You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or allow?

Bitcoin has lost half its value in less than 12 months, down 13% in June thus far

thewayne — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 17:40:59 GMT

Wow. An "investment" that is not based on anything is losing value? Whouldathunkit. Now, if you'd generated a few hundred Bitcoins at the beginning when it was possible and sold them when they were worth $100,000+, that would have been quite awesome. But it still wouldn't have been an investment: it would have been speculative trading to other speculators. Because there's nothing behind it. Still, the only value in Bitcoin is other people buying it and it being used for illegal activity such as to traffic in drugs and paying ransomware demands.

This is an excellent quote from the CNBC article: "Bitcoin differs from stocks, bonds and real estate because it doesn’t generate earnings, interest payments or rental income that investors can use to estimate its value, says Robert Johnson, a finance professor at Creighton University. Instead, its price is largely determined solely by investor demand.

“You cannot invest in Bitcoin, you can only speculate,” he says."

A comment in the Slashdot story notes that prominent FORMER promotors of Bitcoin, Marc Andreesen and Peter Thiel are no longer singing the praises of Bitcoin, they're now telling people to invest in AI. Apparently they made their money in BC and got out.

By the way, unless you're really good at timing markets, don't invest in AI.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/12/bitcoins-price-drop-is-forcing-investors-to-revisit-why-they-own-it.html

https://slashdot.org/story/26/06/14/0817238/bitcoin-has-lost-nearly-half-its-value-in-11-months

SpaceX rejected in attempt to get listed in the S&P 500 index! Bodes ill for AI IPOs...

thewayne — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 19:52:21 GMT

Ah, what a lovely article! Sometimes standards get upheld!

As you may have heard, SpaceX has filed to do an IPO (initial public offering [of stock shares]) and go on the stock market. Lots and lots of people are salivating, perhaps Leon Muskbrat most of all. They also filed with the New York Stock Exchange for a quick listing on the Standard & Poor 500 stock market index.

And they were rejected to get listed on that index.

HAD they been accepted, their valuation would have skyrocketed, no pun intended. Lots of institutional investors buy funds directly based on the S&P rather than or in addition to buying individual stocks, so that mix would have contained SpaceX immediately.

What squelched the deal?

A basic problem that Musk-lead companies have long had: profitability.

In order to be included in the S&P 500, the company has to be currently profitable, and must have been profitable in the four preceding quarters. SpaceX is not currently posting a profit, and never has. There is also a rule that they must release at least 10% of their shares to be publicly traded, SpaceX is going to release 3%. After a month-long consultation to decide whether to allow the rules to be waved to allow SpaceX into the club, the decision was made to not open the door.

This may hamper Muskbrat's quest to become the world's first trillionaire. Now, will he alter the IPO to let loose more shares to meet the 10% threshold, and will he alter operations to make it more profitable? I expect that among the things dragging it down is he's making SpaceX buy almost all of the Tesla Cybertruck production to keep Tesla's sales chugging along. Apparently SpaceX's debt load is $29 BILLION dollars US because of its AI debt load. That's a big load on profitability, having to service that amount of debt.

The AI company Anthropic has also filed for an IPO. It's sealed, so details are not much available, like what percentage of shares will be let loose. But like all AI companies, it is not profitable.

However, Leon did get some good news with the Nasdaq folks, who decided"... to allow SpaceX to enter the Nasdaq-100 Index within 15 trading days as opposed to the usual three months. Similarly, the FTSE Russell index provider decided to give SpaceX and other follow-on companies accelerated entry to the Russell Top 500 Index after the close of the fifth trading day following an IPO."

But there was even more bad news for SpaceX: "...Morningstar analysts described SpaceX as having been “significantly overvalued” in the lead-up to its IPO. The investment research firm valued SpaceX at $780 billion—less than half of SpaceX’s $1.75 trillion IPO goal—primarily based on the strengths of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite service and rocket launch business."

OUCH! A Muskbrat-led business overvalued? Say it isn't so!

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/sp-500-blocks-fast-spacex-entry-wont-waive-rule-for-unprofitable-ai-firms/

RIP: Anthony Head, known for Buffy the Vampire Slayer among many other things

thewayne — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 20:39:21 GMT

Ah, a sad day. He was a marvelous actor and did a lot of work. Aside from the TV series Buffy, he appeared in the Apple TV series Ted Lasso, and from the AP article: "...Other notable roles included playing Geoffrey Howe, the deputy to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, played by Meryl Streep, in the Oscar-winning “The Iron Lady.”

Head portrayed a prime minister himself in the sketch comedy show “Little Britain,” as well as King Uther Pendragon, the father of Prince Arthur, in the “Merlin” TV series. He also appeared in “Motherland,” Manchild,” and “Silent Witness,” along with acting in many plays, musicals, and recording music as a singer.

Head passed away 'due to complications from pneumonia'. He will be missed.

https://apnews.com/article/anthony-head-obit-buffy-vampire-lasso-a1c56edf560de048e730a2cf337e4223

Amazon cancels the Stargate TV series before it fully starts production

thewayne — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:07:59 GMT

Well, the odds weren't good that it would see the light of day. I had just heard they were in development earlier this year. I was really looking forward to this, we enjoyed the original and the SG-1 series.

I still cringe whenever I'm in a theater and I see the MGM logo and Amazon with it. It just makes me sad. Perhaps it's better than MGM dying entirely, but not by much.

https://screenrant.com/stargate-amazon-new-series-canceled/

Pope Leo issues an encyclical about artificial intelligence

thewayne — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:49:51 GMT

This came out two weeks ago, and I'm not commenting on it as I'm reading it right now: I just converted it to an epub and at 43,000 words it's about 80 pages long in a double-page format on my laptop. It's going to take some time to chew through and form opinions on. There's definitely a lot to think about.

In it, he quotes Gandalf! Some commentators have proclaimed it as a slam against Peter Theil who created the Palantir [company/system] and is decidedly using it not for the betterment of humanity.

If anyone would like a copy of an epub of the encyclical, send me your email address as a private message and I'll send it to you. It's only 95k, so easily fits as an attachment.

An Ars Technica article on the encyclical:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/citing-gandalf-pope-leo-says-we-must-disarm-ai/

The inevitable Slashdot page on the encyclical:
https://slashdot.org/story/26/05/26/0441241/pope-leo-warns-of-risks-from-ai-in-42300-word-encyclical

And the actual encyclical!
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html

S. Korea Starbucks CEO sacked after disastrous Tank Day promotion

thewayne — Mon, 25 May 2026 08:21:53 GMT

Oh, boy!

This guy is apparently an ultra-nationalist type and decided to do a Tank Day promotion. In South Korea, this was something that happened in 1980, a time when South Korea was being ruled by a military dictatorship. There was a brutal crack-down on pro-democracy protesters and a lot of people died when an unidentified person ordered troops to open fire on the protesters. A lot of people also just disappeared and still haven't been accounted for.

The CEO decided to 'celebrate' Tank Day, obviously a severely tone-deaf idea, which included special Tank Day tumblers and mugs. The public responded with videos of said tumblers and mugs being destroyed with hammers and such, along with other Starbucks merch being destroyed. The article goes on to report people getting refunds on prepaid gift cards and deleting their Starbucks smartphone apps. When word finally reached the USA HQ, he was fired. Starbucks Global announced that the CEO was no longer employed by the corporation and was no longer in that role.

The company that owns just over 2/3rds of Starbucks South Korea, Shinsegae Group, saw their stock take a 5.5% dive in trading.

From the article, "...Shinsegae Group Chairman Chung Yong-jin also issued a public apology.

“I deeply bow in apology as the representative of the group,” Chung said. The marketing “deeply hurt the public, the bereaved families, and the victims of the May 18 demonstration.”

Also from the article, the President of South Korea, Lee Jae Myung said on Twitter that "...he was “enraged” by Starbucks’ campaign and demanded it apologize to families of people killed during the uprising."

One more lesson on how to utterly ruin your high-paying career.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/19/starbucks-korea-head-fired-after-tank-day-promotion-sparks-public-uproar.html

Functional strength vs body builders

thewayne — Thu, 21 May 2026 23:47:26 GMT

This is hilarious! You only need the first six minutes until you get to his first commercial, the rest of the video is just more of the same. But it is funny.

I saw another video that explained. "Anatoly" is actually named Vladimir and placed 3rd in his weight class in a world championship. He's a pretty serious lifter, just happens to be a bit on the small side at 78 kg. So basically it's world champion-class vs gym rats.

But I love the mop!

Anthropic AI attended a multi-faith religion confab after hosting one with Christian leaders

thewayne — Mon, 18 May 2026 20:42:37 GMT

In early April, Anthropic hosted a two-day gathering of 15 Christian leaders to discuss Claude's "morality and spiritual development" at its HQ. Ignoring the concept of coding morals into software and the fact that different groups of the same religion who ostensibly follow the same core book have different interpretations, you do have the problem of this being just one core religion. And Anthropic took some heat for just meeting with representatives of Christian religions,

In early May, Anthropic and OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, joined a conference that included scholars from the "...New York Board of Rabbis, the Hindu Temple Society of North America, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the U.S.-based Sikh Coalition, and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America...". I note the absence of Hindu, Buddhist, atheists, Native American and Shamanistic traditions, Druidic and Wiccan traditions, and any number of other faiths. Heck, having the Church of Satan present would have certainly livened things up! But this was an invitational gathering called the Faith-AI Covenant, so they're just being a little representative, not remotely all-inclusive.

LLMs have a 'rule book' that are supposed to dictate some of their behavior. In the case of Anthropic's Claude, it's called a constitution. As of a month ago, it was 29,000 words. That's probably pretty complex. Considering how self-contradictory religious texts can be, do you want to code that into a rule book?

The companies making chatbots have a big problem. People using them have been talked into committing homicide, suicide, experimenting with drugs to the point of fatal overdoses, etc. While they say their programs are designed to be protective, their behavior shows that it is anything but.

Martin Luther King Jr. had a great quote: 'Our technology has so out-stripped our morals that we now have guided missiles and un-guided men.' It's relatively easy to guide a missile with radar, GPS, and terrain-matching optics/computers. But to code morals into a computer, based on religion - especially with several competing religions contributing?

I think you're going to end up with an almost HAL-9000 scenario, or any number of other scenarios where the program is paralyzed by the contradictions and mismatches within and between the various faiths. Ethics and morality are tricky codes, and they don't have to come from religion, and if you try to dictate them from religion, it's a great way to get the Crusades and any number of other horrible things.

I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think this is it.

Gizmodo article from last month on the Christian gathering:
https://gizmodo.com/how-do-we-make-sure-that-claude-behaves-itself-anthropic-invited-15-christians-for-a-summit-2000743766

Washington Post article re: Christian gathering, much more in-depth:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/04/11/anthropic-christians-claude-morals/

Gizmodo article on latest multi-faith gathering:
https://gizmodo.com/anthropic-has-added-several-more-religions-on-its-quest-to-inject-perfect-morals-into-claude-2000756740

Napoleon Solo wins the 151st Preakness Stakes!

thewayne — Sun, 17 May 2026 00:07:26 GMT

He's in pretty phenomenal shape to win in a field of 14 horses!

Lake Tahoe residents abandoned by its energy supplier who wants to power AI data centers

thewayne — Sat, 16 May 2026 18:31:59 GMT

Ah, capitalism at its finest!

49,000 California residents of the area get their power from California-based Liberty Utilities, who get their power from Nevada-based NV Energy, and come May 2027, NV is going to start sending its power to data centers because it can make more money.

Lake Tahoe is an Alpine lake that is divided by the California/Nevada border, most of it on the California side. It looks to me like most of the residents are on the western/California side.

California regulators can't do much because it's a Nevada utility. Nevada won't do much of anything because it's California residents that have the problem and thus is not their ~~voters/tax-payers~~responsibility.

From the article, emphasis mine: "However, NV Energy representatives pushed back on the idea that data centers are the main culprit behind the decision to stop supplying energy to the Lake Tahoe community, telling Fortune that it was part of a long-term transition predating the AI boom. After NV Energy initially sold its California assets to Liberty in 2009, it struck a series of temporary agreements to keep providing power to Lake Tahoe until Liberty could secure another energy supplier.

Now, for whatever reason</u>, NV Energy has decided it cannot keep extending such agreements. That leaves Liberty scrambling to find a new energy supplier as it plans to offer a replacement contract for any bidders capable of meeting California’s renewable energy requirements." *cough* more money from data centers *cough*

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/energy-supplier-abandons-lake-tahoe-residents-to-serve-data-centers/

Do router reboots help home network performance?

thewayne — Tue, 12 May 2026 15:13:33 GMT

Short answer? Probably not.

This writer has a complex home network. Mesh-enabled, lots and lots of devices plugged into it, a decent-sized family using it heavily. And he did some benchmarking at various times of the day, testing throughput with multiple benchmarks, resetting the router, then doing it again. Not rigorously scientific, but still demonstrative. The result? Didn't make much of a difference.

So he talked to some router manufacturers. And the responses were pretty uniform: modern routers are highly engineered and pretty robust, they're designed to be reliable and have high uptime. If you're having performance issues, the problem most likely lies elsewhere: computer needs a restart, network issue with your ISP, poor network design (you might benefit from a mesh or a faster connection). Or you may need a better/newer router. And, of course, keep your router's firmware updated for performance purposes and to ensure it's patched for the latest security updates.

Do I reboot ours very often? Nah. We have occasional power outages, in which case I'll shut off our UPS which will power off the router. The funny thing is that I read this article last night in bed before I went to sleep, and during the night Russet was working and our ISP had a network shutdown for maintenance. The first thing she did? Reset the router. Didn't make any difference since the upstream network was dead.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3125791/i-rebooted-my-router-and-busted-reddits-favorite-tech-myth.html

Researcher shows Microsoft's Edge browser stores saved passwords in memory in plaintext!

thewayne — Thu, 07 May 2026 19:38:10 GMT

A security researcher did some poking around and discovered a bad thing with the Edge browser. Every browser wants you to trust them with your passwords and credit card data. At least in the case of Edge and passwords, that trust may be unwarranted.

The researcher stored a password and then captured all the memory. And found the password in plaintext. Unencrypted, unhashed. Completely readable. Microsoft dismissed this finding, saying that the computer would have to be compromised by malware for this to be a vulnerability.

Well, guess what. COMPUTERS GET COMPROMISED BY MALWARE ON A REGULAR BASIS. THIS IS A PROBLEM.

The Edge browser is based on Google's Chrome browser. There are many browsers based on Chrome, and apparently they take the very minimal resources required to encrypt or hash said passwords.

No word if this problem exists on Edge browser on other operating systems such as Mac.

Now, here's the really bonus extra-stupid thing. If I'm a user on a computer, and I want to view a password for a web site, I HAVE TO ENTER MY LOGIN PASSWORD TO VIEW IT. It's already been decrypted and stuffed into memory in plaintext, but I have to authenticate myself to view it!

This is quite an amazing level of stupidity. The amount of CPU resources required to decrypt one password for one web site is miniscule. There is zero reason to decrypt all of those passwords and stuff them into ram where any malware can steal them.

I expect this will be changed in a forthcoming - and soon! - Patch Tuesday, we'll see how quickly they get around to it.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/researcher-finds-microsoft-edge-stored-passwords-load-in-plaintext

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/06/2014204/microsoft-edge-stores-passwords-in-plaintext-in-ram

The new Murderbot novella(?) is out!

thewayne — Tue, 05 May 2026 07:00:53 GMT

It released Tuesday at midnight, the title is Platform Decay. One thing that's nice about buying mostly ebooks is instant access. :-) The author, Martha Wells, recently announced that the next book may be the last in the series, especially since she only has one more under contract. She said that she's happy where SecUnit is and she doesn't want the series to go on indefinitely, plus she's happily at work on a new fantasy series, of which she has two books out right now.

She also has the Murderbot Apple TV show to work with, we shall see how long that series continues.

This book is clocking in at 170-180 pages.

https://www.polygon.com/murderbot-diaries-series-finale-martha-wells-interview/

Fight fire with.... infrasound?

thewayne — Sun, 03 May 2026 23:52:35 GMT

This is pretty cool. A startup founded by a former NASA engineer has created a device for extinguishing fire with infrasound: super low frequency sound waves that literally push the oxygen away from the fire, denying the fire of one of the things that it needs for combustion!

It's safe to be around when it's in operation as it doesn't destroy or deplete the oxygen in the area, i.e. you won't asphyxiate, and being low frequency it won't damage the hearing of people or pets. In the video there's a demonstration of the device in use on a simulated oil pan kitchen fire, which it extinguishes in under 30 seconds.

There are a lot of unanswered questions, such as will it activate again if the fire reignites, what are long-term maintenance requirements, what about furniture, mattress, or electrical fires, crosswinds, etc. So far, the company hasn't released any specifics as to how its testing is being conducted, nor have any units been released for third parties to verify testing conditions or parameters.

The company also hopes that the unit could be used to fight wildfires, such as mounted on the front of bulldozers. It's working with one California wildfire agency to see if such testing can be done.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/05/startup-says-sound-waves-can-replace-fire-sprinklers-experts-arent-so-sure/

Terry Pratchett's Discworld ebooks on sale!

thewayne — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:07:08 GMT

Today is his birthday, Amazon and the Apple bookstores are selling the Discworld ebooks for $1.99. I don't know if this offer is only good in the USA.

Good news for book store lovers

thewayne — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:19:32 GMT

There's an online book seller, Bookshop.org, started in January 2020. They give EIGHTY PERCENT OF THEIR PROFITS BACK TO INDEPENDENT BOOK STORES! 80%! That is pretty darn cool!

And it's having an effect.

When Amazon launched in 1995, there were 5,000 members in the American Booksellers Association. In 2019, 1,889.

The ABA has now grown to over 3,200 members, and Bookshop.org has donated over $47 MILLION to independent bookshops! When you make a purchase from them, you can designate the donation part of your purchase to go to sellers in your area or into a general pool.

What's even better is people are changing Amazon Affiliate links to links going to Bookshop.org!

In my area, the only place that you can buy new books is still Walmart, used books it's thrift shops and the Friends of the Library site at the mall. 90 minutes to Las Cruces or 2+ hours to El Paso to get to B&N. I doubt that's going to change here.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91529634/independent-bookstore-day-bookshop-org-founder-on-how-small-retailers-are-taking-on-amazon

https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/04/27/052242/america-now-has-70-more-bookstores-than-in-2020-says-bookshoporg-founder

I did something mildly clever with my iPhone recently

thewayne — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:31:39 GMT

I have a recurring problem with my phone at work/the university. It doesn't want to maintain its registration with the campus WiFi. And this is a problem because I use it as a part of my work process. I run the Apple iCloud app on my desktop PC and copy book information into the Notes app so that when I'm working in the stacks to pull books that I need, I can just look at my phone. But since it's not connecting to the WiFi, I have to manually turn OFF the WiFi in order for Notes to sync!

So I did some querying, and aside from having to adapt it from old information (older version of IOS), I set up an automation!

Now my phone watches for geofencing, and when I arrive at school, it automatically turns off WiFi! And when I leave school, turns it back on!

It's working quite reliably. I only wish I'd thought of it a couple of years ago. Fortunately my laptop doesn't seem to have a problem maintaining its WiFi registration.

Happy Blog Bday to me!

thewayne — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:21:50 GMT

I just got an email that my Live Journal blog is 22 years old now! Started it in ~~2002~~2004 after my friends and I did a mass exodus from Network 54 when they went weird. Then in 2017 on the 13th of January, I started my Dreamwidth side and ported everything over when LJ was not only sold to a Russian company, but the servers were relocated to Russian territory. So I'll get my 10-year anniversary with DW in the middle of the forthcoming January. Yay. ;-)

And I'll continue manually cross-posting to my LJ blog as DW will remain my primary blog. I wish the automatic cross-post would start working again, but I expect that won't happen until Russia loses the war in Ukraine once and for all and withdraws and loosens up on the information flow chokehold that it maintains on its people.

There's a new Penric & Desdemona book out!

thewayne — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 06:51:21 GMT

The title is Darksight Dare and it dropped a couple of days ago.

HOWEVER, there may be a problem with the Kindle release. There are reports that the edition that was available as soon it released was only about half there. The Apple edition was complete.

I haven't read it yet, I'm working on a 'making of' book of Monty Python's Life of Brian! As it is one of my absolute favorite books of all time, it has a little priority. I'll read the Bujold next.

RIP: Dave Mason, 79

thewayne — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 03:20:33 GMT

If you're into older rock, Dave Mason is a name a name that you'll either recognize right off the bat or you won't. But when you hear the people whom he's worked with, and what he's done, then you start to wonder if you haven't heard of him.

Here's the first two paragraphs from the Variety obit:
"Dave Mason, solo artist, a founding member of the band Traffic, writer of the classic rock songs “Feelin’ Alright” and “Hole in My Shoe” and sideman to the Rolling Stones, George Harrison and Jimi Hendrix, has died, according to an announcement from his publicist. He was 79.

Mason was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the other original members of Traffic in 2004. In the 1970s he enjoyed solo hits with “Only You Know and I Know” and “We Just Disagree,” and over the years he also performed or recorded with David Crosby, Graham Nash, Michael Jackson, Cass Elliot, Leon Russell and others."

Let me repeat some of those names. A founding member of Traffic. The Rolling Stones. George Harrison. Jimi Hendrix (he played 12 string guitar on All Along The Watchtower). Crosby and Nash. Michael Jackson. Momma Cass. He also was a member of Fleetwood Mac. Feelin' Alright was not a hit for Traffic, but it pretty much launched Joe Cocker's career.

AND inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

A singer, writer, and performer. Triple threat. Definitely a formidable and accomplished artist. Cause of death was not released, though two years ago he cancelled a tour due to unspecified heart issues.

A great one has taken his final bow.

https://variety.com/2026/music/obituaries-people-news/dave-mason-dead-traffic-feelin-alright-rock-hall-fame-1236727460/

Doonesbury Say What

thewayne — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 17:59:32 GMT

"I think it's time [the pope] starts to get questioned. Donald Trump takes questions all the time. Nobody gets to ask the pope a single thing. And I think it's time and I would like to offer myself as the person to go interview the pope. I think I'm uniquely qualified. I studied Latin, theology, went to Catholic Church for 12 years."
-- Sean Hannity

And you've been spreading lies and distorting news for 27 years on Fox. You may have studied it, but clearly you didn't absorb it and don't practice it except possibly in a superficial way.

And perhaps the brain-dead POTUS does take questions all the time. He deviates and avoids answering them at all costs, insults those who asks them, and lies to avoid any possibility of accurately answering them. You really can't compare him to the Pope. And if you think you can, then your much further gone than I thought.

I expect people ask the Pope questions on a regular basis. There's a difference between asking a question and questioning the basis of their reasoning, which is what you want to do. You want to ask entrapping questions, "gotchas", to score points with the MAGA base and prop up your boss in the White House. There's no way you want to honestly debate theology because you'd be left a charred pile of ash.

I just found a cool Excel function!

thewayne — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:44:24 GMT

Well, it's not a cool function, it's an option on a function. Specifically, the Weekday function.

I'm finishing up our taxes. Normally I'd finish them in February or March, but it's been a heck of a few months. One of the things that I do is dump all my prescription drug purchases into a spreadsheet and calculate the day of the week, so I can take a mileage deduction on my state taxes for weekend pickups since I'm not working those days.

Nevermind whether or not we're going to dinner or a movie....

Anyway, the function ends up being:

=IF(WEEKDAY(A1,2)>5,42,"")

A1 is my date field of when the transaction takes place. By default, i.e. without a number changing the day of the week for the date the starting DOW is Sunday = 1. By supplying the 2, you're telling Excel that Monday = 1, therefore if the DOW is greater than 5, it's Saturday or Sunday, therefore the weekend! If that's true, plug in 42 (round trip to Alamogordo and back), otherwise make it a blank cell.

Five trips for an additional 210 miles, at $0.21 per mile towards my state taxes! I have to manually eliminate dupes for multiple transactions on the same day, being multiple drugs refilled and picked up at the same time.

I use spreadsheets a fair amount, but not for anything particularly complex, just as a general purpose tool, so I was kinda chuffed to find this. The question is whether or not I'll remember it for next year!

Kanye blocked from entering the UK, festival cancelled

thewayne — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:24:49 GMT

Heh. Actions can have consequences, who knew!

He applied for an Electronic Travel Authorization, basically a very short-term entry visa to headline the Wireless Music Festival this summer in London. And the Home Office noped out of it, saying "Antisemitism in all its forms is abhorrent, and we recognise the real and personal impact these issues have had. As Ye said today, he acknowledges that words alone are not enough, and in spite of this still hopes to be given the opportunity to begin a conversation with the Jewish community in the UK."

Already purchased tickets will be refunded.

The UK has a policy that convicted felons will not be admitted, I wonder if it will be applied to a certain felon after he leaves office.... one can but hope.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gxk3kxjr0o?utm_source=buzzfeed&utm_medium=iframely

Assistant Atty General issues opinion saying the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional

thewayne — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 16:51:49 GMT

Here's a bit of irony. President 45 claimed the PRA as a defense for him keeping records to himself at the end of his first term, now he's got someone in the 'Justice' Dept to say that the law is unconstitutional. Now, the beauty of this is they're not filing a lawsuit in court challenging the law to get it overturned, they're just claiming it's not valid and therefore we're not going to follow it, neener neener.

Pretty clever way of trying to dodge that particular law, scumbags that they are.

The PRA was voted into law in 1978, four years after Richard 'Tricky Dick' Nixon resigned from office in the wake of the Watergate Scandal. The argument that this AAG is making is actually kind of humorous: "The PRA is not a valid exercise of Congress's Article I authority and unconstitutionally intrudes on the independence and autonomy of the President guaranteed by Article II," he found. "The Act establishes a permanent and burdensome regime of congressional regulation of the Presidency untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose.". Funny how the eight presidents since Nixon, including four other Republicans, didn't seem to find it too terribly burdensome.

There's a basic flaw here, in my non-legal opinion. The Constitution and Bill of Rights (which is part of the Constitution) seemingly has always been interpreted sequentially. Amendment 1 (Freedom of Speech) prevails over subsequent Amendments in most cases. Seems to me that Article I authority should prevail over Article II authority: checks and balances.

But IANAL, much less a constitutional attorney. I don't know how people would go about challenging an opinion issued out of the blue. I thought that normally opinions were issued relevant to court cases, in support of one side or the other, or to illustrate a point of law. This opinion is just thrown out there: 'Not gonna do it!' If a case is in front of the SCOTUS and the Justice Dept issues an opinion, then others, such as the ACLU or EFF, can file an amicus brief with a counter-opinion saying 'The Justice Dept's opinion is full of crap and here's the reasons why'.

But what do they do when the opinion is just floated out there without it being attached to a specific case? It's just 'HEY! This is what we now believe!'

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/justice-department-presidential-records-act-unconstitutional/