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Computing Thoughts

Advice, Housekeeping

While waiting at not-so-Best Buy to have my hard drive backed up / wiped prior to sending my ASUS Brick Model off to be repaired, I took a little walk around the store just to look at my options should the laptop be “unrepairable” and ASUS refusing to replace it (I know, it shouldn’t be a problem to replace a piece of equipment that was purchased in January of this year, but it’s a fool who doesn’t make at least some contingencies in case of corporate bastardy).

All the laptops looked the same, had too many unnecessary features and cost too much, so I didn’t spend too much time there.

Then my eyes fell upon this creature:

It’s one of those “everything in a screen” systems, and I must admit I was drawn to it — in no small measure because of the earlier suggestion from The Reader Formerly Known As CoffeeMan that I look at a desktop PC instead of a laptop. 

While my need for portability has admittedly been reduced because I no longer travel as much as yore, I still might need to take a computer out of the house when going somewhere on vacation, for example — or needing to carry the thing out if there’s a fire in the apartment block.  Carrying a PC tower and screen out is a non-starter for all sorts of reasons, but a single screen (plus keyboard) that in extremis  could be carried in a large suitcase?  That is a distinct possibility.

Here’s the White Monster’s spec sheet:

Hmmm.  Big screen for my Aging & Failing Eyes, a properly-sized keyboard for my Fat & Fumbling Fingers, manageable size (see dimensions) and if I may be greedy for once, more computing power than I would ever need for the remainder of my existence on Planet Earth.

There’s the small matter of the dollars required, but I’d just raffle off a gun or two from my ever-dwindling stock of Second Amendment appliances.

If anyone’s had actual experience with one of these beasts, let me know in Comments, because right now it’s looking awfully attractive.

Disgusting Lie

Immigration, Lies and Untruths, Marxists

Seen at Twitter* (via Insty):

Ahem.  Having been through the (legal) immigration process myself, and most recently with New Wife, I can attest that the question involving prior membership of the Communist Party or similar organizations is still very much part of the interrogatory, and has been since the early 1950s.

So to say it has “no prior precedent in immigration law” is, like so many utterances from the Left, a bald fucking lie.

All that the Trumpist USCIS is doing now is broadening the scope to bring such charming little fads like  jihad and terrorsymp into the conversation.  And about damn time, too.

*All Elon’s rebranding efforts to the contrary, it will always be Twitter to me.  Screw that “X” nonsense.

Never Mind That Yellow Snow

Bad News, Food & Drink, Health

…watch out for the radioactive shrimp instead:

The Food and Drug Administration is warning U.S. consumers not to eat certain frozen shrimp products sold at Walmart over concerns they contain radioactive isotope Cesium-137.

In a press release Tuesday, the FDA said they were investigating reports of Cs-137 contamination in shipping containers and frozen shrimp being imported by Indonesian company BMS Foods after it was detected by customs officers at four US ports.

Now to be sure, this is being done in an excess of caution:  there’s no actual proof that WallyWorld sold any radioactive shrimp, and the levels are well below what the FDA considers as harmful.

But if you’ve got that big shrimp boil scheduled for the weekend family reunion and you bought the stuff from Sam’s Club or its cousin, you may want to consider replacing it from somewhere else.

#WoodstockBrownAcidWarning

Muzzling Free Speech

Corporate Fuckery, Legal Stuff

…and also causing financial harm.

I seldom regard lawsuits with the same awe that the Powdered Wig Brigade may do (except when it comes to gun rights), but I think I’ll make an exception here:

In what could become one of the most significant free speech and digital rights cases in American history, Wimkin Social Media and its founder, J.C. Sheppard, are initiating a massive class-action lawsuit. Their targets are a formidable alliance: Big Tech companies, their advertisers, the Biden administration, and legacy media giants. This landmark legal action isn’t just about one company’s survival; it’s a defiant stand against what they call the “systematic silencing, blacklisting, and demonetization” of conservatives in the United States.

Wimkin’s legal action seeks to recover staggering financial losses while serving as a rallying point for every conservative content creator, publisher, and platform that has been censored, banned, or financially crippled by the combined power of Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., and their media allies.

Wimkin’s legal action is a comprehensive effort to hold those responsible accountable for a coordinated campaign to suppress conservative viewpoints. The defendants include Apple, Google, Meta (Facebook), YouTube, X, TikTok, the Biden administration, and major advertisers and aligned media outlets. The lawsuit claims this coordinated effort, disguised as “safety” and “misinformation control,” has caused severe financial and reputational harm, directly violating constitutional protections. Due to the ongoing nature of these losses, Wimkin’s legal strategy invokes equitable tolling to preserve the statute of limitations, ensuring that damages as far back as 2019 can be claimed.

No, I’d never heard of Wimkin before, either.  But anyone who takes on The Man — in this case, Leftists and their corporate lickspittles — has my support.

But wait!  There’s moar!

Sheppard’s fight doesn’t end in the courtroom. He is also drafting a bill for Congress that would demand “real reparations” for conservatives who can prove financial losses from 2019 to the present because of politically motivated censorship or deplatforming. Sheppard draws a sharp contrast between this initiative and progressive calls for slavery reparations. “The left demands reparations for events that happened over 150 years ago, when no one alive today experienced them firsthand,” Sheppard states. “We’re talking about real, provable, measurable damages that have occurred in the last six years—damages that have destroyed livelihoods, stifled innovation, and robbed millions of Americans of their right to speak freely.” Sheppard believes the total recovery could exceed a staggering $500 billion.

Good luck, my son.  Hit them where it really hurts:  their fucking wallets.  Stick it to The Man, bigly.

Impressive

Drive Time

So some guy decides to take a drive in his old car.

The drive happens to be from Rhode Island to California, the guy is famed car collector Fritz Burkhard, and his old car is a 1937 Bugatti Atalanta:

…worth about $30 million.

I like his attitude:

“If people just park their cars to show them and keep them in the garage they miss 70-80 percent of the fun. 

“They don’t know what that is. These are machines to be driven. They are pieces of art, but you don’t tack them on the wall.”

There is no mention of how his insurance agent felt about it.