The phenomenon of consciousness / individuality / free will is the fragment of our higher-dimensional anatomy that intersects with our 4-dimensional reality.

Avalanches, Since I Left You

The Dreamcast controller is ugly as sin but surprisingly comfortable to hold. It must have the widest delta between looks and ergonomics of any controller.

I rip CDs to 320 kbps mp3s, and my ear is good enough to say that it sounds good compared to older, lower-quality mp3s that I’ve still got rattling around in my collection. I have no complaints, but I bow to the serious audiophiles who know their hardware better than me.

I use mine virtually every single day, albeit for playing music and podcasts and a little bit of web browsing and not much else. If the camera were better it would have become my primary phone.

I fuckin LOVE the Jelly Star! I use it as my music player. Expandable memory, headphone jack, runs BlackPlayer and Podcast Addict. Don’t need it to do anything else in the world. Wonderful device.

Can one trademark a brand and then announce that it is immediately public domain so that no one else can ever trademark it? Someone should trademark No Buy Stuff or some such phrase and do that.

Weaponization or dangerous rays are not among the challenges facing space-based solar.

Contrary to appearances in fiction, most designs propose beam energy densities that are not harmful if human beings were to be inadvertently exposed, such as if a transmitting satellite’s beam were to wander off-course. But the necessarily vast size of the receiving antennas would still require large blocks of land near the end users. The service life of space-based collectors in the face of long-term exposure to the space environment, including degradation from radiation and micrometeoroid damage, could also become a concern for SBSP.

I was going to say that I kind of wish The Devil existed, because then we would know that truly horrible people would eventually face damnation, and in a way it’s nice to imagine that cosmic justice could exist.

Fun Toy Banned Because Of Three Stupid Dead Kids

I’m not sure that doesn’t make prospect even more terrifying.

Why would I?

The Plants that Would Not Die

Watch the original Gone in 60 Seconds, from 1974. The car stunts are absolutely insane, to the extent that they probably shouldn’t have been allowed to make the movie the way they did, but it happened and I’m glad that cameras were rolling. The Nic Cage remake was trying to make a movie safer, slicker, and more coherently, but there’s no replacement for a bunch of insane stunt drivers risking their lives and the lives of everyone around them.

But then I start to feel like

this guy, with the “real” camera and the phone camera, but the phone camera is the one I’ve most consistently got on me, because I can’t lug a whole additional piece of hardware around in a camera bag, meanwhile the phone camera pictures are grainy and shitty, and I’d just as soon have a Pixel in my pocket at all times that can take fairly good pictures at all times.

Camera is probably the first obstacle. I’ve got a kid, and I really want to have good documentation of her growing up. If there were a dumbphone with a legit camera, that’d be a big deal for me.

After that, probably maps is the next most important thing that I want an actual smart phone for. I remember getting my first smart phone, and probably the main thing I was excited about was always being able to navigate directly to where I wanted to go.

Almost everything else is tertiary to my needs.

The one on the right looks like it has an engorged tick for a nose.