcHyn6PycI