What rates a train of thought?

 So I'm dwelling on "Rote Memorization" which for a while looked pretty bad, all old and discounted.
But it has proven the best.

Annoying cartoons on PBS notwithstanding.
But a rote memorizer (not me) might have been disappointed that "Pluto" was impeached.

Why? What did Pluto do?
(What were the politics that went into banishing it as a planet?)

Let's totally imagine (because, as far as I know, this isn't true,)
That treaties covering "The Planets" must exist. No large apartments, no missile bases.

But Meteors and the like must be fair game, being too small to worry about.

The rote memorizers protested that there would be too much to remember....

So they invented a criterion.

Is the massive object So mean that it throws all other objects out of its orbit??
Aaaahh, *tolerant* live-and-let-live biggie rocks, could be excluded from their little club.

Guys could never be "Pluto"
An abortion of a train-of-thought splatted out...I forgot it, but I'll edit soon
("THOR"-toe)

Train of thought forming

"So, your name is "Series?" Like a TV Show?"

"No, my name is spelled C-E"
"Hey guys, she's named after a TV show, how weird is that?"

-------

AI and people looking to impress a teacher might like this video.

https://youtu.be/tFec-zYU0l4

The boring trains of thought are totally missing!

THIS is pure rote memorization for memorization's sake (Or did you forget diphthongs from third grade?)
Adults might look back and remember fondly the useful tool they've used all their fr e a k in life,

the "Diphthong" (and how it's spelled)

Random Poetry you're supposed to know (God knows why)

This Motel in Hell
By anonymous

This boring throne of bums,
This parking lot, the seat of tiny-town,
This other hell, half-shithole,
This prison built by Real estate Developers for money
against the highway and the hand of police patrols
This unhappy breed of retirees, this little world,
A pimple on the butt of the middle of nowhere,
which serves as (I'm tired, can I stop now?)
Against the wishes of much happier places,
This cursed plot, this earth, this realm, this motel

"Mrs. E Knocking at the back door"

Is it 3AM yet? My game bores me late nights and I want tea, or a cigarette or maybe type a blog.

Mrs, 'E' Knocking at the back Door looks like a code for something, but it was just a way to remember a rule in English. 
I've heard that "Phonics" fell out of fashion.
I'm imagining that our teacher went over the origins and why they taught it, but now sadly I read that all their efforts were wasted.

My brother blamed multi-lingual teaching.

And I don't think our phonics rules would translate into a different language.

Another better blog said it first ("Phonics" not the languages part)

https://www.groupcentered.com/reading-blog/reading-wars-are-over-phonics-failed-whole-language-failed-balanced-literacy-failed-who-won-it-certainly-wasnt-the-students

At this point in irrelevant time some not-so-clever person brings up

Bough,
Through,
Rough / Tough
And after a short argument, they get bored and a little pissed you didn't laugh at their joke, and stalk off.

"Man's Laughter" is a Joke an old dead comedian used to drag out (Manslaughter pronounced by a french detective)

The point is, Phonics doesn't cover the huge amount of weirdly spelled words in English. They seem to just help your OCD tendencies ("I before E except after C (And in weigh and neigh)"

I think (Really not sure) Phonics was a reading aid, not a spelling aid, and the rote-memorization method has survived since time immemorial: The Presidents. The Elements. The Planets. The Multiplication table (up to 12, in a Pee-Chee folder) 

Socket-wrench-socket sizes (SAE and Metric)

The "Wordstar" Editor

"Internal conflicts"

CTRL B for bold, CTRL-I for italic (italic) CTRL-C for copy, CTRL-V for paste, CTRL-Z for mistakes, CTRL-X for "not here Buddy, Take it somewhere else" and the rest of the gang are available in Microsoft, but Microsoft is too woke for these people and they damn it to hell, one letter at a time.

Uh, where was I: "Rote Memorization."

Still the best, for a wide swath of the population, but the new generation of point-clickers think it's bullshit.

How far back Ancient-History should go, um,?

Not being in elementary school anymore, I wonder.
But it matters; -They're making a history test for Immigrants (Which now I suppose I will have to go look up,)
"Who was the Fourth President?

Mad...wut??

What was Mckinley famous for?

(Ask a Filipino or a Hawaiian about Mckinley)

It rankles, always has, that there are a huge amount of people who know more about fictional history (eg "Star Wars") than the real thing, but that's a different blog.

For example, how will this bit of fiction be put in history books of the future?

It's either fiction that Hegseth potentially endangered people on a mission,

or

Hegseth is such a biggie guy that he says what is declassified and when.

I wonder about the wife and the newspaper-guy, maybe this tidbit was released on purpose, to the loudest-mouthed people he knew.

related? IDK https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2025/10/23/the-pentagon-stooges




My fantasy bloggy-world imagines that I have actual readers.... (lol) 

To play the game you must mop the floor:
Steal the mop, 

kill the old guy with the bucket,

and make friends with the dish-washer-guy to get soap.

All without alerting the boss who thinks you've got your own mop and bucket.

So OK you're mopping the floor at exactly the right spot, and the prison-guard falls and dies,

so's you can steal his keys and rescue the girl from her cell.

F*ck up and she is executed tomorrow.

Succeed and you get XP.

TLDR it's very draining and I'm just about ready to choose another game.

BUT

There's the shame of giving up, and the knowledge that very few games I own will work.

A fictional movie I bought last year was absolutely awful.

The plot was fine and such, but the movie-quality could have been from the theater-trashcan.

THIS year I bought what I *think* (I hope) is the same movie, discounted to ten-cents.

Yay!! It's HD, it looks fantastic, but is it the exact same movie?
If people dance towards the end with a song I've linked to in this blog, then "yes."

High contrast Black-and-white, and I only wish I could post screenshots.
Maybe I'll figure out how, or just let my camera take a pic.

Really bad Picture, sorry.
I'd promise to do better but who would care?? Still.....

I tried again but the purples are from my screen, apparently.
Buying movies is chancy.

Google says I can go to "My Stuff" To find the movies I've bought.

There Is no "My stuff"

They stuck it into a teeny top-right corner and called it "Purchases and rentals," thanks to a helpful reddit post.

Hogshead delivered.

 I don't know much about food delivery, except when Cane's chicken wants you to order something, they don't list the price. 

Obviously they list prices somewhere, you can google them.

And what is a "Finger"?

It matters knowing because 28 Fingers is, um

(Link)

28 fingers is close to $35, somewhere, at some time.
Even the site displaying this picture hides it and says,

"Picture? What?"

I want a snobby critic to review Cane's vs KFC.

KFC has better chicken, or Yum Brands does (they own pizza hut and KFC)

*I* think I like KFC better, and this is in response to a strong suggestion that I try Cane's instead of KFC, because the implication was, they would be cheaper.

I don't think so.
My fondest memories of chicken are usually greasy with very soft crust.
The latest crusts are slightly leathery and have very little if any grease.

You guys continually ruin every damn thing..."O, Lard, so fattening" who cares.

But the iPhone Krispy Kreme snobs have spoken, they like Cane's over KFC,
https://www.mashed.com/1763034/kfc-raising-canes-best-chicken-tenders/

Krispy Kreme's are not doughnuts, they're candy.
Cane's isn't real chicken, real chicken has bones.
I love KFC.
OK not as much as 16 or so years ago, but still.

Yes, *I* remember the swimming pools of grease in the bottom of potato chip bags and chicken boxes!!

You don't drink the grease, nor eat it daily, fried chicken would cost too much.

Name a menu item on the KFC menu, and I'm allergic / intolerant, except for the delicious chicken.

Buckets of it.

They don't actually mention this, but I am pretty sure, only one $10-deal per order?

In other words, you could not order 16 pieces for $20.

My math is so bad, and the other deals claim to save a percentage.

This one seems simple, it's just, *small* for all that trouble.

"Dark meat bucket" which meat is best? This is math class all over again.

Against my stomach's advice, I shall order this, because I keep missing this deal (ordering on a Monday or a Friday.)
Strong tea pisses off my stomach, and I'm seriously not in the mood, but I'm trying to work up an appetite.

They do not accept orders at 3AM unfortunately, something about "Future orders" and that is not on their menu.

Bias in its many forms could be instilled in AI.

Once public education is abolished, AI will take over the responsibility.

   I have huge gaps in logic and HOW's missing, lots of publications no one ever reads I could possibly point to but won't, because this was meant to be very short.

Put it this way (Maybe): AI will be a lot like that TV show "Bones" with that coroner with her rigid philosophy and gaping holes in social discourse skills.
What was the result of an example 5-year block of History?
It would depend maybe on where the AI-Teacher lived.
Or did that particular teacher avoid the subject completely, leaving AI to use heuristics??

Or Some math term I forget, "Linear regression."

AI won't exist in a vacuum, it's basic purpose (besides making money) is...

Ya know what, forget what I said. History will be quietly buried, statistics will get glorified, and financial predictions will be relied upon.

There's a whole different endless jag about mean nurses and eventual nurse-robots.

Lots of disaster plots in my head, most of them leading back to the lazy / overworked doctor and the eventual death of the client-patient. 

The mean nurse welcomes you after verifying who you are.
As she is speaking, another nurse enters to check your ID Bracelet.
Yet another nurse (optionally) hooks you up to a monitoring machine.
Three nurses, One Bot. What future do YOU see?

Random 3AM trivia

 Orient vs "Orient Star" what's the difference?
(No, really, what?)

Armalloy was a substitute watch bearing. Was it from necessity or just overall cheapness?

Kresge, Newberry's, Woolworths, all died (didn't they?) So why do "Dollar stores" do so well?
Thanks to inflation will they be $5 stores soon?
(I've never seen a "Five and Dime" or a "Dime store" but they used to exist, I'm told.)
So is "dollar store" going extinct?
So many thoughts, so much to google, who cares (besides Google)

I'm reading a thread on reddit about the consequences of making a particular choice in a fictional game, a game I remember playing before, but I think I must have abandoned it.

Well, I do remember earth being destroyed by really big monsters and Captain Anderson, but this is different.

A hot crewmember's boyfriend died, should she keep his video-diary?
He wants it destroyed.

She wants to keep it.

WHY am I choosing (In what universe do lovers turn to the captain of a ship to resolve their problems?)? Please don't mention "Love Boat")
So, reddit.

Geez, you'd think I was reading up on an election.

People are intractable, at least on reddit.

Spoilers: The baseball-hat avatar is right, and I think the other person is a quintessential forum type..

disagree and die.

https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/12vw02l/why_is_letting_kasumi_keep_the_greybox_a_paragon/ 

(8AM Later) O yeah, this scientist experimented on his autistic brother to make him into the ultimate AI. 

(I'm not sure what "Geth" are.) Well yeah I've played this before, but I remember tons better graphics.

Cram in some lore, why don'tcha:

Turian

Salarian

Wrex (Urdnots)

The least lovable, Salarians.
Turians come across as battle weary and talkative, like Odo on "Deep Space 9"

Wrex will prolly be featured in a movie one day, and has a WWE (wrestler) personality.
Plus he has a pleasing shape, but his friends are all impossibly hard to live with.

They'd feel right at home on Reddit.

Mass Effect(s)

 I own Mass effect Legendary and Mass Effect Andromeda, and just today I bought Mass Effect 2.
It's because some review site insists that this has to be the best game ever made.

I forget playing them, I forget the whole story.
There WAS one version where Player (me, the protagonist) follows her boss on the roof down to some soldiers fighting enemies....and I can't remember much more.
What was Legendary? One and two stuck together, maybe three. 

Why didn't you mention this, can I play it?
That's why I bought "2" specially, the unvarnished, unremastered version.

It's too dark, everything is tinged red (in my head, I'm not playing right now)

I wonder if I install "Legendary"would I kill this thing or would it look nicer?

I'm sick of playing without a controller and trying to read tiny icons, but everything runs smoothly.

Will I get controller abilities?
Will the cheats work?

This display seems normal enough on a light background.

But sometimes it seems to overemphasize "red".

-------

Back to reality, and thanks for making fun of my playing old ^%$# games.
Yeah they're old, but they seem to work, and they're unfamiliar to me so it all works out.

It all runs together anyway, a girl walks into a bar and meets a slimy guy who gives her valuable tips.

I distinctly remember a completely different game doing exactly that.
Then I kill all the bad people, and ... I ...??

Nested missions. To get the apple you must go to the supermarket,
By taking the bus, 

By having exact change.

So...

Talk to the guy 

to learn about the enemy (tiny specs I can't see)

Constantly fire (and run out of ammo)

Cheat tons

To recruit the guy

so's you can eventually fight more tiny specs and a hulking thing.

Then, a speech.

I don't really like this game.

A photographer seemed hellbent on creating a christmas card photo of people in a forest 

(The location is not clear)

I suppose they could be in a tiny park next to the subway.

Cats have it so good, people buy $700 toilets for them.

(Tiny dogs have to go in the freezing cold, rain, and snow, it's tradition.)

Was there ever a *dog* toilet? A plastic indoor lawn, a cardboard box?

Or is the dog an excuse to avoid in-laws at thanksgiving...

Was the photo retouched to look all soft and dreamy (and cold?)

How can the whole ground be blurry white?

Why do they keep getting people in here who yell at the air?
Why is that girl talking just a little too loudly about something she disagrees with in this blog?

My place should look like the Taj Mahal after this long, but no. It will be pale white over dark insignificant gray or blue. All my stuff will be in a huge pile or gone forever, and I'll spend a year trying to sort it out.

My mind wants to dwell more on what will happen, but it doesn't fit in this blog.

Tell me those people didn't get all dressed up to watch their pet take a shit.

Amazon sells everything from everywhere, and if there are ads, they push electronics.

Well I came up with a commercial in my head for "Amazon Fresh" or whoever.

The crowded house is full of argumentative relatives who hate snow and cats and slippery sidewalks, and sit there overacting (for the commercial, keep up.)

The sneezing kid, the allergic brother-in-law, the Grandpa with symptoms too long to list but he'd need some sort of OTC pain killer, bottom line.

Yeas, they all need to be medicated.

Get made fun of for having a huge tray of meds, or order them online (This wouldn't work though...16 relatives, 32 ailments, umpteen orders?)
I vote for the huge tray you ordered the other day.

Let them make fun, until they're sneezing and in pain, and you can shoot darts from your eyes with a grin as you pass around the pills and Band-Aids.

Make fun, will you? No Band-Aid for you!!

I wonder if it would make good advertising....

It's tradition

Not to rub it in, but WAR is tradition, 

Pestilence, Death.

Lotsa stuff is traditional, but helluva reason to justify it.

Nature (Why?)

From the train of thought on Google's front page:

After laying off many national park workers, Trump will make it more expensive to go to a national park. 

I'm of a mind to believe in my darkest heart of hearts, unbeknownst to anyone else....

That white republicans are nature lovers, sort of.
I mean, with the campers and the endless driving, who does that?
My rocky intro is for this picture. I cannot tell where it's from, only who.

Patriotic Graffiti?

---

---

The cough medicine they sent me was opened and used, so I said that in a review that no one will ever see, they said so.

They DID send along a link to Black-friday deals.
The deals they sent seem to be wallflower, stay-at-home products no one would ever buy.

And me, with my shrinking prune of an account, could not buy anyway...

A picture of one, if this still works (a "pimple" patch)

Pimples are a fact of life, why not draw attention to them?
Pimple-lives Matter!!!

"Vegan" (I missed that) gotta have vegan pimples.
Are they free-range?

A very depressed woman seems to be wearing a sackcloth outfit for her boyfriend (That's the name of the product)

Someone bought it and complained [that it looked *exactly* like the one in the picture]

I only just remembered a really old TV show where a normally sexy woman wore an oversized football jersey to bed.
Yeahbutt...

These look too expensive to be pajamas

Lonely abandoned products needing a home won't you spend 19.95 a month (0.65 a day) to make these products happy on cubbyholes and dusty shelves?

Buzz lightyear, the hank-hill of cartoons (in my head, anyway.) 

I vaguely remember a toy room on free TV where the toys tried to escape. 

Or was that those zoo animals?
The zoo animals were livelier zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

There is a whole sermon I just wrote on one finger, and it's gone!

Fine!

TLDR

Charlie Brown is full of it 

(L I N K) Link You have X days until Xmas, so say your overlords in Washington.

True false: There were / are TWO Thanksgivings, one for wingnut batshit crazy people, one for everyone else?

It's complicated, involves math.

Fourth-Thursday vs Last-Thursday of-the-month.

Bombastic people explain it better, and the two-thanksgiving-thing was a dated rumor from a relative.

Edit: This just in!!

In other words, this does not rate a blog entry, but it saved my android Phone browser's life:

OK...in any advice about android-"edge", the browser, they keep mentioning three dots, like everyone everywhere has them.

I do not.

I DO have lines, on the top and the bottom-right.

Bottom, three lines (not useful) ... Top right, three "sliders" for lack of a better word.

Inside the sliders, a few options:

"Show Feed" is now turned off, to quell that incessant propaganda from MSN (I *think* it's from MSN)

And WHY would I want "Show sponsored shortcuts" on?? It's off as well.

"Shortcuts" (not sponsored ones) are great unless you really like typing with one fat finger.

The "Dots" everyone refers to DO show up on different context menus, just to confuse me, but they do NOT show up here.

The shit is about to hit the fan with political news, and I turned it off just in time, otg

too deep, nevermind

 

how do you write an introductory paragraph for the Universe?
How do you fill an hour for unruly kids?
You try, but you can't, says conventional wisdom.
For example, Mitosis vs Meiosis.
How you talk about reproduction in such a way that book burners
fall asleep and are generally pleased?

It's like, TMI to the max, 99.99% of the population would never see relevance.
It's an interlude in a cool sci-fi movie.

Someone mentions "Double Helix" and it's like some hypnotic keyword that sends your mind into the fantasy world of highschooler girlfriend Nancy, who you sat behind in Biology. 

There is no relevance in school, and if there accidentally is any left, conservatives will excise it.

Fire teachers, ban books, until all that's left is the above, for future real estate salespeople, data-entry personnel and politicians. 

When Mommy and daddy love each other, uh,

Mrs. Mei separates the diploid from the haploid,
Makes Gametes.
I took a sick day.... What's with "Gametes"?

Oooo We're all Zygotes from the Planet Gamete and zzzzzzz 

Buried within the minutiae is the fact that this process involves some randomness.

Religions do not account for random events, (it's against their religion) so nevermind.

But if you're in the mood, go read about it.

If there were no "God", the benevolent construct micromanaging everything everywhere,

I think chaos would exist until the biggest baddest warlord conquered this-and-that and ran what he could until he died.

*With* god and the rules surrounding God (he/she/it,) biggie baddie warlords can proclaim legitimacy because of (their) God, as written in The (their) book.

Maintain a facade of obeying their God, and their rule is assured, backed by their priests and judges.

But this was a train of thought that is speeding away very fast (What did it say about intolerance? I can't remember anymore) "Free will" is a fallacy in most religions....something like that.

Piss off enough gods in other religions and you'll get a war, unless you WANT a war, because it makes you more glorious in the sight of your priests, judges and people who count....Peace is "woke", bottom line.

Or so the thinking goes, I'm only a parrot.

--------------------

The irrelevant TMI I shall speak about today right now is,

"Do I have a home to go back to"? 

I don't miss the neighbors, or the tall dangerous cliff-like road, or the bugs...and yet, when seen from very far away, they all make sense.

This place does not.

Fictional, yes but Zillions know what it is.
Now if only they did one on Zygotes and gametes
and God

I'm tucking this one-finger edit

For another time.

Android OS usage: 7.8GB,

Massive bloat for 16GB users.

8GB users don't get that so why should I?

Rosh Hashanah

 It's a day to visit KFC, as is this thursday, and Christmas.
But I doubt KFC is open on biggie holidays;

Someone needs to write a blog about carefully preserving the KFC until the day you eat it.

Something in my router was updated and now it has a hidden channel stalking it, like some cursed spirit, and I do not even use MLO.

What is MLO, You ask? I don't know, ask Reddit.

The hidden channels are like peaceful aliens in movies, watching everything we do.

Just when we start getting used to them (in the movie,) BAM! They destroy us like germs.

My body is sneezy, toilet-y and very sleepy.
And I don't have a lot else to say. No one anywhere really knows how to shut off those hidden (MLO?) channels.

Well, there IS one thing:
The doors around here are designed to sound like that, all loud and alarmy. It comes with living in the building!!!

You can walk ten feet away from a door and it will "Slam" or briefly sound an alarm, if you were too slow to let the door go.

So.......

there.

I wanted to point out some photos yesterday, but got too tired.

The guy building a 300-million ballroom can't afford a steak?

My cold (a draft)

 Not sure why it's common knowledge that "Nyquil," The once all powerful cold-killer, is old and weak (cough-cough) because they took out the best ingredients.

This could be a pity-party or it could research what works these days. For COLDS, not the other thing.

I told a lady I wanted cherry Nyquil, not knowing about all the other ingredients.

She never called back.

Now, I can order damn near anything from the internet, anything legal, but I wonder what RFK would take? In other words, what works in 2025?

I'll continue this later.

https://www.forbes.com/ (not helpful)

https://www.forbes.com/health/wellness/best-cough-medicine/

Still not helpful, but it looks authoritative.

Robitussin, Mucinex, Honey.

Just saying that in a sentence sounds so authoritarian and bigoted, but that was the f'ng gist of their very bombastic article!!

Diverging slightly from the text:

You get the feeling that everyone is a latent addict, and just need a little push for them to fall over the edge into the fires of perdition (hell)

So forget that shit, also forget "Honey".

I hate "Mucinex", it tries to be all green and yucky to stay in soccer moms' good graces,

And if they turned it red and cherried it,

The inquisition would burn them for heresy.

  I feel better, I do, I just have a lingering cough and excess snot.

More yucky Mucinex???

There's gotta be something better, PLEEZ

I realize that this is not earth-shaking, but I appreciate my phone withholding its own keyboard while I use the regular keyboard, because it reminds me not to microscopically hunt-peck.

I still don't know how anyone texts effectively on a phone.

Now if only I knew how to resize pictures on phones.

Double-tap and drag does nothing. Resting my finger on the little square on the border lightly, occasionally it lets me drag it.

I'll summarize, then.

Full of snot?? Mucinex.

In Church / the Library / the bus?

Robitussin.

But Wait! Can I interest you in some "delsym"? only 3-dollars an ounce.

There's also a walmart brand, 45 cents an ounce.

Makes you wonder.

This bottle should have been free.
Some sick person took a swig.
(That red print you can't really read says,
"Don't use without a seal."
WHAT seal????

If I narc the guy out I could make him lose his job, and him with that nasty cough from all the rain and the snow.

This is so bad that society thinks I should ignore it, or really bitch about it.

Ain't society great? Always there with the (Snarky) answers

My cough....hmm... It's dry unless I cough in exactly the right way to hock up a giant loogie.

So I'll say it's dry, with occasional wetness.

I don't care if I cough till the cows come home, so F U, Robitussin.
Mucinex, you taste so damn bad.... I get it, you don't wanna get pilloried by the overactive mom society who have a responsibility to lock up meds only they don't, they'd rather sue.

I can imagine it... The little brat missed lunch because he was sent home early for being a miscreant.

So he hunts cabinets for stuff to eat and finds this in the refrigerator (Is that why they're selling such tiny bottles lately?? 3oz, $3 an oz, nine dollars.)

Someone out there has a cold.

They ripped off the seal from my bottle, took a swig, and put it back.

I really hope the guy isn't dying of covid or aids.

Keyboard tome mysteries

 This is mostly a rant, so far,

 that you can ignore. 

I disagree with some of my new keyboard's terminology.

"Fn" or, "Function Key" is imprinted "Fn" and that seems simple enough and is copied by several keyboard companies.

To access special keys that have nothing to do with typing, press Fn and the key which usually has the special function imprinted on the key!

But these guys wanted to reinvent technology.

The Function key now has four modes (it would be technically impossible to have more than 2, except for *another* switch I haven't mentioned yet)

Also the four modes start with "0" just to look extra-technical.

Also, to use two of the modes, you need a different type of a computer (I didn't mention that either, for fear of confusion)

The damn Fn button is "on" or "off", pressed or unpressed, 0 or 1 (if you like techie terminology.)

But now thanks to the alternate universe-switch, it can be 2 or 3 (Are you following this?)

Being the richer-than-god guy that you are, you prolly have TWO computers, but are too cheap-ass to buy two keyboards.

• Change channels to one or the other computer.
• Change the Type of computer (Apple or windows) (This action will rename your function key)
• Press the function key (to, uh, turn on a light or whatever)

It all becomes clearer if you are into writing computer programs ("Macros") for your keyboard

(Which is possible I suppose, but I have not read that page yet)

In a way different section, you can stumble blindly around to find the keyboard light combo that is pleasing to you.

Don't like rainbows? (too suspect subversive "woke"?) They have a keyboard key that changes the default(?) rainbow color to, for example, red (as in "kiss your ass goodbye soon" red)

But can you duplicate it for friends next Tuesday?
I really wouldn't know.
Punch the key and watch different patterns, until one looks acceptable (not puke blinking-green)

None of this needed a program, although I think maybe I could use one.

I was reading a reddit thread which asked about disabling the sleep-tendencies of the keyboard.

A snarky guy DYOR bla-bla and gave an answer.
We (general "we") don't want to read tomes, it's Nice to be able to ask a question to masses of people at once,

but the people always run across the snarky, the mean and the confidently stupid, first, and those people win awards for non-helpful bullshit answers (10k of them)

"Google is your friend"

"I have no problems (shs)"

"DYOR"

"I don't know"

----------

Here is something I'd like to try, blogging on my phone using the keyboard.

Yes, when the apocalypse happens and the laptop is dead, I can use the phone to talk to the keyboard! 

I'm doing it now.

But, could I suddenly decide to switch back to the Laptop?

Uh, not instantly, it's a blog after all that gets updated online, but, ignoring those little details, hang on....

Yes!

---

Anyway...

I worry that the lens (The glass covering the lenses) is either scratched or could be scratched.

Guess what? It does not matter a hell of a lot.linky

I'm so relieved!! You have no idea. The microscopic scratch I cannot really see (My eyes are kind of bad) vs the sandblasted scratch they put for test purposes.

My thumb and flies would have a much bigger effect.

I wonder sometimes about reviewers dissing phones.

Yes it seems better than God, but it's just not apple.

Bah.

They should buy an actual camera to compare the phone to.

$4k but then would you shut the hell up and stop bitching?
(Did I mention it was $4k, Twerp?)

Speaking of which, if people care so much about picture quality, why not just buy a camera?

But you've seen the photos, the ones where a politician is speaking and all the reporters eagerly hold up their phone.

The dancers in Iraq (wherever) or the miserable people after a disaster, are prolly hosted on much more expensive dedicated fancy cameras.

Which brings me to my next question, how the hell to keep lenses clean in dusty environments?

Also, dedicated cameras don't have a piece of glass to shoot through, it's the unprotected lens against the world.

This phone sits its butt down on the glass covering the lenses, that seems wrong, somehow.

rogue robot

 There's so much about this subject I don't know, I would need an AI machine of my own to figure it out.
So I'll guess, and ask hypothetical questions.
Isn't it true that most biggie tech firms load up on a project hoping to dominate the field.

When they fail to dominate, they buy.

If they cannot buy, they abandon.

I predict Gemini will be abandoned, certainly by 2028 but prolly sooner.

?

The combined talents of both competing systems (I'm not proposing mergers and acquisitions, hmm)

might be beneficial to consumers, but I'm assuming that they want to make money at some point.

Anyway, enough mind wandering.

I'm at stage two of my cold / flu, which is constant calls to the bathroom. Is that significant?
I'm armed with cough medicine, snot-minimizer and of course, Imodium. 

So a few hours a day I can stay awake wondering stuff, and then it's back to the bathroom or bed.

And right now I wonder what the hell a phone wants with AI.

I mean, what??! It should make really nice sounding calls. 

It should *Maybe* stream videos and have a way to pipe them over to friendly TV's at waiting rooms.

It might even want to play a game!

So what the hell is AI for? 

"Tensor G5" is a processor without a mission, unless that mission is to watch what I do and where I go, and make predictions to the overseeing authority.

It plays games! Sort of.

It's a biggie Nielsen box that monitors what I watch, what chat programs I use,
And (I didn't know this one) what I photograph!!

Someone somewhere way high up, is teaching their AI program what porn looks like, to better report on it in the future.
Someone somewhere (yada,) Keywords.

THEN some data harvester can hand in a detailed summary to some politician, "what did people talk about most, yesterday?? What did they watch??"

I already get ads tailored to my tastes, "I see you looked at power supplies, huh? Here. I've got one on sale," and that's NOW, no fantasy.

We need (I need) random keywords to test out the theory, but I'd rather not have people busting down the door looking for my seditious behavior, TYVM

I just had a train of thought about phones with location services.
The good guys in movies always seem to be running away from the evil people who just happen to have the finest state-of-the-art surveillance equipment,
One of the good guys always grabs the other's phone and smashes it. Phones are precious to us, we love them and keep them close to our hearts, and that is precisely why movies do that (I think) although the movie-phones are around ten years too old. Them smashing up Modern iPhones is prolly sacrilegious.
On the new phone is a missing, obvious setting, "roaming (yes/no.)" It (instead) says "Roaming: allow data" which means to me that turning off roaming is unthinkable, not an option.

AI, we've got a job for you

"Compared to previous models"? Tell that to my pixel 7, one-bar if I'm lucky, usually. Anything less would be death.

I'm supposed to add a screenshot here of the sim-status page, but it won't let me.

'Signal Strength"

"-83dBm 57 asu" (-105 dBm, then -92 dBm 42 asu)

and it was worse when I first asked it (-92, I think)

Regardless, all signal-bars are happy.

My Mobile voice-network-type is, NR SA. I don't think you'd care but I want to go look it up.

My mobile data network type is "I W L A N" (also, look it up)

AHh!! someone closed a door several hundred feet from here,

 and the signal lowered to -110! 

Point being, the bars dropped a little. They don't shrink, they just go missing.

So the bars are not decorative, they work.

All bars present at -99 dBm, and after that they start to disappear.

I had a devil of a time working out Bluetooth though.

You must be able to quickly press menu buttons on both phones.

My brain was telling me that once it's hooked up, only one phone needs to be fooled with, but that was way wrong.

No one ever tells me anything. Is this cool or what??!!

I don't know if I mentioned it, but my pixel 7 (ordinary edition) and the Pixel XL10 are so close in size, Flies would have trouble landing on the difference.
But the corners on the new phone are much more lazily curved, like some patio, not a building.

And the new phone supports magnetic charging.

I'm really trying to wrap my head around why.

Wouldn't the phone get too hot?
Could you (for example) watch some movie while it magnetically charged?

How busy are you that plugging / unplugging cords would eat into your time?

In the way-future, magnetic chargers on buses and trains and coffee shops would be nice, but doubtless they'd be for iPhones, not for Androids.

I don't see much of a reason at present; the charger would keep disappearing from your office.

And isn't it true that the charging gizmo needs a regular charger to work?

I'll need to absorb more propaganda videos before I'm sold.

Why?

This video is bombastic and doesn't use the official Google charger-gizmo, but it claims that problems exist with magnetic charging anyway.

"Qarging"??

I'd think (I wouldn't know) without their official $39 dongle which does absolutely nothing without a charger, you can't diss the wattage yet.

(Does nothing without a Qarger? WTF?? Are we being all vegan or is google just cheap??)

At the risk of getting punched, uh,
What lame-wad assmunch marketing rep decided to release one/half of a product
and then have the nerve-gall-audacity to charge $39.??
There's more to this.
I have vague visions in my head of protesters and e-waste, but when you specifically sell charging equipment that DOES NOT CHARGE.... wut?

I like the reddit headline, lol.
But it's my point, you're selling an f'ing ADAPTER for a charger
and then you want $40??

It includes a fan! Cuz phones get hot,
It does NOT include a charger!! 
See, cuz, uh ......

The eco-terrorist who decried little wall warts in every package could not have known the obligatory purchase of even bigger wall warts, unless he was a traitorous shill from the electronics industry (The ones who change USB every three months)

I don't work in an office, no one would ever see it, so the only thing really going for it is that the USB-C port on the phone could remain more, "virginal" or something, not bent up, etc.

Since a phone needs to be plugged-unplugged daily to charge, and cables go bad, yes, I see a reason, but maybe they'll come down to 9.95 or cheaper. I see them with those nice useless toys google keeps pointing me to: spinners, tiny planes.

----------------

I don't know why everyone says it's big, why they call it XL.

 Maybe the ordinary-edition is smaller by a lot. I'm not richer than god but I'll guess, the Apples run small and so Google must follow. Anyway I'm totally glad I got the larger size.

Picture,->bluetoothed over.

The transitive verb "Bluetooth" (I'll Bluetooth it to ya) hasn't been invented or this grandma spellchecker is still way 90's, IDK) I'm behind too...It's prolly BT2U

I'm going to upload a pretty picture taken in very poor light.

The point is, it's lots better than everyone says, all the shills who'll say Apple is the best, etc.

This picture has been shrunk and converted, and it *still* looks nice.

All settings for the camera were "auto."

Yes keep doing that. I'll take your picture.
O! Someone's coming!!