Wicked Boring

...I didn't sleep very well, alas, either Saturday (the night before the test) or Sunday nights. But Sunday night was clearly not the fault of the sleep clinic, and I can say many good things about the Sleep Center at the Salem Hospital/North Shore Medical Center. The place was comfortable, the staff technician was an absolute peach who was just a pleasure to deal with, and everything was as safe and healthy as they could possibly make it.

My pulmonologist wanted to do the sleep study because a different test done several months ago showed a sudden wakening (or short pattern of them) in the middle of the night. "It was the cat, jumping on my hip, at 2:30 in the morning." They didn't think that was it, so they decided to check for sleep apnea.

Ha. Ha. Ha. ( Read more... )

...so Christmas season can begin. This year, it lasts three days.

OTOH, most years it lasts the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve/Day celebrations.

But no party for New Year's Eve for us this year. Last year, I almost made it to the party...but ended up in the hospital about 8 hours before our first guests arrived. That should have been my first clue that 2020 was going to suck.

Hoping for a joyous Yule or other post-Solstice season for you and yours.

Hey. We've got eggnog!

...but, of course, the White House sez it never happened, according to the Washington Post.

Six years ago, Dutch hacker Victor Gevers logged into President Trump’s Twitter account by guessing the password: “yourefired.”

Then he did it again. On Oct. 16, Gevers, 44, made another accurate guess, maga2020!, on his fifth try, according to Dutch prosecutors.

Hacking is a crime in the Netherlands. But on Wednesday, Dutch officials said they would not press charges because Gevers had met the bar for “responsible disclosure,” demonstrating how easy it could be to gain access to the U.S. president’s handle: realdonaldtrump.

Gevers strongly recommended that Trump enable two-factor authentication. However, given the passwords he used, I suspect that might be too complex for him.

Things to like about Christmas even though I don't celebrate the whole religious part of things:

the food is really good;

the tree is a lively family room decoration (and the lights glinting off of the snow make me happy);

our local dairy makes killer eggnog with the density of plutonium;

beautiful seasonal music makes me feel like a kid again (and nobody tells anyone, no matter how bad their singing, not to sing Christmas carols);

bright colors help stave off winter's gloom;

presents (especially the giving thereof);

it's a good excuse to see family I love and cool friends;

we enjoy giving to those in need so they have something of joy;

and we'll be put a roaring fire in the fireplace just in case anybody (very skinny) is of a mind to crawl down the chimney (and, of course, primitive love of fire which pre-dates written human history by many millennia).

Some people can help rather more than I can.

MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon's Jeff Bezos with a net worth topping $60 billion, just announced that she's given away more than $4 billion to over 300 organizations across the US in the past four months.

...

In a new Medium post, Scott, who has a net worth topping $60 billion, announced the nearly $4.2 billion in donations to organizations ranging from food banks to emergency relief funds. The news comes after announcing back in July that she'd already given $1.7 billion to 114 organizations over the past year.

Scott wrote in her latest blog post that after her post in July, she asked a "team of advisors" to help her as she sought to give immediate support to those being affected by the economic crisis related to the pandemic.

Guess we know who got the heart in the divorce.

The Boston Globe reports two milestones today:

The first Americans have been vaccinated against Covid-19 outside of the testing pool. They are front-line health care workers. Halle-fucking-lulah.

The United States has passed 300,000 dead from Covid-19. One American dies every minute. And stupid people do not believe in the pandemic. You can't fix stupid.

Also? Last milestone:

The Electoral College is voting. It looks like a tight race right now (Biden=240, Trump=232), until you realize that the states yet to vote are California (55 blue), Oregon (7 blue), and Hawaii (4 blue). All of those three states come in later, because of time zone issues. California will be in at 5 p.m. our time; Oregon any time now (4:30 p.m. our time); and Hawaii is out in the ocean somewhere, and apparently doesn't have a radio, so it doesn't come in until 7 p.m. Eastern.

So, when you grow up in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1960s, you don’t grow up with a set of storied sporting teams.( Read more... )

I was today years old when I learned that natural fractals helped children de-stress. They do quite a lot for many adults, too...including me.



Gimme that golden ratio.



P.S. I just finished making a batch of chocolate chip cookies with walnuts. Benoit Mandelbrot liked my cookies.

No, I am not kidding.

Ars Technica reported in November of last year about a study that showed that rats which were taught to drive tiny little cars liked doing it so much that they would continue to drive the cars even if they weren't given treats.

Clearly, the rats and I think being able to drive cars *is* the treat. I love so much about this study.

If you're going to teach rats to drive, first you need to build them a car (or Rat Operated Vehicle). The chassis and powertrain came from a robot car kit, and a transparent plastic food container provided the body. Explaining the idea of a steering wheel and pedals to rats was probably too difficult, so the controls were three copper wires stretched across an opening cut out of the front of the bodywork and an aluminum plate on the floor. When a rat stood on the plate and gripped a copper bar, a circuit was completed and the motors engaged; one bar made the car turn to the left, one made it turn to the right, and the third made it go straight ahead.

Already, the rats are better drivers than many humans.

Go rats, go! We need a Rat Ferrari.



(Via Reddit.)