Cop Car's Beat

More from News for Nerds - Auto emissions, Bit Coin cost, & USA Fossil fuel use

Volkswagen, BMW Fined $1 Billion For Colluding To Make Dirtier Cars (theverge.com)123

Posted by msmash on Thursday July 08, 2021 @02:02PM from the closer-look dept.

Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler spent years illegally colluding to slow the deployment of cleaner emissions technology, says the European Union, which is dishing out fines as a result. From a report: The EU's executive branch hit the Volkswagen Group (which owns Audi and Porsche) and BMW with a collective $1 billion fine on Thursday for their role in the scheme. Volkswagen Group must pay $595 million, while BMW will pay $442 million. Daimler, however, evaded a $861 million fine of its own because the automaker revealed the collusion to the regulators.

The scheme described by EU authorities is separate from the Volkswagen Group's massive Dieselgate scandal, in which the company installed software on its diesel vehicles that helped fool environmental regulators into believing they were compliant, when in reality, they were polluting far more than the legal limit. Dieselgate ultimately led to nearly $40 billion in fines, buybacks, and legal fees for the Volkswagen Group. Daimler also installed software on some of its diesel vehicles to cheat emissions tests and has paid billions of dollars in fines. BMW was careful to point out Thursday that, unlike the other companies it was caught colluding with, it had not cheated emissions testing.

 

Bitcoin Power Plant Is Turning a 12,000-Year-Old Glacial Lake Into a Hot Tub (arstechnica.com)69

Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @11:30PM from the hot-tub-time-machine dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The fossil fuel power plant that a private equity firm revived to mine bitcoin is at it again. Not content to just pollute the atmosphere in pursuit of a volatile crypto asset with little real-world utility, this experiment in free marketeering is also dumping tens of millions of gallons of hot water into glacial Seneca Lake in upstate New York. "The lake is so warm you feel like you're in a hot tub," Abi Buddington, who lives near the Greenidge power plant, told NBC News. In the past, nearby residents weren't necessarily enamored with the idea of a pollution-spewing power plant warming their deep, cold water lake, but at least the electricity produced by the plant was powering their homes. Today, they're lucky if a small fraction does. Most of the time, the turbines are burning natural gas solely to mint profits for the private equity firm Atlas Holdings by mining bitcoin.

Atlas, the firm that bought Greenidge has been ramping up its bitcoin mining aspirations over the last year and a half, installing thousands of mining rigs that have produced over 1,100 bitcoin as of February 2021. The company has plans to install thousands more rigs, ultimately using 85 MW of the station's total 108 MW capacity. [...] The 12,000-year-old Seneca Lake is a sparkling specimen of the Finger Lakes region. It still boasts high water quality, clean enough to drink with just limited treatment. Its waters are home to a sizable lake trout population that's large enough to maintain the National Lake Trout Derby for 57 years running. The prized fish spawn in the rivers that feed the lake, and it's into one of those rivers -- the Keuka Lake Outlet, known to locals for its rainbow trout fishing -- that Greenidge dumps its heated water. Rainbow trout are highly sensitive to fluctuations in water temperature, with the fish happiest in the mid-50s. Because cold water holds more oxygen, as temps rise, fish become stressed. Above 70 F, rainbow trout stop growing and stressed individuals start dying. Experienced anglers don't bother fishing when water temps get to that point.

Greenidge has a permit to dump 135 million gallons of water per day into the Keuka Lake Outlet as hot as 108 F in the summer and 86 F in the winter. New York's Department of Environmental Conservation reports that over the last four years, the plant's daily maximum discharge temperatures have averaged 98 in summer and 70 in winter. That water eventually makes its way to Seneca Lake, where it can result in tropical surface temps and harmful algal blooms. Residents say lake temperatures are already up, though a full study won't be completed until 2023.

 

America Used Fewer Fossil Fuels In 2020 Than It Has In Three Decades (theverge.com)76

Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @10:02PM from the pandemic-side-effects dept.

Americans gobbled up fewer fossil fuels in 2020 than they have in three decades, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The Verge reports: Consumption of petroleum, natural gas, and coal dropped by 9 percent last year compared to 2019, the biggest annual decrease since the EIA started keeping track in 1949. The COVID-19 pandemic was responsible for much of the fall as people stayed home to curb the spread of the virus and used less gas. In April 2020, oil prices nosedived below zero because there was so little demand. The U.S. transportation sector alone used up 15 percent less energy in 2020 compared to the year before. Higher temperatures last winter also helped to cut energy demand for heating, according to the EIA. As a result, greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels plummeted to a near 40-year low.

That downward trend will have to continue in order to stave off the climate crisis. Upon rejoining the Paris climate agreement, President Joe Biden committed the U.S. to slash its planet-heating pollution in half this decade from near-peak levels it reached in 2005. That's part of a global effort to keep global warming from surpassing a point that life on Earth would struggle to adapt to, a global average temperature that's roughly 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. To hit that goal, there should be no further investments in new fossil fuel projects, according to a recent landmark report from the International Energy Agency. The oil and gas industries are already feeling the crunch from lawsuits and activist investors forcing them to move faster toward more sustainable forms of energy.

Another Vanity Card from Chuck Lorre - and further notes on Lorre

If one looks up "Chuck Lorre" on Wikipedia (please see Creative Commons), one finds a photo of "Chuck Lorre", below.

Lorre at PaleyFest 2013

The entry starts, as follows:

Charles Michael "Chuck" Lorre (/ˈlɔːri/;^[1] born October 18, 1952)^[2][3] is an American television director, writer, producer, composer, and actor.

Called the "King of Sitcoms" during the 2010s,^{[4][5][6][7][8]} he has created and produced sitcoms including Grace Under Fire, Cybill, Dharma & Greg, Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, Mike & Molly, Mom, Young Sheldon, The Kominsky Method, Disjointed, Bob Hearts Abishola, B Positive, and United States of Al. He also served as an executive producer of Roseanne. He won Golden Globe Awards for Roseanne (1993) and Cybill (1996),^[9] and won the 2019 Golden Globe Award for The Kominsky Method.

Other than Young Sheldon, The Kominsky Method, and Disjointed, I have seen and enjoyed (some to a greater, some to a lesser extent) Lorre's sitcoms. I still watch re-runs of The Big Bang Theory though I can recite the dialogue - without having the TV audio engaged - in most of the episodes. (I admit to deliberately avoiding several episodes that I find annoying - usually because of writing that presents characters Sheldon and Wolowitz in truly obnoxious ways. They are obnoxious enough without the extra effort that someone seems to think is required.) In addition, because of conflicts with my schedule or the TV schedule I missed most first-run presentations of Mom, I am now catching up on those presentations, in re-runs.

My complaints about Lorre's writing is his reliance upon cheap sexual innuendos that are most unfunny and his insistence upon keeping characters infantile beyond their years. That said, for the most part, Lorre's writing is still above the standards set by others in sitcoms that see the air on our major networks. I am a fan. Or, perhaps I am merely jealous of anyone who has discernible eyebrows?

Summary of the week

Hunky Husband's busy calendar - 6/21/2021

It is well that HH is as organized as he is. It really helps him. Today he has a social engagement (to see old friends from 50 years ago, one of whom has come to town) and an appointment with his audiologist. That being the case, HH brought his penciled schedule for the day to me last evening to see if he had missed anything. He had noted the time at which he was to leave the house to meet his old friends at McDonald's, the time he was to leave McDonald's for home, etc. Right on! Unless HH starts getting more anxious about the whole thing, I plan to go to the gym this morning. I should return home before HH needs to leave, but I don't plan to go with him. McDonald's is less than one mile from our home.

How can we be so wasteful? - 6/22/2021

The item, below, is from News for Nerds.

Amazon Labels Millions of Unsold Products For Destruction, New Investigation Finds (theverge.com)73

Posted by msmash on Monday June 21, 2021 @01:39PM from the closer-look dept.

Amazon marks millions of unsold products for destruction each year in the UK, according to a new investigation by British television program ITV News. From a report: ITV found stacks of boxes marked "destroy" that were filled with electronics, jewelry, books, and other new or gently used items in one warehouse's "destruction zone." The news outlet caught the practice on camera while going undercover at the Dunfermline fulfillment center in Scotland. It says it tracked some of the goods to recycling centers and a landfill. About 124,000 items at Dunfermline were labeled "destroy" during a single week in April, according to an internal document obtained by ITV News. Just 28,000 items were set aside for donations during the same period. About half of all the stuff that's trashed are things that people returned, a former Amazon employee told ITV. While the other half are "unopened and still in their shrink wrap," the ex-employee said.

 

Sidenote to Bogie: I recall your telling me about wastefulness when you worked at Brookstone. I think it pales into insignificance when compared with the magnitude of Amazon's wastefulness.

 

Hunky Husband's busy calendar - 6/23/2021

 

 

For the first time since February, 2020, I got to see my friend who lives in a retirement village in northwestern Wichita. Hunky Husband took Elegant Friend and me to lunch at the Bricktown Brewery, a restaurant just a few blocks from EF's apartment. EF and I failed to recall how large portions of food are at that restaurant and each of the three of us took as much food home with us as we ate.

 

We lost our ISP (Cox) - 6/26/2021

 

 

As I was trying to solve a "no audio" problem with my computer software, this morning, I lost Internet connection - at about 7am. Since Cox has been laying some sort of cable in up along the main street that is about 1/3-mile to the west of us, I checked that our Wi-Fi was working and chose not to panic; but, I did check up on it every once-in-a-while. Hunky Husband and I just returned from the public library where, for the first time in 1.5 years I checked out a couple of books (both fiction, this time). In logging the books into my Excel spreadsheet, I note that I now have Internet connection - at about 2:45pm. Yay! HH is going down to his computer to check on his incoming emails.

 

I still have no audio. (Yes, the speakers are plugged in, powered up, and producing sounds.) The Troubleshooter software checked out my system and found nothing that it could fix - even after it reinstalled the audio drivers. I updated the System BIOS which, likewise, produced nothing. I don't much use the audio; but, it would be nice to have it back. 

 

Unlike previous times, HH has been choosing to go with me for most of the errands that I run - whether he drives or whether I drive. This is new behavior.

 

P.S. Weather - 6/26/2021

 

We received 1.6" of rain overnight. That cooled us down a bit, even if it raised the humidity. It was rather nice doing yardwork this morning - pulling millions of weeds and gathering branches downed by the wind.

More from News for Nerds - Bah, Humbug to CAPTCHA

Cloudflare Wants To Kill the CAPTCHA (zdnet.com)53

Posted by BeauHD on Saturday May 15, 2021 @09:00AM from the there-has-to-be-a-better-way dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet:Cloudflare is testing out the possibility of security keys replacing one of the most irritating aspects of web browsing: the CAPTCHA. CAPTCHAs are used to catch out bots that are trawling websites and are often implemented to prevent online services from being abused. "CAPTCHAs are effectively businesses putting friction in front of their users, and as anyone who has managed a high-performing online business will tell you, it's not something you want to do unless you have no choice," Cloudflare says.

To highlight the amount of time lost to these tests, Cloudflare said that based on calculations of an average of 32 seconds to complete a CAPTCHA, one test being performed every 10 days, and 4.6 billion internet users worldwide, roughly "500 human years [are] wasted every single day -- just for us to prove our humanity." On Thursday, Cloudflare research engineer Thibault Meunier said in a blog post that the company was "launching an experiment to end this madness" and get rid of CAPTCHAs completely. The means to do so? Using security keys as a way to prove we are human.

According to Meunier, Cloudflare is going to start with trusted security keys -- such as the YubiKey range, HyperFIDO keys, and Thetis FIDO U2F keys -- and use these physical authentication devices as a "cryptographic attestation of personhood." This is how it works: A user is challenged on a website, the user clicks a button along the lines of "I am human," and is then prompted to use a security device to prove themselves. A hardware security key is then plugged into their PC or tapped on a mobile device to provide a signature -- using wireless NFC in the latter example -- and a cryptographic attestation is then sent to the challenging website. Cloudflare says the test takes no more than three clicks and an average of five seconds -- potentially a vast improvement on the CAPTCHA's average of 32 seconds.You can access [link removed by blog owner] to try out the system.

What has happened this week?

Safety Deposit Box Project:

The big thing that happened was that Dudette met Hunky Husband and me at the credit union so that we could get her onto our safety deposit box as a co-owner. Yay! She and Bogie will need to be able to access the stuff in that box, eventually. Unfortunately, despite what I had been told, they would not issue another key for Dudette.

In order to have Dudette put on as a co-owner, she had to provide a photo ID (her driver's license did nicely) and her Social Security card. As happened, Dudette could not find her Social Security card. She, instead, brought her birth certificate and her marriage license (to show her name change), knowing that her original Social Security card is among the papers that we do keep in the safety deposit box. That worked nicely, too. Why we still have Dudette's and Bogie's original Social Security cards is beyond me; but, there they are - and Dudette chose to place hers back into our safety deposit box when the paperwork was all done.

Come to think of it, Dudette also used the opportunity to return the Half-Pint microwave oven that we had loaned the girls. I need to retrieve it from HH's car trunk. [I got it, only to find that Dudette or Wonderful GrandDaughter had slipped a pint container of home made cookies into it. It's a wonder that I opened the door of the microwave. Otherwise, who knows how many years the cookies would have stayed there?]

Similarly, I used the opportunity to take a twig, that is to become an oak tree, that I had potted up a year or two ago - for Dudette & Wichidude or for the girls (Wonderful GrandDaughter and Rachie).

Yard Work:

Slowly, maybe not so surely, I am making progress on yard work. A week ago yesterday, I mowed the good grass. I had actually been checking the status of the mower battery; but, when it proved to be alive and well, I went ahead and used the mower - thinking that Jim's Tire & Auto would be picking it up that day for its 1st annual servicing. As it turned out, Jim's was swamped. They will call us when they have time to do the servicing - in about three or four weeks, they thought.

 

 

Trees:

Our crabapple tree that was planted last May is showing some color. The tiny leaves are unfurled.

The weather has provided so much moisture in March (yes, we're supposed to have rain in April) that the nursery has been unable to get their trees out of the ground on their tree farm; thus, the two trees that I bought last fall will not be planted in March - maybe April. The first photo shows, in the foreground, a yellow flag marking the spot in which the new cherry tree is to be planted, eventually replacing the North Star Cherry tree that is enveloped in yellow, in the background. The second photo shows the location at which the new Oklahoma Redbud tree is to be planted, replacing the redbud that had been encroaching on the neighbor's fence.

And then there are narcissi:

 

Money well spent

In my youth (which I consider to extend to a greater age than did it 50 years ago), I transferred schools during my senior year of college. The transfer was from University of Missouri School of Mines & Metallurgy¹ (MSM), basically an engineering school, to University of Wichita² (UW). The strange thing about WU was that, although they had a School of Engineering, as a physics major I matriculated into the School of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Woo hoo! In so doing, I lost most of the hours I had earned in "engineering" courses (10 semester-hours were allowed to transfer), I lost the minor in electrical engineering whose requirements I had completed (no minors allowed outside one's school), a bunch of non-technical (humanities) courses were required to be fulfilled in order to earn a degree in liberal arts & sciences, and a couple of humanities courses that had been accepted as substitutes for over-crowded required basic courses (one in economics, the other in English) at MSM were disallowed and the "required" basic courses were added to my requirements at UW. As I recall, by the time the dust settled, the part of my previous college work that would count toward my degree from WU amounted to but 118 semester hours. Yikes! (Please note that, in order to earn a BS degree at MSM at that time, I had to earn at least 150 semester hours of credited work.

I needed only four physics courses (12 semester hours) to complete my technical requirements for a BS from UW, but I needed to complete four semester hours of physical education (not offered to female students at MSM), introductory courses in public speaking, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and those basic courses in economics and English literature. Actually, I rather enjoyed some of those courses; but, tonight the money I spent taking the required English course - Introduction to American Literature - paid off. I got bragging rights, tonight.

Hunky Husband was watching some old episodes of Law & Order. I walked into the room in time to watch the last couple of minutes of one episode in which a sleazy lawyer was saying (my quote probably isn't exact), "Sometimes a guy has to dare to eat a peach." Ah, yes...from 1962 I recall The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock by T.S. Eliot. [Yes, the same man who wrote, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.] Of course, even though I claimed bragging rights for knowing about the poem, that bit of knowledge has come in useful down through the years. In the copy of the poem, below, I have high lighted the appropriate phrase.

The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

By T.S. Eliot

 

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .                               10 Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.   In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.   The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,                               20 And seeing that it was a soft October night Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.   And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate;                                30 Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions And for a hundred visions and revisions Before the taking of a toast and tea.   In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.   And indeed there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—                               40 [They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"] My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— [They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"] Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.   For I have known them all already, known them all; Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,                       50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.   So how should I presume?   And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?                    60   And how should I presume?   And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!] Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.   And should I then presume?   And how should I begin?         .     .     .     .     . Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets              70 And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . . I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.         .     .     .     .     . And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?                  80 But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet–and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.   And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while,                                             90 To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" If one, settling a pillow by her head,   Should say, "That is not what I meant at all.   That is not it, at all."   And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while,                                           100 After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say:   "That is not it at all,   That is not what I meant, at all."                                          110         .     .     .     .     . No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.   I grow old . . . I grow old . . .                                              120 I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.   Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.   I do not think they will sing to me.   I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black.   We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown               130 Till human voices wake us, and we drown.                                                               [1915]

From a Virginia website0

 

¹ Now Missouri University of Science & Technology

² Now Wichita State University

Young and old conversants

Working in the kitchen, I heard Hunky Husband guffawing in his basement den, so I had to go ask him why he was laughing. He showed me an item in a newsletter that he was reading. It illustrated the different ways in which various people use language - particularly when one of the people is young, the other old. I've changed the lead-in, for personal reasons, but not the quote. It sounds like something that HH would have told his troops 40 years ago.

After an aide answered a question, the questioner shook his head and said, “Pick up your phone, call your mother, read her what you just told me” ... “If she understands, we can keep talking.”

This was a lot funnier than what had happened about an hour, previously. I happened to go downstairs for something and heard beeps and siren noises coming from HH's den. He had somehow come upon a scam: the one that displays and announces messages to the effect that a bad thing on your computer is going to bring down the internet unless you call the given phone number RIGHT NOW! HH was trying to figure out what to do - difficult for anyone to do with all the bells, whistles, and flashing images. While he went into the laundry room to iron his weeks' worth of shirts, I shut down his machine and cleaned it up. Not that it will help, but I did change a couple of his security settings while I was at it.

One of those mornings

It can't be our uniqueness that, on rare occasion, we have one of those mornings. Everyone has those. For instance, this morning....

5:45am - I emerge from my basement lair to find the upstairs bedroom hallway light on (above the hallway closets). That's a very unusual occurrence as Hunky Husband uses that light so seldom that he can not remember the location of the switch that controls that light. Do I check in his bedroom to assure that HH is alright, or do I leave to do the grocery shopping and let the light go? I decide to don shoes and hoodie to leave for the groceries.

6:04am - HH opens the doorway into the garage just as I am ready to punch the button on my sun visor to open my overhead door to start my car and back out. HH just wanted to check that everything was OK with me. He had arisen, read my note about my going to get groceries, and checked the garage - surprised that my car was still in. After assuring HH that all is well and opening the overhead door, I drive down the dark driveway noting that, although it has usually been delivered by this time, there is no Wichita Eagle newspaper in our driveway.

6:32am - I return home to find the newspaper still has not arrived, HH has returned to bed, and the hallway light is turned off. After unloading and putting away the groceries, I go back to bed.

8:30am - I arise to find HH in a stew because we still have not received a newspaper, for the second day in a row. He has called about the omission and received the same satisfaction as he had received yesterday - an imperceptible amount. It has been a few years since HH last had to fight this battle - a battle that lasted for two or three weeks at that time.

8:40am - Being a complete klutz, I knock my bottle of water over, spilling 1/2 cup of ice and water over my cluttered computer desk.

8:45am - HH comes up from his den in the basement, handing me his check book and two most recent statements from his credit union, and asking me to figure out whether his $538 check to the Wichita Eagle that he wrote on 10/10/2020 has cleared. (Unfortunately, it has been about 15 years since that particular credit union's online services have been available to me - partly because I tend to procrastinate and partly because they make it difficult to communicate with them.) It takes me a few minutes, but I finally find the appropriate entry that confirms that the check cleared on 10/16/2020.

8:55am - HH readies to visit the nearest convenience store in order to, again, spend over $2 for a replacement newspaper. HH cannot find his wallet. I spot it on the table next to his reading chair - in the spot on that table which is diagonally opposite to where I would have expected he might have laid it, regardless of the fact that he never puts his wallet on that table.

HH and I agree that the rest of the day can only be better.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Arthur Schopenhauer

Week in Review - 9/25/2020

Monday, 9/21/2020: Having decided to get down to the task of making more/better face coverings for Hunky Husband and me, I was disgusted with myself for having forgotten my lack of elastic for the ear pieces. Gah! I bought three yards of silk for the double inner layer of fabric, but failed to order the elastic. In case there is someone who missed the announcement: Walmart is trying to compete with Amazon as a "go to" online merchandise ordering website. However, there are items for which they have taken time to establish ordering capability. Such was the case with the elastic. It has, since, become available and I have ordered several yards of white and several of black. It is to be delivered during the first week of October. [Added note: The wild bird seed that was ordered at the same time was delivered on the 22nd.]

       

I still seek a source of two types of light bulbs - and - sanitizing hand wipes.

Tuesday, 9/22/2020: The Wild Turkeys and I are having a contest. They try to see how much of the mulch around our new trees in back they can remove, and how quickly, while I attempt to rake the mulch back into place during my daily outdoor chores. The photo, below, was taken in July; but, it shows some of the turkeys and points out the mulch that they love to scatter.

Wednesday, 9/23/2020: As I stepped outside to gather in this morning's newspaper, there were a couple of bat-like flyers tumbling over our front yard. I could not imagine that we had bats as large as these two appeared to be and, by the time I had taken another step, I realized that there were a number of these tumbling flyers. Aha! It is September. The Common Nighthawks are migrating south with their more-or-less wheeling movement. As happened, it was early enough that it was nearly dark outside, and it was foggy; thus, the birds were flying a bit lower than normally they would have been observed to do. Their tumbling flight was to catch insects around the street light that is near our yard, fueling their long flight to South America. I did not/could not have captured their aerobatic flight; but, YouTube came to my rescue. I recommend full screen for viewing this video (under 2 minutes).

 

 

Several times since moving into this house, I've observed migrations of nighthawks - following the same track each year as far as I can tell. Otherwise, seeing nighthawks in our little town is so rare that I cannot, reliably, recall any instances. I do recall (1940s and early 1950s) watching nighthawks dart about in the even smaller town in which my great-grandparents lived. They lived on a relatively busy street, across from a small hotel. As I recall, some of the nighthawks nested atop that hotel - on its flat roof. Their in-flight squawks are unmistakable.

 

 

Did I mention it was foggy? Thirty minutes later, as I left for my walk, I found that the "perfectly dry" outdoor surfaces were then "perfectly wet". During my walk, within 0.4 mile of the house, I experienced a "Seattle rain". The rest of my walk was dry.

 

I continued my fall cleanup in the yard by yanking out another tomato vine (this is the 5th one, so far, this year.) You can see how huge the plant was in the photo, below. It was late producing ripe tomatoes and sparse in production. It's fruit were tasty, however.

 

The fall yard cleanup continued with my raking cottonwood tree leaves and sticks - for the ninth day in a row. It has been only a couple of hours since I raked and, in the next photo, it is obvious that tomorrow will be another raking day. Unfortunately, I failed to snap a photo "before". The splice of two photos to provide a wide-angle look isn't perfect; but, close enough for government work!

 

 

Thursday, 9/24/2020:

On this, my late mother's 106th birthday, News for Nerds led me to a report at The Guardian, concerning the effectivity of impermeable face shields in protecting against aerosol distribution of the novel coronavirus.

 

Face shields ineffective at trapping aerosols, says Japanese supercomputer

Simulation using world’s fastest supercomputer casts doubt on effectiveness in preventing spread of coronavirus

Obviously, my dentist is ahead of the curve since she insists that all staff working on patients wear a surgical mask under the transparent face shield. I would also point out that dentists have used the transparent face shields "forever". I had always understood it to guard them against droplets of spray.

A large garden spider is having her last fling of summer. It's to be in the low 90s (as high temperature of the day) over the weekend, then into the 60s during next week. It was in the mid 60s when I spotted this beauty, below. I never had the opportunity to show her back in a photo - only her front and side.

 

 

 

Friday, 9/25/2020: One of the items at News for Nerds, this morning, concerns helping people become addicted to Facebook. I understand that, just because one uses FB does not imply that they are addicted; but, there are frequently reports in the traditional media that might lead one to conclude that a non-trivial number of users are, indeed, addicted.

Former Facebook Manager: 'We Took a Page From Big Tobacco's Playbook' (arstechnica.com) 86

Posted by BeauHD on Thursday September 24, 2020 @11:30PM from the engaging-analogies dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Speaking to Congress today, the former Facebook manager first tasked with making the company make money did not mince words about his role. He told lawmakers that the company "took a page from Big Tobacco's playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset" and arguing that his former employer has been hugely detrimental to society. His analogy continued: "Tobacco companies initially just sought to make nicotine more potent. But eventually that wasn't enough to grow the business as fast as they wanted. And so they added sugar and menthol to cigarettes so you could hold the smoke in your lungs for longer periods. At Facebook, we added status updates, photo tagging, and likes, which made status and reputation primary and laid the groundwork for a teenage mental health crisis. Allowing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news to flourish were like Big Tobacco's bronchodilators, which allowed the cigarette smoke to cover more surface area of the lungs. But that incendiary content alone wasn't enough. To continue to grow the user base and in particular, the amount of time and attention users would surrender to Facebook, they needed more."

Tim Kendall, who served as director of monetization for Facebook from 2006 through 2010, spoke to Congress today as part of a House Commerce subcommittee hearing examining how social media platforms contribute to the mainstreaming of extremist and radicalizing content. "The social media services that I and others have built over the past 15 years have served to tear people apart with alarming speed and intensity," Kendall said in his opening testimony (PDF). "At the very least, we have eroded our collective understanding -- at worst, I fear we are pushing ourselves to the brink of a civil war." As director of monetization, he added, "We sought to mine as much attention as humanly possible... We took a page form Big Tobacco's playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset."