Jack William Bell @jackwilliambell@rustedneuron.com

Today's hot take: In the modern world a deep grounding in science and mathematics are *required* to understand even the most basic mechanisms of technology and society.

Yet more than two thirds of the populace are functionally innumerate, including most of our leaders and our media.

Thus: https://xkcd.com/882/

This screenshot is why I don't do multiplayer games, audio/video conferencing, or anything else requiring sub-second ping times.

So, note, the AVERAGE DELAY TO THE SATELLITE AND BACK was nearly three seconds. Max was pushing seven. Min was 700 Msec.

Go ahead and complain about your slow Internet. I dare you…

Hearing thunder off in the distance. I check Accuweather and, sure enough, there's a severe weather warning on. The radar plot looks pretty scary, but it also looks like it's all going by south of me.

However, #Seattle plus much of King county and south Snohomish county are getting hammered.

(I'm now seeing lighting flashes to the south.)

WTF? Why did the birdsite show me this ad? I mean (a) I'm not in Texas, (b) I'm retired, (c) I never worked in airplane manufacturing, and (d) I thought Boeing was laying off thousands of people?

#COVID19 #HumanCondition https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/social

It's even a double!

Are Older Voters Turning Away From Trump? https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-older-voters-turning-away-from-trump/

I didn't think we'd see this happen! Especially, look at the drop for the over 65 boomer crowd.

TIL about the 'Shopping Car Theory'.

And, if returning the damn cart is all it takes to make you a decent human being, then giving the cashier back that extra twenty she gave you in change makes you a fucking saint.

https://xkcd.com/2302/

Saw this pic on the birdsite. https://twitter.com/InterurbanE/status/1257025925843087360

It made me think of a true story, which I will now relate to you…

Forty years ago I lived on an isolated property in Eastern WA, even more isolated than where I live now. An abandoned railroad line ran through the property and up a canyon behind. Far up that canyon lived a crazy man.

Among other craziness, he built his own rail cart.

Gamification.

Original: https://twitter.com/SluggoIsLit/status/1256820622077952000

It's like he's trying to use the language of religion without actually understanding it; the way you would try to use a phrase book to chat up a girl in a bar in a foreign country.

We're gonna end up with an actual 'Church of Trump' aren't we?

Answers

Note the ribbon cable in the pics above? The LEDs and LCD panel are built into the board, so that ribbon cable is only for the membrane switches. It has five wires and there are four membrane switches, so it's clear there is one wire per switch plus a ground.

To see if the problem was the membrane switches I pulled the board loose, which took some doing: two of the screws were so tight I had to use a pair of needle-nose vise grips on them.

I decided to roast some coffee today, but my good roaster wasn't working. It's a Zach and Dani's Gourmet Coffee Roaster and it has a lot of nice features. It also has a poor reputation for reliability.

What was happening? Well the control buttons for everything but minus time and cool mode weren't working. I could see they were bog standard membrane buttons, but that's it without taking it apart.

So I took it apart. The board very basic and has two solenoids to control power to the works.

Came across this on the birdsite with no attribution. But, damn… 

Today the total #COVID19 death toll for the US is just over 50,000 people. The number of confirmed cases is just under 1 million people.

I believe both of those numbers are far under the actual; due to lack of testing, bad (sometimes intentionally bad) reporting criteria, and just crappy reporting.

What I believe is irrelevant; what we need is hard data on deaths for all causes. The CDC does have deaths from Pneumonia/Influenza showing a huge spike the last few weeks https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html

Promoted ad on the birdsite. But the jokes on them!

I use nano…

Wake up sheeple!