Whenever anyone talks about how high interest rates are now, I remember when my wife and I bought our house in 1997. We were pre-approved for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage at 7.5%, and we were told to take it.

What we were actually told was, "you’ll never see a rate this low again.

Yeah, that’s what I meant. Ask the women in your life for advice.

What do your woman friends say?

When people ask me why I like Linux, my go-to reason is my main personal machine. I use it for everything I do outside of work, including running my Emby server.

I built it from $500 worth of parts 13 years ago. I’ve kept updating the os and applications. It’s starting to slow down a bit after the last os upgrade, but it’s still plenty usable.

I am getting concerned about the spinning platters. As far as I am aware, Linux won’t prevent an ancient hard disk drive from reaching the natural end of is life.

It’s probably time to move on to a new machine. Well, new motherboard, CPU, RAM, and disks at least.

So sitting on my ass eating candy isn’t the way to lose weight?

Pong.

I live in The U.S., so of course I’m not actually familiar with a functional health care system. However almost 50 years ago when I was in elementary school, there were health lessons that taught us kids how to brush and floss.

Regular flossing doesn’t seem to be the kind of thing you should need an X-ray to learn about.

not the name of the software/company, but rather some sort of advanced DDOS-like attack

As we’ve discovered, both can be true.

On Friday, as we were running around the hospital where we work trying to get every computer working again, we were following the work-around to rename the Crowdstrike folder under C:\Windows\system32\drivers to “bad-CrowdStrike”.

When my coworker was typing the rename command, instead of typing “cro TAB”, he started typing “clo TAB”. He’d ask me why it wasn’t finding it, and I’d point out the typo.

I started saying, it’s not “CloudStrike”, it’s “CrowdStrike”.

By the end of the day, we were both a little loopy. I started typing “CloudStrike”, and cursing him out for screwing with my head. By the end of the day I wasn’t sure what it was either.

CloudStrike

CrownStrike

ClownStrike

It occurred to us that CrowdStrike is an absolutely terrible name. It sounds like a terrorist attack. Of course, it felt like one on Friday.

No certainly not, but I didn’t see it on the list yet.

It’s it too soon to say, “letting Crowdstrike push updates to all your windows workstations and servers”

It’s not that complex.

A mutation happens. It can result in either a disadvantage that prevents the plant from surviving to reproduce or an advantage that helps the plant survive to reproduce.

There’s no “knowing” involved. There is no intent on the part of the plant. It’s just random. You’re seeing the descendants of the plants that got an advantageous mutation.

What you’re not seeing in your yard are the billions of different plants that never survived because their mutation was a disadvantage.

My mom often used two:

“Useless as tits on a bull” (often referencing her husband, my dad)

And also, “shit fire and save matches”, which I never understood to actually have a meaning, it was more like just an exclamation of surprise.

I just had the odd experience of using a manufacturer’s discount card to pick up a medication for my wife. The medication is relatively expensive and seldom covered by insurance.

According to the information on the card, if you have private insurance which covers the medication, the discount card covers the co-pay, so you pay nothing. However, if your insurance doesn’t cover the medication, the discount card covers the cost, and you still pay nothing.

Our insurance didn’t cover the cost, and we didn’t pay anything for the medication.

I don’t understand how that works.

I think it’s important to remember that the USA isn’t a single culture. Things vary dramatically even within a single state to say nothing of differences between states.

In some areas prom is very important. In others, not so much.

Only one of my three kids went to prom (Eastern PA).

Prom in my high school was a relatively big deal. You rented a tux or bought a dress. Some people would rent a limo. The prom was held in some kind of banquet hall with a fairly fancy meal. There’d be a DJ and dancing.

My wife was one year behind me in high school, and we attended FOUR proms (my junior prom, then the next year her junior prom and my senior prom, then the next year I came back for her senior prom).

I think for most people it’s just an opportunity to get dressed up, have a good meal, and dance. If you’re already dating someone, it obviously has more significance, but I had plenty of friends who just took another friend as a date for the prom and others who didn’t go with anyone. However, there was a lot of pressure to be a “couple”, even if you weren’t actually romantically involved with your “date”.

Typically the parents take pictures of the kids in their dresses and tuxedos. From the parents’ point of view, it’s a moment to sort of take note of how your kids are maturing and think about what the future holds for them. Lots of thinking about how old you are ;-)

Often there’s an after party that goes on late into the morning, and for many kids the after party is more important than the prom.

I think social media has had an effect on what prom is, but it also has the effect of distorting what it is to people who only experience it remotely. When you’re seeing the crazy YouTube videos and Instagram posts, you’re not seeing what prom is. You’re seeing a snapshot of what those particular proms are.

the 1950s. This was a high water mark for conservatism in the U.S., and in order to go on any date at least one parent, usually the girl’s dad, had to be present.

Perhaps this was a regional thing.

I was born in 1970, but from what my parents have described, dates were not chaperoned in the 50s unless you happened to have particularly strict parents. Like maybe if you were Amish or something.

Here’s the only thing I was able to find online about dating in the 50’s

https://www.plosin.com/beatbegins/projects/sombat.html

it has pedals like a bicycle

Are you taking about the Aptera from the video you linked?

If so, the Aptera doesn’t have pedals like a bicycle. It’s a fully electric vehicle (or it will be if it reaches production).

Came here looking for this.

https://www.stroke.org/en/about-stroke/stroke-symptoms

I have heard that the younger generations just want to bang on the drum all day.