Lion ponderings

Finished a complete rewatching of the entire Harry Potter series. Most notable was the change in film technology from 2001 to 2011 adding to the passage of time already obvious in the actor's aging. The final 4 episodes were still bad. Gathered the mane conflict was between descendants of supernatural parents & descendants of mortal parents. It was less about Harry's magical ability, since he was manely incompetent, but more about his parents. This was the escapist series millenials grew up with, on their way to lives spent protesting crises they saw on the internet. Hunger Games was the series lion aged parents took generation Z to see. The live action kid fantasy got started with Harry Potter & made 2001-2005 a magical time in the movies, but it quickly lost its way with Lion Witch Wardrobe & Hunger Games .

Some channels in the last year have risen to incredibly high view counts while most channels have dropped to nearly 0 views. They changed the algorithm to concentrate all recommendations on a small number of channels with the highest quality. The view counts are what would previously be considered good numbers for Casey Neistat, but now everyone in the top tier is getting those numbers. There's also an explosion of users of the platform, as they've licensed enormous amounts of copyrighted content. Next to every licensed video is a list of recommendations from the top channels. The logarithmic scoring has meant the days of seeing recommendations for mediocre videos with a couple views are long gone. The user experience is definitely improved, even if you're seeing a lot less videos.

The lion kingdom has endured truly awful keyboards for the last 20 years, despite spending lavishly on a piano for just the right action. The latest one was bad enough to finally replace with a "mechanical" keyboard. Mechanical keyboards came out in 2010, many years after the world was perfectly fine with membrane keyboards. They were nosebleed expensive. Not sure why people suddenly cared after not caring or why the ancient model M suddenly became famous. Refurbished   model M's are a waste because the biggest memory of the 1980's was how fast the keys broke. Keys would die instantly or stiffen, while newer membrane keyboards lasted forever. Mechanical keyboards today are finally affordable & should use enough modern methods to last longer. Not sure if lions notice how bad the keyboard is because of the mechanical keyboard craze, dementia, or because it really is bad. The last traditional feeling one was in 1997, but it quickly

Reading about the south pole to predict what the 1st colony on Mars would be like is depressing. The 1st antarctic station was buried in snow & they lived underground. The most recent one is a giant building on stilts, reflecting the economic high point of 2000. They only get 2 sponge baths per week & no fresh food for 8 months per year. Supply trips are limited to the summer. All the energy to melt snow into water comes from burning jet fuel which is flown in. The early Mars colony would probably be underground & similarly constrained. The problems would extend to supply trips every 2 years, the need to recycle all air & water. They would have slightly warmer temperatures & no snow drifts. Annual solar energy is probably comparable, but lack of snow would make solar panels more practical.  Solar panels might be a huge win, concentrating sunlight for growing fresh food, freeing up supply trips for something besides fuel, but most of the energy budget would have t

The lion kingdom has somewhat of a fascination with the Apple IIc. It just looked neat in the movie View to a Kill. Any graphics on a computer which appeared to show high fidelity data from the real world were fascinating in those days. The way the monitor appeared to be attached by some magic to exactly the right place in space was actually just a cheap stand with no attachment point at all. Despite the movie graphics, it was the same old, command line based Apple II.

There are actually many times lions took chances because they weren't accountable to anyone like a wife. The government historically encouraged marriage because married people were less likely to break the law & personal experience agrees. Married people were exempt from the draft & paid lower taxes. Divorce was also not allowed without good reason. The pendulum shifted after 1970. No-fault divorce laws finally allowed breaking up for any reason. Equitable distribution laws allowed 1 person to take all the assets instead of dividing them equally as before. That was the end of promoting peace through marriage. Looking at the many couples of this generation & how they selected their partners, it becomes clear how they were very aware of the divorce laws, every step of the way.  Social preferences were very dictated by the property division in case of divorce & almost nothing else.  Because it's not a binding contract like before, filling checklists replace

Pleasanton no longer has a July 4 fireworks show, but there is now a Diwali fireworks show. This is an important shift, as a culture which believes in science has naturally replaced a culture which arrests people for attributing gender to chromosomes. The ages old battle between science & superstition continues the same way it did 1000 years ago. The only way for progress to happen is for the fittest cultures to survive & the unfit cultures to die. The focusing screen of 10 years was melted a long time ago, when photographing a sunset. It still worked all these years, but focusing was always rough. It never could focus on portrait. Interestingly, it melted where the sun would be during a sunset movie on the northern hemisphere. The lion kingdom has questioned the value of getting another DSLR. The old one was $2000. A new one is $1000.   Transporting it in an age of manely running has kept it from use. The mane reason is just to have what lions had

The Top Gun house existed in a long gone time when a normal individual could own a house on the ocean.  Today, it's been replaced by highrise condos for $2 million.