“I had to quit a job because of aggressive nesting geese.” I have rediscovered “Ask a Manager.”

I was having system problems several months ago, the solution for which was to reinstall the operating system. Now the problems are back, so I upgraded to Sonoma, which will either fix the problems or give me ALL NEW UPGRADED problems.

Where does the coyote get money to buy all that stuff from Acme? I don’t know how much a 25 foot tall slingshot costs but I bet it’s expensive.

That was a bad idea. I’ve done it several times previously and it was a bad idea those times. I expect I’ll do it again because I want it to be a good idea.

The word ‘But’ asks to not appear in these sentences. Alexandra Petri: “The word ‘But’ has been stunned to find itself appearing in an increasing number of sentences that begin ‘The killing of children is never acceptable … ‘“

The Most Iconic Vintage Dessert from Every Decade

1940s: Bread pudding.

I love bread pudding. I eat it several times a year.

Unfortunately, the last time we got bread pudding it wasn’t great. We got it take-out—a massive brick. I froze most of it, but made the mistake of not breaking it up into individual portions beforehand, further diminishing the likelihood that I will ever eat that bread pudding.

Future archeologists will no doubt wonder at the find.

A 21-year-old computer science student from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln won a global contest to decipher the first text inside a burned, blackened scroll from the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum. The student used X-Ray computed tomography (CT) scanning and an AI algorithm to detect Greek letters on several lines of the rolled-up papyrus. The letters spelled out the word “purple.”

Praying that Israel exercises compassion, clemency, pity, forbearance and love.

Mary Lou Retton Crowdfunded Her Medical Debt, Like Many Thousands of Others

But unlike the Olympic gymnast, most people don’t raise enough money to cover their costs.

Our healthcare system is a disgrace.

The Progressives Who Flunked the Hamas Test.

Helen Lewis at The Atlantic:

Fitting Israel into the intersectional framework has always been difficult, because its Jewish citizens are both historically oppressed—the survivors of an attempt to wipe them out entirely—and currently in a dominant position over the Palestinians, as demonstrated by the Netanyahu government’s decision to restrict power and water supplies to Gaza. The simplistic logic of pop intersectionality cannot reconcile this….

I donated to the United Jewish Appeal Israel Emergency Fund to support the people of Israel. The fund provides: “Emergency cash assistance for victims of terror. Critically needed trauma counseling. Care for children in shelters. Burial expenses. Funds to relocate people to safer areas.”

Tyler Cowen interviews the fascinating Ada Palmer, Hugo Award winning author of the “Terra Ignota” science fiction series, Renaissance historian at the University of Chicago, musical composer, consultant on anime and manga, and more.

She talks about:

• Why living in the Renaissance was worse than living in the Middle Ages in Europe.
• Why she doesn’t want to go back in time.
• How censorship worked during the Inquisition, and why Enlightenment philosophy and pornography were closely related.
• How sexism by historians gives us a warped vision of history, and why the recent involvement of women in studying history has led to breakthroughs.

and much more

This is a podcast I had to stop listening to frequently, just to think about what Palmer last said.

“I came to realize that my Woody was my impression of Tom yelling at his kids.”

On the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast: Soundalikes, or voice doubles, “are voice actors who perform as characters that were originally played by someone else.” The soundalike replaces a big superstar like Robin Williams or Julia Roberts for video games, rides, toys, TV shows, etc.

This podcast features an interview with Jim Hanks, a successful character actor and soundalike who specializes in playing Woody from “Toy Story” when brother Tom Hanks is unavailable.

• Go online to make a payment.
• Apple Pay needs me to reenter my credit card
• Go into the house to get my wallet
• See Julie, talk with her
• Remember that we were expecting a check—ask Julie about it.
• Look where Julie says the check is. No check.
• Decide not to bother Julie with it right now
• Make a note to talk with her later
• Notice my dirty lunch dishes in the sink
• Wash them
• Notice clean dishes from yesterday are still on the drying rack
• Put them away
• Pet dog
• Return to my office
• See the notification from Apple Pay on my desktop—I need to update my credit card
• Check my pocket.
• Still don’t have my wallet

Sometimes I want a nice turkey sandwich but I do not want the side order of doggy drama so I eat something else instead.

“Whatever calculation you make must begin with the premise that the deaths of innocent people are evil. I simply don’t know what the answer is. What I do know is that any ideology that is not bounded by a recognition of universal humanity is too dangerous to be let loose upon the world.”

Also:

“Your Moral Equation Must Have Human Beings on Both Sides. Ignoring universal humanity is the path to murder.”

Also:

“My basic bedrock assumption is that the fate of these two peoples are intertwined.”

I was already losing interest in Twitter when Musk took over. The constant arguing and anger were wearing me down. Musk said he saw Twitter as an arena for combatting ideas. The signal I got from that is that he wanted more arguing and anger. So I gradually started doing Twitter less and less until now I only check it a couple of times a week and I don’t post there. I do have a list of meme and comedy accounts on Twitter that I check regularly.

Hard-Core Sleepers Obsess Over Their Snoozing Stats

… for millions, chasing winks with the latest sleep-measuring technology has become a nighttime sport, complete with sleep scores and strategies on how to best sack the competition. … “I can see that on days when I tape my mouth during sleep, I have a 7% higher recovery score…. “

For more than 70 years, filmmakers have been reusing the sound of a particular scream. Many people even know it by name—the Wilhelm Scream.

“The scream is usually used when someone is shot, falls from a great height, or is thrown from an explosion.” It first appears in the 1951 Western “Distant Drums.” It appears in the 1954 “A Star Is Born,” “Star Wars,” “Toy Story” and on and on in many, many movies, TV shows and video games.

The actor who voiced the scream was likely Sheb Wooley, who also voiced the 1958 hit novelty song “The Purple People Eater.”

I listened to this podcast episode about the Wilhelm Scream Friday morning. That night, we watched the 1993 Sylverster Stallone movie “Cliffhanger” and I’m pretty sure I heard the Wilhelm Scream in it.

The One Year podcast looks back at the 1955 Davy Crockett craze and how it saved the then-struggling Disney studio and “created the first baby-boom phenomenon,” almost by accident.

A reporter made sure a retired police chief’s death didn’t go uncovered. Then social media attacked her.

Sabrina Schnur, a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, faced death threats and anti-Semitic attacks from a bridade of right-wing boneheads who think that she downplayed the hit-and-run death of retired police chief Andreas Probst, when in fact she was the person who reported that it was a hit-and-run rather than an innocent accident.

Of course, billionaire bonehead Elon Musk joined the attacks.

smh when I think I used to feel obliged to have opinions about global crises based on a few hours of reading the news and to share that opinion with the world on the Internet.

Digital Equipment Corp. (1957-98) was a titan of the computing industry for decades, aid its technology legacy is still felt today. And it was influential in my personal life.. When Julie and I met, Julie was doing PR for DEC and I was covering the company as a journalist. Shocking conflict of interest—but she had stopped doing PR for them several weeks before we started dating.

For the lonely, a blurred line between real and fictional people

In lonely people, the boundary between real friends and favorite fictional characters gets blurred in the part of the brain that is active when thinking about others, a new study found.

Researchers scanned the brains of people who were fans of “Game of Thrones” while they thought about various characters in the show and about their real friends. All participants had taken a test measuring loneliness.

Who picked Petyr Baelish or Sandor Clegane as their imaginary bestie?