whitey whacked

Notorious killer and mob kingpin Whitey Bulger was murdered yesterday by at least two inmates in a West Virginia federal prison. The killers may have organized crime connections. Further details about the circumstances have not been published as of this writing.

It's never nice to celebrate someone's death. At the same time, if you were looking for a real-world example of poetic justice, you'd be hard pressed to find a better example than Bulger's slaying. The man was a monster.

Alternatively, if you believe in karma, Whitey's account was cashed out and closed yesterday. He died as violently as he had lived.

Bulger was infamous for many things, including the fact that he was a fugitive for sixteen years, with most of that time spent in Southern California. Part of the time I lived in LA, I rented a room not far from where he was living in Santa Monica under an assumed name.

I've often wondered if I ever saw him in a store or walking around town. He would have been a generic-looking and utterly forgettable senior guy. Did I ever smile and say hello? It makes a chill run down my spine.

the war on masturbation

Then first published online, this article had the title "Why Fascists Hate Masturbation" and the secondary title "The rise of nationalism coincides with anti-masturbation movements." A few hours later, it was changed to something quite anodyne.

Did fascists complain?

That aside, the article talks about anti-masturbation groups and efforts, some of which are on the far right side of the political spectrum.

If someone doesn't want to masturbate, fine. If he or she thinks it's wrong or unhealthy or whatever, then he/she should refrain.

But why do some of these people feel compelled to insist that other people do the same? Why are people so determined to start movements?

People need to learn to mind their own business when it comes to others' lifestyle issues.

quickening

Baby three seems to be much more active at the stage of my pregnancy than my first two children. I was looking at my pregnancy journals over the weekend and noted how I could feel this child earlier than the others and that he/she is more active.

Feeling the child earlier in a subsequent pregnancy is not uncommon. A mother is more attuned to what goes down having experienced it before.

So that might explain the starting date. However, the activity level is different. My first child was the least active of the three -- not that he was sedentary by any means -- but this one is a real busy bee, particularly when I'm in bed.

I hope this does not mean the kid will be really rough when he/she is larger and can cause real pain. I'm also not looking forward to my bladder being used as a trampoline.

While I was typing this, baby three decided to join in the fun. I think he or she is giving dancing lessons in there or something.

chicken cone

This is a real thing at KFC restaurants in Thailand (enlargement): chicken nuggets in a sugary sweet sauce served in an oversize ice cream cone.

This might appeal to some women having pregnancy pangs, but I'm certainly not one of them. I like one thing and one thing only in ice cream cones: ice cream itself.

the phony prince

I thought this was a fascinating article. The pitch: a street child from Colombia was adopted by an American couple and grew up to be a master con artist, swindling an astounding number of people for three decades into believing he was a Saudi prince.

His high point was when he walked into a Coral Gables American Express office and convinced them to give him a Platinum card with a $200 million credit line.

He was skilled in convincing people to give him large sums of money and other valuables, which he then quickly used as capital on lavish shopping sprees. The bling he amassed allowed him to perpetuate the scam that he was a Saudi prince as he went hunting for more targets.

It seems the biggest factor working in his advantage was convincing people he was a royal. Once they bought that, he usually could easily fleece them.

I find stories about con artists like this fascinating for two reasons: the gullibility of the people they're able to swindle and the sheer brazenness of the criminals themselves.

book cheating

I am not one of those readers who, when partly finished reading a book, stops to read the last page or two or three to see in advance how things turn out. This has happened accidentally a few times, when looking to see how many pages I have left, so now I cover the text when doing a page count.

I don't think it's "wrong" to cheat and look ahead, but that's just not for me. Part of the joy of reading a thriller or mystery is the escalating jeopardy and trying to figure out who the bad guys are. So when you cheat and read ahead, then you deflate the experience of reading the book in the way the author intended.

For me, this "rule" uniformly applies for novels. But what about non-fiction?

A case in point: I'm currently reading a book about the Patty Hearst kidnapping. I know she's still alive now and that she was at least investigated for crimes she allegedly committed with her kidnappers.

But was she charged? Put on trial? Convicted? Imprisoned? These things I do not know. I certainly could find the answers within minutes on the Internet.

But adhering to my "no cheating" rule, since the author of the book in question does not foreshadow the outcome, I decided not to read online about what happened to her and instead just enjoy the book as it unrolls.

Part of the fun for me, both with fiction and nonfiction, is guessing how things will turn out. So why spoil that fun knowing something in advance, even if the book is about a true story?

dogface child

I had a dream last night that our forthcoming baby was born with fine puppy fur instead of human skin. The fur was a random pattern of white, brown, and black with both white and black freckles.

The baby's features otherwise were entirely human. It just sort of looked like an infant upholstered in fine puppy fur.

I kept wanting to learn the child's gender in the dream but could not find out. People only were talking about the puppy fur.

Extreme hirsuteness in a human is very rare but not unheard of. Hypertrichosis is the usual form with human hair growing everywhere on the body.

With hypertrichosis, the hair is colored in the normal human range -- black, brunette, blond, etc. It's not tricolor and freckled like a canine.

I'm wondering if the dream was my subconscious playing a practical joke on my conscious mind. I've been thinking a lot in recent days about having a boy versus a girl.

So my subconscious may have decided on some fun. When your newborn is colored something like a beagle, you tend to overlook issues like gender.

Of course, anyone who had a child with such a freak mutation like tricolor puppy fur could make a fortune from the more sensational media. You could sock away enough to send the kid to Harvard and then medical school, where the child could then research how to eliminate puppy fur in human children.

lazy praying

The Atlantic is currently running an article about a phone app where you can order up a prayer to be performed on your behalf. The service is currently offered to Hindus, but I could see something like that taking off with other religions.

I could never understand the concept of asking someone else to do your praying for you.

I remember once sitting in a medical office waiting for an appointment when I was still living in the states. A nun was waiting in one of the other chairs. She was approached by a thirtysomething woman who asked the nun to pray for her sick friend. The nun whipped out a pad and dutifully wrote down the friend's details.

So in effect, the nun was asked to be a lobbyist to God for a woman she's never met. The nun reacted in such a way that I had the idea such requests were commonplace -- hence, the handy pad. No money changed hands.

My use of prayer is sporadic at best, but I would never think about asking someone else to do my praying for me. It would seem that any supreme being would be less inclined to respond if you didn't bother putting the effort into it yourself.

ridiculously oversized

Absurdly oversized outerwear, like the coat seen here, is supposed to be the hot new "look" in winterwear this year. This particular example is by the designer Balenciaga.

Does that thing come with tentpegs? Needless to say, no one will be wearing this in Australia because it never gets cold enough and summer begins in two months.

The ridiculously oversized trend violates my basic personal rule of fashion -- if it doesn't flatter you, don't wear it. It also looks ridiculously impractical. Is the reason she's wearing four or five jacket underneath this because that's the only way to keep it from slipping off (enlargement)?

Coats like this are needlessly wasteful, both of fabric and money. You need yards of extra material to make something like this.

And where do you store it when you're not wearing it -- the garage?

The coat is $4,100 American, in case you're interested.

the invasion

Meghan Markle and Harry Windsor (aka Prince Harry) are in the midst of a whirlwind two-week tour to Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. The itinerary includes three separate visits to Sydney: early last week when they arrived, this past weekend for the longest portion, and again late this week into the weekend.

Needless to say, we avoided going up to the city this weekend. Fortunately, we're far enough south of the city that the visit did not affect traffic here.

Public crowds at one point exceeded 15,000, which is a lot for Australia and the largest ever for any royal visit. Australians are not as pro-royal as Brits but more so than Canadians, so finding that many royalists is not difficult.

The husband and I were talking about how many in those large crowds were true royalists. My theory is well under 100 percent.

Meghan and Harry are celebrities more than they are royals. He is currently sixth in line of succession, which means he almost certainly will never be the monarch.

The couple was very gracious in their appearances but behaved like any royals on tour, so their whole visit was something of a snore. But their trip likely boosted public support for having a monarch remain as the Australian head of state, so perhaps that was the true reason they visited after all.

sears is dying

The once mighty Sears filed for bankruptcy protection this past week. As part of the move, the retailer plans to close 142 stores, taking their total down to 545.

The chain has been shedding stores like mad during the last five years. In 2013, they had nearly 2,000 stores across the United States.

There are a lot of reasons for the company's slow-motion demise: rise of e-commerce, declining mall foot traffic, deep-discount competitors, and hedge fund management that has saddled the company with a massive amount of debt.

When I lived in the States, Sears was one of those places where I didn't like to shop but, dollar for dollar, their stuff always seemed well made and durable, compared to some of their competition.

While the chain will still exist once it emerges from bankruptcy, it will only be a pale shadow of what it once was. One can imagine that the weakened company would fold a few years down the line.

At its peak, Sears was a retailing pioneer and powerhouse. At one time, for instance, they sold mail order houses of all things.

My home state of Illinois supposedly has more Sears houses than any other in the nation, particularly in the Southwest of the state. The photo below shows a Sears mail-order house in Carlinville, Illinois (enlargement).

the sex doll brothel

Houston, Texas, is in a tizzy over a proposal to open what can only be described as a sex doll brothel. The facility would serve men who want to rent the sexual services of robotic dolls.

Thinks of them as battery-operated escorts.

Some opponents trotted out a whole host of biblical verses in an attempt to stop the endeavor. Others appealed to emotion by claiming the facility would lead to more sexual slave traffic and the like.

IMHO, this is baloney. While I think it's creepy a man would want to get off on a robot, he should have the right to do so. Fucking a fake woman is a true victimless crime.

I think as long as the place has discrete signage like adult bookstores do in most American cities, then it should be allowed.

Picking Houston as the launch site for an imagined national service might not have been the brightest idea, however. Haven't these people ever heard of Vegas?

defectors

I recently wrote here about how I was giving novelist Joseph Kanon a "second chance" after being disappointed with the first book of his that I read (but not his first book), The Good German.

I've now read four of his novels, most recently Defectors, and can say Kanon writes a good espionage story. His historical detailing of the world his characters occupy -- mid-century Cold War Europe -- is superb. The writing is strong and most of the characters are interesting.

But then he has a weakness, and that's probably the reason I didn't much like The Good German: his female characters are amorphous and interchangeable from book to book. He can write men fine, but not women.

Thinking back over the four books of his I've read so far, all have pretty much had the same female character, a fading beauty who no longer can get by on her looks alone. That's a problem.

I'll still read more of his books. The positives outweigh the negatives. I'll also be curious to see if the same female character appears in more of his books. I'm suspecting she will.

cannibal cookies

Police in Davis, California, are investigating whether the homemade cookies a student gave to her classmates contains human ashes, as she claimed. Several students who ate the cookies reported they were gritty like they contained sand.

The authorities are uncertain if the prank was actually a crime. The student could possibly be charged with improper disposal of human remains. Apparently it is not considered cannibalism to eat human ashes. The school district may also discipline the student in question.

I think the moral of the story here is simple: don't eat homemade baked goods offered by people you don't know and trust.

alone in berlin

Last night, the husband and I watched the film Alone in Berlin, starring Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson. I learned about the movie a few days ago when I happened to be looking at Thompson's credits and noticed Alone in Berlin, something I had never heard of.

The film loosely tells the true story of Otto and Elise Hampel, a Berlin couple who organized and carried out a solo resistance effort against both Hitler and his government. Their protest was simple -- they left hundreds of denouncing postcards in public places throughout Berlin for more than two years before they were caught and executed.

I thought the film was a mixed success. Thompson and Gleeson are both excellent and give performances that will break your heart. The movie looks terrific too with its bleak interiors and desaturated color punctuated by vivid red swastikas.

On the other hand, the script had significant problems and the budgetary limitations were obvious at times, particularly in some klunky CGI. As well, the film had a number of excellent supporting performances of roles that were never fully realized and with key scenes possibly left on editing room floors.

Nevertheless, I would recommend the film because it makes you think. What would you do if you lived in that time and were the Hampels neighbors? Would you look the other way or report them to save your own neck?

morning sickness blues

Just like with my first two pregnancies, I have breezed past the time when morning sickness is supposed to stop yet I'm still nauseous nearly every morning. Unfortunately, I'm obviously one of the 10 percent of women who experience morning sickness throughout a pregnancy.

It doesn't bother me as much this time as it did during, particularly, the first pregnancy. I can't say that I get used to it, but I know it's par for the course. My pattern of morning sickness is exactly the same as in the last two pregnancies -- yucky all morning and then okay the rest of the day.

Given that there is some scientific evidence linking morning sickness intensity and baby's gender, I'm wondering if this means I'm having a boy again. Supposedly, according to some studies, there is scientific evidence holding that moms are often sicker with boys than with girls.

Of course, not having been knowingly pregnant with a girl, I may be one of the women who gets equally sick for both genders. So I guess it's irrational for me to presume another boy given the lack of a test control.

So time will tell. Hopefully my ultrasound will answer the question.

not enough famous

The Washington Post is running an interesting opinion piece about how Donna Strickland, until she won a Nobel Prize in physics earlier this month, was not considered "notable enough" to warrant a Wikipedia entry about her. One had been created about her earlier in the year, but then it was deleted by a lone editor who did not find her "notable."

I will admit that I use Wikipedia a lot because it's easily accessible, often interesting, and ad free. At the same time, the site has some serious flaws and this "notability" issue reveals one of them -- it's unnecessarily subjective.

Right now, a volunteer "editor" can decide if something is or isn't notable. Yes, there are guidelines, but they're both specific and amorphous to allow for a great deal of subjective inclusion and exclusion. Given that "notability" is so highly subjective -- like whether or not something is delicious or expensive or ugly -- that it's an extremely weak foundation upon which to build.

In some arguably trivial fields, someone can be "extremely notable" but in another highly professional field, someone can be somewhat notable. So the website can promote someone who is "notable" simply because they've become somewhat known on YouTube while at the same time discarding a leading physicist who is widely published.

When Wikipedia makes new policies, they tend to be more complex and bureaucratic than what they had before. So the site may respond to the Strickland situation by developing even more convoluted notability "guidelines."

I'd argue the opposite needs to be done. The litmus tests need to be simple. If the person is cited or published by three publications online, for instance, then that should suffice for "notability." Such a standard would thus have included Strickland but excluded the list of individuals whose YouTube videos were "most liked."

In an amusing coda, the very active editor on Wikipedia -- who apparently was something of a self-designated notability barometer, has quit the website. Was it because of the Strickland incident?

the cult of irrationality

I am currently reading a biography of Wilhelm Canaris, a wily character who played both sides during World War II. He was first strongly allied with Hitler and the Nazis, but then secretly turned against them and directed complex plots right under their noses.

I'm now through the earlier part of his life when Canaris rose to power, and it parallels some of the reading I did recently of the book about 1920s and early 1930s history. A line in the Canaris biography reminded me of something I read in that book and other books recently, too.

The Nazis rose to power and strength partly because of what some have called "the cult of irrationality," a percentage of the populace that is fairly uneducated, unread, and easily duped into believing wild rumors and preposterous claims. When confronted with a question about an issue, they are more apt to believe the irrational reason instead of the rational one.

That reminded me of our own times. Too many people believe wild conspiracy theories and other tripe peddled by nutballs with a YouTube channel. Things like vaccines cause autism, Israel pulled off the 9/11 attacks, climate change is a Chinese hoax, and more. People like this rush to embrace the irrational while looking at the rational with contempt.

How to fix this so people can't be manipulated and exploited by the unscrupulous? I don't think there's an easy fix and instead it would be generational by improving the education system so people know to reject irrationality.

elderly advocate

A few days ago, I went to visit the elderly woman in whose house we live at her care home. As I was leaving, I said hello to the home's administrator and we started chatting about the woman I was visiting.

At one point, she asked me "did you ever think about becoming an elderly advocate?" I wasn't exactly sure what that was but I had an idea.

The administrator explained that elderly advocates are appointed by the court to act for certain elderly people no longer able to handle their personal affairs. Advocates must be cleared by the court system first and are paid for the work they perform on an hourly basis.

Apparently the demand for advocates far outstrips the supply so landing gigs is quite easy once you're approved. Most of the work can be done from home, given it's mostly paperwork, billpaying, phone calls, and the like, on a flexible schedule and then visiting the older person regularly to review matters.

The job requirements are fairly minimal: a high school education or equivalent, a clean criminal record, and several personal recommendations. No problem with those for me.

I talked to my husband later about this and he thought I'd be great. So after Child Three is a few years old, I think I'll look into this. I like helping people and have always gotten along well with the elderly, so this might be just the thing for me.

shooting up

On Sunday, The New York Times Magazine will run a feature on a Philadelphia neighborhood that is described as "the largest open-air narcotics market for heroin on the East Coast." The article is already available online for free.

I found the piece really sad, particularly some of the pictures. Several photos show addicts shooting up in full public view on the street.

Addicts like this have completely sold themselves to one drug or another and have no home, no job, no hope as a result. They have thrown away their lives like garbage.

In reality, they have only one hope -- somehow, through rehab or something else, they have to go clean. Otherwise, their lives will spiral into more misery, illness, and ultimately an early death.

Their drug obviously has a powerful hold on them. Otherwise, why would they completely discard all dignity and self-respect simply to get high?

demon child

A Utah couple placed an envelope with more than $1,000 in cash on a counter in their home. Later, they discovered the envelope and cash were missing, so they hunted for it throughout the house.

They eventually found what had happened to it. Their two-year-old son put it all in the home shredder.

Supposedly the kid did this because he thought he was being "helpful" -- he often assists his parents in shredding junk mail and important records.

The absence of published details does not give a clear picture about whether there were any parental lapses here. Did they tell the kid never to use the shredder alone? To only shred material they gave him? That money should always be handled with extreme care to keep from being lost?

Absent more details, it's not really possible to tell if the kid is innocent of intent or if he's a monster demon child. Based on what has been written about him, I'm leaning toward the latter, however. Two-year-olds are not this dumb.

kanon misfire

Several years ago I read a novel by the American Writer Joseph Kanon called The Good German. The book had been made into a movie which I never saw, but the topic looked like something that might interest me, set against the backdrop of World War II's final days inside Germany.

Needless to say, I was underwhelmed by the book. While the setting was interesting and well developed, I thought the characters were one-dimensional and the dialog stilted and cliched.

As a result, I was not inspired to read another one of the author's books. Now when I read a truly bad novel, I vow to never, ever read the author again. Kanon did not receive that distinction, but I wasn't itching to read another of his books.

Nevertheless, I was in the library a few weeks ago and spotted another Kanon novel Leaving Berlin. I will admit I was drawn in by the interesting cover, using a period photograph, and was intrigued by the story described on the book flap. So I thought, what the hell, it's a free read so I checked it out.

I read it and actually enjoyed it. The book was not without flaws, but it was leaps and bounds better than his earlier The Good German, so perhaps the latter was just a rough early book, a Kanon misfire, so to speak.

So Kanon is back on my reading list. I have since checked out another of his more recent novels, Istanbul Passage, and will give that a whirl.

speed versus accuracy

I'm not yet at my pregnancy midpoint but the time has arrived to schedule my mid-pregnancy ultrasound. So I sat down with the husband last night to coordinate calendars.

I will admit I am somewhat impatient to learn whether I'm carrying a boy or a girl.

I could schedule on the early side, but then accuracy on gender is less certain. I could schedule on the late side, and wait longer, but then accuracy on gender is significantly higher.

So I told hubby I'd prefer accuracy over speed. He agreed that was the smart choice. He also had an interesting perspective.

We've known ever since I was pregnant with our first that we wanted more children later. So the possibility of Baby Three has been a known unknown for about five years.

Hence, he said, we've really been waiting about five years to see whether the third child is a boy or girl. It's a weird way to think about it, but he's right. So why rush and cut a few weeks off that five-year wait time when accuracy would be sacrificed.

self-destructing artwork

Friday night in London, Sotheby’s auction house sold a painting for more than $1 million American that self-destructed within minutes after the transaction closed, something no one in the room knew would happen. The work is by the contemporary artist Banksy, an enigmatic figure that may actually be several people.

The partial self-destruction occurred when the canvas began running through a shredder built right into the frame as unknowing spectators and buyers watched in amazement. As a result of this built-in sabotage, many art experts believe the work is worth significantly more.

Art is subjective, so if someone wants to pay $1 million for a very expensive party trick, that's their business. What I'd like to know is what will the painting be worth, if anything, in a hundred or two hundred years?

The buyer may be able to flip it for a good price, and perhaps a few more dealers can do the same. In the end, however, I suspect someone will be left holding the bag.

drunkeness for sober people

Someone posted this on Reddit this week. The carpet is actually flat and lines the hallways of a Cologne hotel.

I suspect no hotel in the United States would install this. Someone would fall the week the hotel opened, sprain his or her wrist, and an $100 million lawsuit would be filed before the sun went down.

That aside, I don't know if I'd like walking down that hall. It seems too disorienting. I also think it could seriously freak out some people who have autism or dementia or a mental illness.

That aside, it does look pretty cool. But it's function follows form, which is always a bad idea.

voting for dictatorship

Yesterday, I finished reading the book on early 1930s Germany that I wrote about here earlier in the week.

Overall, I thought it was wobbly in the beginning third, okay in the middle third, but really strong in the final third. I knew some about Germany in that era but I did learn a good deal more, particularly about the Enabling Act (more on that in a minute) and the Night of the Long Knives.

I knew that Germany passed from a democracy to a dictatorship in 1933, but I didn't know that it happened legally. I always thought there had been some kind of coup but I was wrong.

In short, the democratically elected German legislature of the time passed, by an overwhelming majority, legislation known as the Enabling Act that transformed the democracy into a dictatorship for four years, subject to renewal, which happened twice. While there was some duress in the vote -- certain legislators were arrested so they could not vote and SS and brownshirts were stomping around the chamber demanding that certain people vote certain ways -- the measure still would have passed without the dirty tricks.

And the general population overwhelmingly supported this move! They cheered the fact that their democracy was handed over to a dictator. Then, of course, everything went from a handbasket to hell in a Berlin minute.

I never cease to be amazed at people who are opposed to a democracy. They'd rather be controlled by a dictator. This is true in 2018, still, in certain parts of the world.

Hopefully, not too far in our species' future, the anti-democratic gene will be evolved out of humankind.

dear young people

Some older folks might find this video offensive. It could be called ageism. At the same time, it makes a very good point.

Older people vote much more frequently than younger people. The people who are elected reflect that fact. So people my age need to vote with the same regularity to make a difference.

A midterm is coming up. The time to register to vote is running out -- it's only a matter of days. If you're under forty, are you registered? If not, then register today -- in most states you can register online.

You can't bitch if you don't vote. I live thousands of miles away from the US mainland and I still vote in every election. It's not that hard. Make an effort. Otherwise, you might be very unhappy with the results. But then who could you blame besides yourself?

typing without a keyboard

I thought this was a very cool potential technology in the near future. It's a keyboarding system without an actual keyboard.

Instead, you wear a wireless connected ring device and type on any hard surface. This potentially work for any device in which you need a keyboard -- tablet, laptop, smartphone, etc.

The particular product in question -- called Tap Systems -- is only one handed, which I would not like. I'd want to go whole hog and type with both hands.

If a product like this becomes popular, I imagine other manufacturers would introduce a two-handed competing product for people like me who refuse to learn the one-handed typing system. Nonetheless, it's technology like this that makes you impatient for the future.

a cautious lesson

I+'m currently reading this new book about Germany just before, during, and just after Adolph Hitler came to power in 1933. It's very engaging, although I would have liked more social history and less about what went down inside the corridors of power.

The author seeks to dispel a number of common myths about Germany at that time, and he certainly does a good job at that. The most important is that the

Several major parties, including the Nazis, sought to entirely dominate the government and completely marginalize the other majority parties in the final years of the Weimar Republic. And therein lay the path to destruction.

This left me thinking about how in fairly healthy democracies today, no one party should ever seek to dominate the national scene permanently. However, political parties by their nature will seek to do that.

Hence, it really is the responsibility of the people to make sure that doesn't happen. That means not always voting straight ticket for one party, election after election.

Unfortunately, right now, I think fewer and fewer Americans are inclined to do that unless they're in the middle. Americans need to pull back from this, both in national politics and in state and local politics, too.

Competition must always remain healthy and strong, with no major party ever able to dominate for long. People need to put country before party and not always vote the same one every time.

The photograph below (enlargement) shows Hitler and his senior leadership in early 1933, not long after coming to power.

the demon windows

A few days after my new laptop arrived, I spent several hours modifying the Windows 10 settings to my individual preferences. I had a particularly difficult time turning off the touchpad, because for whatever reason, the controls for that item was not where all the help sources said it would be.

So everything was chugging along fine. The day before yesterday, for whatever reason, Windows decided I absolutely had to update and kept nagging like a little bitch. So I did it shortly before bed because it turned out to be a several-hour endeavor.

Needless to say, when I brought up from idle yesterday morning, I soon discovered that with this "updated" version of Windows, every single one of the changes I had made had been nullified. Particularly annoying was the fact that the touchpad, which is way too big IMHO, had been turned back on.

So I went back through and changed everything to the way I wanted. Except the fucking touchpad. Unlike before, I could not modify that so it would not work. The thing was like a vampire. It would not die, no matter every thing I tried to do to kill it again.

Finally, frustrated, I decided the reboot the laptop again, even though the thing had rebooted at the end of the update cycle. Finally, I could turn off the touchpad. I prefer a wireless mouse and that's what I use exclusively.

Why does Microsoft do this, assume that their preferences are more important than my preferences? Presumably it's not a conscious decision like that for all the options. Some Windows geek in Redmond may have forgotten to toggle some choice when crafting this latest update.

But some of them clearly were conscious corporate decisions. The Windows update reset my preferred default browser from Chrome, a competitor's product, to their own product, which I believe is inferior.

This made me wonder, in the near future, when we're all riding around in robotic driverless cars, will upgrades mean the thing won't take you where you want to go, but instead where their corporate overlords decide you should go?

made me laugh

This faux magazine cover that someone posted on Imgur had me laughing like a fool. Whoever did it was very skilled with Photoshop and also matched the typeface perfectly. If you can't quite see it below, check out the enlargement.

It's always this guy.