Thoughts at large

**Jimaz** · January-19-23, 05:53 PM

The dramatic rise in the price of eggs is due to the avian flu sweeping through the chicken population.

Big Ag loves the efficiency of factory farms so they "put all of their eggs in one basket."

Will we never learn?

**jcole** · January-20-23, 08:52 AM

Corporate egg farms are disgusting; there used to be a fairly large one on M21 between Capac and Port Huron and the smell that came out of there was putrid. Actually, any poultry operation I have been near are pretty gross; if you want to lose your lunch on a hot humid day, take a ride through Greeley Colorado, or pretty much anywhere to the SW of Greeley.

Originally Posted by Jimaz

The dramatic rise in the price of eggs is due to the avian flu sweeping through the chicken population.

Big Ag loves the efficiency of factory farms so they "put all of their eggs in one basket."

Will we never learn?

**oladub** · January-22-23, 10:15 AM

Originally Posted by Jimaz

The dramatic rise in the price of eggs is due to the avian flu sweeping through the chicken population.

Big Ag loves the efficiency of factory farms so they "put all of their eggs in one basket."

Will we never learn?

Avian flu is a major cause. However, anecdotally, I buy eggs from an Amish family, the Y's, who produced organic eggs for Organic Valley. We bought 32 dozen last week. They switched to another organic wholesaler who paid more money. They did not like it when they found out, Mrs. Y said, that Organic Valley kept a masseuse on staff for their office workers instead of paying more to farmers. This second egg purchaser did not raise his prices as much as their production costs rose so they sold most of their chickens and only kept a few hundred for retail sales and something for the kids to do. They still sell eggs for $3.50/dozen while the local stores here, Kroger and Quick-Trip, are about $5. The Y's apparently make money at $3.50/dozen so they must not have been receiving that much from their previous purchaser. I realize that diesel prices have gone up but the Y's temperature control their eggs with a diesel generator too. Let me summarize by adding increased production costs and possible corporate greed to avian flu costs.

**Jimaz** · January-26-23, 10:58 PM

The weirdest thing about becoming a reluctant messiah is that some people become afraid of you.

Why is that?!

**Jimaz** · February-13-23, 09:16 AM

Exploring interspecies communication: theycantalk.org

There's no reason to stop at Koko. {Wikipedia link filtered through tinyURL.com to circumvent the DetroitYES parentheses bug.}

**Jimaz** · February-25-23, 09:07 AM

Originally Posted by Jimaz

Exploring interspecies communication: theycantalk.org

There's no reason to stop at Koko. {Wikipedia link filtered through tinyURL.com to circumvent the DetroitYES parentheses bug.}

I was considering experimenting with human beings who attempt intraspecies communication via similar button-pressing behavior but then I realized that's all we do here anyway.

This feels a bit like citing The Onion but that's the point: Hoping to translate what cats and dogs say from AIR.

**Jimaz** · March-04-23, 11:41 PM

I just now heard a commercial from a company whose services I didn't need or want.

They claimed they were superior because they didn't pay commissions to salesmen who would try to sell me something I didn't need or want.

Duh. The commercial itself was trying to sell me something I didn't need or want.

What's the difference?

**Jimaz** · March-06-23, 11:47 AM

"The cosmos is also within us. We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."

And now we can change that way.

The Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing begins today.

**oladub** · April-11-23, 11:16 PM

I'm curious about some recent news stories that went silent.

Four Chinese balloons we shot down shot down. The search has ended for two of them and Pres. Biden said, " "Nothing right now suggests they were related to China's spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country." "Our military has even stopped looking for two of them"

Meanwhile, the last I heard, Russia was looking for our state of the art $30M drone on the sea's floor that Russia had knocked out of the sky. The US seemed less interested in recovering the high tech gut of this drone than Russia. "Parts of an engine’s case, nose, wing and gas tank, were recovered" by Russia floating on the water early on but we have not been updated on this story.

Then there was the manifesto left behind by Audrey Hale the Nashville school shooter. We got to read Osama Bin Laden's Manifesto. It was helpful for understanding his motives. Why the censorship this time?

Edited to add 4/17: A few days ago, there was an explosion on a Texas farm that killed 18,000 cattle. That's about 27M pounds of cattle. Imagine cleaning up that mess. Yet this story hardly reached the front page. The media didn't seem to care and there has been little followup. I did find one explanation better than the others but it was a commenter's opinion not necessarily fact.

"If a small explosion released contained grain dust as would be found in a feed storage silo, the follow up explosion could be massive. There may also be organic bedding to soften the area where they walk. The cows would contained in a holding area from which they could not escape as that is the purpose of a holding area. The large motor on a pump could indeed fail in such a way as to be the ignition source for an explosion. The barns could have had a large natural gas supply for heat.

18000 cows is a super-huge herd. It may have included not just the cows for milking, but also young calves and heifers. If it was a completely contained operation as it is often done these days, they would have all been trapped. When scared, cows stampede insanely. They may have been injured before the fire.

All of that said, at lot of stuff had to go horribly wrong at one time but not impossible. The most unbelievable part to me as someone that has been around dairy his whole life is 18000 cows in one place. If it was big enough to contain 18000 cows it was big enough for unexpected tragic failure. -commenter Joe Strader.

These were big stories with sequels that our press does not seem interested in pursuing."

**Jimaz** · April-26-23, 11:13 AM

It used to be that when someone asked you if you can work well with computers they meant "Can you get these computers to do something useful for us?"

Today it means "Can you cope with all the obstacles these computers cause and still get anything done?"

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams wrote a funny bit about how automatic doors were programmed to say pleasantries to whoever used the doors. Instead, everyone was annoyed by it — and they couldn't shut it off!

Adams was a prophet.

**canuck** · May-08-23, 09:16 PM

Originally Posted by Jimaz

It used to be that when someone asked you if you can work well with computers they meant "Can you get these computers to do something useful for us?"

Today it means "Can you cope with all the obstacles these computers cause and still get anything done?"

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams wrote a funny bit about how automatic doors were programmed to say pleasantries to whoever used the doors. Instead, everyone was annoyed by it — and they couldn't shut it off!

Adams was a prophet.

Good one, Jimaz.

That funky future that sounded a tad pushy in the deft hands of anticipators seems rather apt now.

I felt that jolt of creepy futuramic insult at the checkout counter yesterday. The young lady at the cash had to listen to a femrobot thank customers for using the "self-serve checkout". Imagine doing an eight hour shift having to hear that you are redundant times ten…

**Jimaz** · May-05-23, 08:19 AM

It's a bit discouraging that "ungoogleability" is not ungoogleable.

Jimaz: Alexa, what words can't you say?
Alexa: Hmm. I don't know that one.

**oladub** · May-09-23, 09:35 AM

Semi-related: I used to think it strange and uptight that German had a formal and informal way of conversing depending on one's relationship to the the other person. Then, about 20 years ago, Wal-mart built a store in my 25,000 population County's seat. The cashier looked at my check and then addressed me by my first name. Walmart didn't serve coffee at their grand opening either. I realized then that I didn't like being addressed by my first name by strangers and attributed that behavior to Wal-mart being an Arkansas firm where maybe that's the rule. I've noticed that lately, my Alexa/Amazon has been addressing me by my first name when doing advertising pitches prompting a twinge of annoyance. I was surprised at myself for harboring a bit of this formality.

For those of you who did not learn German despite attempts by your grade school, high school, and university like I didn't here is Babble's explanation:“Sie” And “Du”: How To Use Them And Avoid A German Faux Pas

**canuck** · May-12-23, 08:16 AM

Yes, well we have the same in French. Here in Québec and other parts of French Canada, we are less formal than France. But some of us older and/or who are used to addressing people with "vous" instead of "tu" are a bit taken aback by strangers or younger folk who "tutoie" rather than "vouvoie" their interlocutor. Same for the German idiom users, I suppose.

**Jimaz** · May-13-23, 09:02 AM

After man flees traffic stop, cows lead officers "directly to where the suspect was hiding," North Carolina police say

"In addition to thanking our officers and deputies for putting themselves in harm's way; obviously, we want to express our gratitude to the cows for their assistance," the department said.

Heh. Humans being herded by cattle. That's a Gary Larson cartoon waiting to happen.

**Jimaz** · May-23-23, 01:09 PM

I just heard that Ford has reversed its decision to remove AM radios from vehicles. I'm not surprised.

Apparently they're just now learning that those radios are part of a national security plan. In case of attack, everyone's supposed to tune to 640 or 1240 kHz for further instructions.

I remember Dad's circa 1953 Chrysler radio had little civil defense triangles on those frequencies.

Here's the story:

CONELRAD System – Triangles on the Dial

No Second Chance: A Radio Dramatization About CONELRAD {WJR Detroit}

**Jimaz** · August-17-23, 08:30 AM

Originally Posted by Jimaz

...In case of attack, everyone's supposed to tune to 640 or 1240 kHz for further instructions....

This was a really smart idea. Those old cold warriors really thought these things out.

I just heard a story on the radio that explained the rationale for not sounding emergency sirens during the recent Hawaiian fires. The main reason for the sirens there is to warn people of a tsunami so people can run uphill, away from the coast. That is exactly the wrong thing to do during a wildfire. So the sirens were left silent and the fires caught them off guard.

It's wiser to train people to associate sirens with an as yet unspecified emergency requiring them to seek more information, e.g., from radio, before acting.

**Jimaz** · July-16-23, 09:08 PM

No greater tribute can be paid to an intentionally unsung hero than to withhold the praise they are due.

Submitted to AphorismsGalore.com

**Jimaz** · July-28-23, 11:46 AM

A USB charger broke when I unplugged it from the wall. Yes, it's made in China and no, I didn't force it.

So I'm looking around for USB chargers {USB stands for "Universal" Serial Bus} and notice how many different types of USB connectors there are.

Before they started calling these connectors "universal," all serial buses used the same DB-25 connector design. Yes, most often only 2 of its 25 pins were used but isn't one connector for all applications more universal than today's USB design? WTF!

Was USB just someone's idea of a cruel prank?

**jcole** · July-28-23, 02:45 PM

More likely they didn't know what a serial bus was

Originally Posted by Jimaz

A USB charger broke when I unplugged it from the wall. Yes, it's made in China and no, I didn't force it.

So I'm looking around for USB chargers {USB stands for "Universal" Serial Bus} and notice how many different types of USB connectors there are.

Before they started calling these connectors "universal," all serial buses used the same DB-25 connector design. Yes, most often only 2 of its 25 pins were used but isn't one connector for all applications more universal than today's USB design? WTF!

Was USB just someone's idea of a cruel prank?

**Jimaz** · July-28-23, 04:35 PM

Originally Posted by jcole

More likely they didn't know what a serial bus was

Well, it's clear that the larger DB-25 connector would have been too clunky for handheld devices so something smaller was needed. Still that doesn't explain why there evolved so many different small connectors that had the same function.

Now I'm thinking it may have been more of a legal/patent/licensing scheme. People saw new growing revenue from small devices and tried to get a slice of that pie by tweaking a component's invention enough to get their own patent so they too could sell licenses. Keeping the term "universal" seems kind of stupid in retrospect.

I've heard criticisms of big pharma doing similar things by tweaking drug molecules to keep them from going generic.

It's all about the Benjamins. Yea, greed!

**Jimaz** · November-12-23, 04:01 PM

Originally Posted by Jimaz

...I've heard criticisms of big pharma doing similar things by tweaking drug molecules to keep them from going generic.

It's all about the Benjamins. Yea, greed!

FTC Announces MAJOR Legal Challenge To Big Pharma Patents

The FTC is going after pharmaceutical companies have been cooking the books to prevent much cheaper generic drugs being developed.

**Jimaz** · August-19-23, 04:38 PM

Originally Posted by jcole

More likely they didn't know what a serial bus was

**jcole** · August-19-23, 06:30 PM

Originally Posted by Jimaz

**jcole** · July-30-23, 07:04 PM

Yep; everything has to be proprietary; always has in PCs. My first "new" PC was a Compaq back in 1996 when Windows 95 was new. Damn thing came with a 14400 modem which was okay for awhile but then they upped speeds and I wanted to upgrade the modem in the PC. I read up on it, bought a 28800, called my daughter's boyfriend who was my mentor and the network mgr at Northwood University at the time. He came over with his tools. I took the side off and sat down to go to work. {Jim always watched me and offered words of wisdom, but never took the screwdriver out of my hands when we did things together}. I started unscrewing things, confident it would be quick. Nope. They had the damn thing soldered in. After hours of working to remove it, we finally decided to use the other serial port and disable the old one, which was not as easy as it sounds. And it's been a merry go round ever since. I just build my own now, but there is always some BS to deal with in the settings or drivers that don't work.