The future we're living in

Coast Fork Willamette River, flowing fast left-to-right (Mount Pisgah Arboretum, Jan. 9)

I’m typing around and over a cat on my lap—little Fleur, all curled up tight—with the MacBook balanced on the right arm of this rocking chair. Luckily its arms are flat and wide. We just got back from a stroll on the old Weyerhaeuser road at the western edge of the Thurston Hills Natural Area. Good thing we had the brollies in the boot, as it was raining when we started out. But by the time we got back to the car at Quartz Park, the sun was breaking out over the south end of Mount Pisgah. I had to take yesterday off from hiking because I somehow tweaked my left foot near the big toe the day before, when we took our longest hike in some time—Trail 5 at Pisgah/Buford—so maybe I just overdid it. After limping around the house most of Thursday, I’m all good today. Hypothesis: I had overtightened my left boot. So today before hiking I loosened it significantly over the toes. I think that did the trick.

Renewed my annual Mixcloud Pro subscription on December 28—for $135—and since then I’ve streamed 65.5 hours of live Radio Free Random shows. That brings my per-hour cost of the subscription down to just over $2.06—and it’s only been 14 days. My goal is to get it down to between, say, 10 and 25¢ per hour, by the time the renewal date comes up again. Rather silly to think of it that way, I suppose, but it’s similar to when Mrs. Random buys a dress and divides the number of times she wears it into the original cost. The more usages, the lower the per-use cost. Basically, it’s an amortization perspective on things. And a reminder to use the stuff we buy!

Got an email today from T-Mobile celebrating “our first year together”—meaning a year since we started getting 5G home internet from them. I have to say, it’s been amazingly good! Way more speedy bandwidth than we would ever need, with hardly any glitches or downtime. And only $50/month. Hard to believe we subsisted on super-slow but not-cheap DSL from Century Link for so long. But the 5G home option only became viable within the last couple years, and before that we didn’t want any new wires to our house (cable, fiber), so that’s why we stuck it out. Quite astounding, even after a year, to have such powerful connectivity with no wires! Just a router sitting in an upstairs window aimed at the cell tower a couple blocks away. Certain aspects of the future we’re living in are pretty dang cool.

3 from Pisgah, Trail 5 (yesterday)

Help repopulate the amateur/personal blogosphere!

January 1, Fern Ridge Wildlife Area

It would be awesome if the hue and cry over Meta’s new policy (ditching paid fact-checker organizations for a crowd-sourced Community Notes-style system) resulted in more people taking up blogging. I see TR Kelley has started a Medium account—brava! For now she’s pasting in older writing, but I have hopes for new stuff soon. She’s an excellent writer, and there are lots more potential ace bloggers putting their words on FB when they could be occupying more solid space on their own sites. Start a blog, fill your sidebar with links to other blogs, and help repopulate the amateur/personal blogosphere!

Mrs. Random has a consultation with the surgeon next week. And the following week she starts a once-every-three-weeks Keytruda (immunotherapy) infusion regimen, to go through at least June (we think). After talking with the surgeon, we’ll have a much clearer idea when what to expect: when surgery, how long recovery, etc.

Studio B RFR-ing is chugging right along. I love being able to get on the air within five or ten minutes of having the urge, right down here in our main living area. It’s doing radio in the comfort zone!

Totally controversial and contrarian

Jan. 7, Wild Iris Ridge Park

For the record, for what it’s worth, I’m way more okay with crowd-sourced fact-checking on social media platforms than I am with it in the hands of contracted third-party companies, which can totally have built-in biases. The former method is called Community Notes on X, and from my perspective, it works quite well. It’s self-correcting, open-sourced, and powered by the users of the platform. As the Twitter Files made excruciatingly clear, Old Twitter censored like crazy and deplatformed like crazy when posts and posters went against the government’s approved narrative, obviously because, as clearly documented, government agencies were given a backdoor into Old Twitter. I think the crowd-sourced Community Notes-style system is a far far better way of dealing with mis/dis-info without introducing an automatic political bias. That’s just my opinion. Me doing me.

Also, my opinion, I’m sure totally controversal and contrarian: How’s a little disinfo/misinfo going to hurt you? I think we should take some personal responsibility—use our brains and freewill to navigate the data on social media, and we should trust ourselves more than a hired company to decide what “facts” are true and what are not. Lots of “facts” have an automatic bias. “Science” is paid for by somebody, for example. Just because something is published as a scientific fact doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. We know enough about how vested interests control the direction and release of research—i.e. we know better! (See: Big Pharma.)

So, yeah, I applaud Facebook’s ditching of paid “fact-checkers” and going instead with a crowd-sourced system. I seen a whole bunch o’ pearl-clutching ‘bout that today on FB in my feed. It’s almost like some people need an authority to tell them what to believe. I believe in a more transparent, self-governing system, and that’s what crowd-sourced fact-checking is designed to be.

Perhaps related, perhaps not: Where have all the real anarchists gone? The ones I know have become authoritarians (and still call themselves anarchists).

UPDATE—relevant Glenn Greenwald video regarding Meta's new policy:

https://rumble.com/v66wldd-system-update-show-384.html?start=458

Weird synchronicity

Today, looking south from Wild Iris Ridge Park's main path near parking lot

    I have not been rising fresh in the morning ready to blog lately. Often I’ll move from making coffee directly to activating Studio B for a morning RFR show. But not today. Instead, I made a to-do list of sorts, in order to summon a bout of productivity. Then I had breakfast and went grocery shopping. Then I checked off (actually, struck thru) a small handful of the list items. Then I took a nap. Then we went for a hike at Wild Iris Ridge park. Back home, after lunch and another nap, I finally got on the air (enjoy the program recording here). THEN, after dinner, we watched S1E2 of Psych. 

Speaking of Psych, there was a weird synchronicity in the episode. Earlier, during my radio show—using a randomized arbitrarily derived playlist—I played Bananarama’s cover of Shocking Blue’s “Venus.” I knew the Shocking Blue version, but for some reason I had no idea that Bananarama had covered it. I mean, why should I know that? It only “…peaked at number one in the United States, Australia, Finland, New Zealand, South Africa, and Switzerland, while reaching number two in Germany and the top-ten in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom (number eight on the UK Singles Chart, matching the same peak of Shocking Blue's version). It also topped the US Dance Club Songs chart for two weeks.” (Wikipedia)

ANYWAY, during this evening’s episode of Psych, main character Shawn Spencer at one point impersonates a spelling bee master and grabs a shopping list next to him on the desk for the words (much to Gus’s consternation). One of the words he gives is “banana,” which the contestant (hilariously) asks him to use in a sentence. And the sentence he replies with includes a reference to “Venus” by Bananarama. So weird, dude!

Hey! My rambling turned into a blog post. Love it when that happens. Thanks for reading.

I’m lowering the per-minute cost

Dec. 30, North Bottomlands Loop, Howard Buford Recreation Area

It’s small-screen season. The TV room upstairs is now activated. I rewatched The Truman Show the other night; such a good flick. Then, finding comparative references on TTS Reddit posts to The Prisoner (1967-8 TV series), I watched the first four episodes of that show last night. Brilliant! Then tonight, Mrs. Random and I watched S1E1 of Psych, the fantastically written, casted, and acted 2006-14 comedy TV series, which we binge-watched starting around this time last year. Soon, after blogging this, I’ll go back upstairs to finish E5 of The Prisoner.

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Since re-upping my Mixcloud Pro subscription on December 28, I’ve logged 52 hours and 16 minutes of Radio Free Random transmission time. For every additional minute I broadcast, I’m lowering the per-minute cost, right? Check out the recordings here.

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No deep thoughts for me tonight. That’s entertainment!

Tracklists and show names

For weeks I have not bothered to add tracklists to my Radio Free Random archive recording posts; in fact I haven’t bothered to keep track of tracks at all, even during live streams. I just couldn't be arsed. You know, sod it! But last night I got back to it. It’s actually kind of fun and quite rewarding to have a tracklist by the end of a show. I also got back to my old naming method: three words picked at random but in order from the song names. Here’s last night’s:

Mercenary Romance Machine (348 min.) - Saturday, 6:04 p.m. - 4 January 2025

Annie Haslam - Wishin’ On A Star

Neel - Sensuous

Men Without Hats - I’m In Love

Ex Hex - Waterfall

Talking Drums - You Do Cry A Lot

New Young Pony Club - Ice Cream

Crystal Castles - Mercenary

The Go! Team - Ladyflash

Indians In Moscow - Big Wheel

Vivabeat - Blue Guitars

Marianne Faithfull/Tommy Mandel - Save Me

John Cale - Everytime The Dog Barks

The Walker Brothers - Death Of Romance

Scott Walker - Rawhide

DEVO - Uncontrollable Urge

Mission Of Burma - That’s When I Reach For My Revolver

Scritti Politti - P.A.S.

XTC - The Somnambulist

Faust - Krautrock

The Partridge Family - Singing My Song

The Ting Tings - Fruit Machine

The xx - Fiction

Roxy Music - The Bogus Man

Wire - Mannequin

Buzzcocks - Why Can’t I Touch It?

Brian Eno - Needles In The Camel’s Eye

The Swallows - Surf Song OR

The Rolling Stones - Ain’t Too Proud To Beg

Beastie Boys - Shadrach

Rodrigo y Gabriela - Buster Voodoo

G.A.A.G. - Down At The Show

The Donnas - Gimmie My Radio

John D’Earth - The Overture/Shady Jady

Tommy McCook, The Upsetters - Cloak & Dagger

Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra - Four Or Five Times

Africa - Louie Louie/Ode To Billie Joe

Bob Dylan - Ballad Of A Thin Man

Starship - Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now

Lou Reed - I’m So Free

Iggy Pop - Lust For Life

David Bowie - Golden Years

David Bowie - Rebel Rebel

Tiger Trap - Treasure

The B-52’s - Revolution Earth

PJ Harvey - The River

The Blow - Nothing

The Dollyrots - Penny

The Pipettes - Dirty Mind

The Fiery Furnaces - My Egyptian Grammar

The Moody Blues - Isn’t Life Strange

Michael Janisch - Serenade Of The Seas

Adele Sauros - Beautiful Anger

Kate Bush - Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time)

Cyndi Lauper - She Bop

Björk - Venus As A Boy

Herman van Veen - Tonight (live)

Klaus Nomi - Lightning Strikes

Klaus Nomi - You Don’t Own Me

Sharp Pins - Is It Better

Juice Newton - Angel Of The Morning

Dolly Parton - The Little Things

New York Dolls - Personality Crisis

Traffic - Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory

Foghat - I Just Want To Make Love To You

Little Man Tate - Hey Little Sweetie

Isotope 217 - La Jeteé

Jonah Jones - Moten Swing

Lennie Hibbert - Village Soul

Why Bonnie - Dotted Line

Cate Le Bon & Group Listening - The Light

Vincent Gallo - Was

The Soul Lifters - Hot Funky And Sweaty

The Upsetters - Touch Of Fire

Ben Seretan - New Air

Houston & Dorsey - Ebb Tide

Young Jesus - Brenda & Diane

Laura Branigan - Gloria

Camera Obscura - Pop Goes Pop

Hovvdy - A Little

Arp - Il Sogno Di Monica

It's like they're all there

Dec. 30, North Bottomlands, Howard Buford Recreation Area

Just waiting for leftover dinner to heat up in the oven. And waiting to see if my brain has anything to offer to this blog today. It’s become a kind of stupid point of pride, I guess. I want to blog something every day, but then again I don’t want to be boring. Hah.

Today I had a nap dream involving an old friend/co-worker from my former job at the natural foods store—Ron. We were talking outside in the store parking lot. At some point it occurred to me that Ron has been deceased for most of a decade. And I called him out on it—“Hey, you’re dead! Right? You’re dead!!” He just gave me a sly smile, turned around, and walked into the store, his white hair morphing into black—which it was when I first met him, many years ago. Strange and rather hilarious.

Ron’s not the only dead friend who has visited my dreams lately. There’s been Joe and David, too. It’s like they’re all there, just on the other side—and they visit on occasion!

Breathe here now

View east from Royal Ave. path, Fern Ridge Wildlife Area (Dec. 31)

Here’s to the first real day of the year, past the holiday-focused nature of past weeks. Umami, prosaic, a stepping away from the sweet and celebratory—that’s what I’m talking about. One-two, buckle my shoe. Back to being flush with reality—truth in energy—a deeper joy than the forced calendrical consensus of Christmas commercialism.

Let’s hear it for things as they are! I mean how they really are, right here right now, not as click-baited and commentated in the caustic and cruel caverns of manipulating mediation breathlessly broadcasted to every laptopped and handheld device.

Breathe here now. Happy January 2nd!

It means more to my gadgets

Golden-crowned sparrow, Howard Buford Recreation Area (December 30)

Arbitrary odometer reading, observing change from 4 to 5 in the least significant digit spot. Yay. (Read that in monotone robot voice, pls.)

I.e. HAPPY NEW YEAR, it being the Western dominant culture’s return-to-zero, or "1/1" in the calendrical cycle. It means more to my gadgets than to me. New spreadsheets, new file folders, and attempting to remember to use the new annum numeral when setting or inscribing dates. My gadgets are important to me, so therein dwells some caring about New Year’s Day and the New Year. I have many file-producing and file-containing gadgets that use dates: cameras, Kindles, digital recorders, computers, phones, to name a few categories. It's a Gadget New Year.

I don’t make resolutions. My last vow was never to make another vow. Ongoing self-agreements are the most I’ve got in that direction. There is no necessary connection with the calendar for those. They’re continuously updated, at best becoming good habits like nightly flossing—or good abstentions, such as no booze (since June 2015) or no pot (January 2022). But okay, this morning I’ll drink a toast of hot black French roasted coffee to the fucking new year! Huzzah!

My Y2K story

Y2K+25! Can it have been a quarter century? There was such a fraught public build-up to that fateful night of December 31, 1999, and now it’s remembered—if at all—as a mere blip.

To refresh memories, the issue was that from time immemorial (the 1950s), computer programmers had encoded dates with a two-digit year, thusly, e.g.: 76-07-04 for July 4, 1976. The problem that eventually had to be faced was that by the time the turn of the century arrived, computers would need to distinguish between, say, 2001 and 1901. A two-digit year made that impossible. It was a serious problem and threatened havoc in many areas of life and work, basically anywhere dates needed to be recorded and compared by computer systems.

The problem was widely recognized and started being addressed and tackled by governments, businesses, and the tech industry in the mid-1990s. Lots of resources and manpower were allocated with a serious sense of urgency, and the efforts were overwhelmingly successful. But by far most of that work happened outside of the public eye.

Mrs. Random was working in a local multi-branch credit union as their main IT person, and it was her responsibility to certify that all systems were “Y2K compliant”—that all dates had four-digit years and that all files and data and programs would gracefully transition into the year 2000 without hiccups. Therefore, because of her position and the memos and magazines she read, she had a good perspective on how seriously the banking industry and tech industry were taking the “Y2K Bug.” To her it was obvious that everybody was busy solving the problem in plenty of time, and that there would be no disaster, no apocalypse, and that all critical systems would survive and continue to function properly.

But of course, because all of this work was largely hidden from the public and not easily explained to the layperson, the Y2K issue became very ripe for media exploitation and sensationalization. The world wide web was still young and exciting, and naturally it helped spread fear, uncertainy, and doubt—along with the tradional news media and tabloid press. (Surprise, surprise!) Not a few people became public prophets of doom and advocated an extreme prepper stance in the face of the looming deadline.

I was working at a natural foods store with a large bulk foods department. Many people ordered mass quantities, stockpiling huge amounts of canned goods, dried beans, flour, nuts, etc. etc. I know one family who moved to a very rural area with their guns and food and supplies, fairly certain that society was about to fall apart.

Personally, I was uncertain. Since I was on the internet constantly (tying up our phone line with our 56K modem lol), I thought it might be possible that there could be big problems, but I didn’t see the use in moving out into the country. I felt that neighbors would pull together and help each other, and my basic faith in human nature wouldn’t let me think that there would be any serious threats of violence in the city. Mrs. R was somewhat amused at my lack of faith in the system, I think. But we did buy extra chocolate and wine, and we made sure we had some basic redundancy in food staples, and I think we stored a couple gallons of water under the stairs. But that’s stuff you’d want in any “natural” disaster, so it wasn’t really extreme.

Of course, December 31 came and went, with only the expected big 2000 fanfare of round-the-world celebrations, covered nicely on TV and various websites. That’s not to say there weren’t any Y2K problems, but they were very minor in the worldwide scheme of things.

We stayed overnight at the credit union—well at least until 1 a.m.—because Mrs. R’s bosses wanted her to be there on hand to verify all systems remained operational into the new year. While she did her normal month-end and year-end jobs, and then conducted after-midnight Y2K-related tests, I was logged into Internet Relay Chat (IRC) talking with Australians, who were hours already into January 1 on the other side of the International Dateline. “We’re fine here, mate!” was the general consensus.

Basically, long story short: Y2K happened and everything was fine and everybody forgot about it within a year.

At the grocery store, we let people bring back their hoarded foodstuffs and graciously gave them their money back. I was a little appalled at that, but in retrospect I see it was good business and a good neighbor attitude. We did not shame them; we wanted their continued business :)

So that’s my Y2K story! Happy New Year! I am ready for 2025 and whatever lurks beyond the odometer flip.

That pen is toast

December 18, Dorris Ranch

I had an ultimate pen once, a Waterman fountain, with five bottles of ink, including black, brown, red, blue, and green—but with fancier names. I loved that pen and used it for hundreds of pages—freewriting, journals, letters, and doodling. The ink was water soluble, and I learned the hard way that if the paper got wet, the writing smeared and disappeared into a blur. NOT the kind of pen and ink to address mail with! This was back in the 1990s, and eventually I drifted away from writing with my fountain pen. It sat unused for years. I did revive it early in my typewriter collecting phase (2017), but then it sat again. At some point the mechanism for drawing fresh ink into it failed, broke. I think I'd let it go dry once too often. Or it just wore out after lots of use. A decorative piece on the end of the pen had also fallen off by then. Anyway, though I still have the parts in a ziploc bag, that pen is toast. I just wanted to write about my ultimate pen on the penultimate day of 2024. Thank you for reading.

De-Xmas’d

Radio Free Random's "Studio B" ensconced within the randomness of our library

O noes, I didn’t blog yesterday. Some streak ended I guess. Who cares! Anyway, it’s been all about RFR the last couple days. Check my Mixcloud page for recent marathon streams.

Mrs. R has de-Xmas’d chez Random quite a bit, including the big one today: de-Treeing. It’s now out in the yard debris bin in tiny pieces. We’re done with that holiday. Onward to New Year’s and January. The tree was occupying our “Empty Space” where previously my paintings-that-need-to-be-gone were sitting. I sent a goodly stack of them to the dump last week—and will be sorting further—but in the meantime I suppose they’ll go back to the Empty Space. Well, actually, I guess we need to talk about that. Currently they are sitting on the old recliner in the library. I guess they’re not hurting anyone there. No cat has wanted to use that chair for months.

Back to radio. I set up a tiny Studio B in the library, and that’s where last night’s and this morning’s long shows originated from. It’s fun to be downstairs sometimes while broadcasting. I can putter around and still interact with the listeners and DJ the music. Today’s puttering involved going through my books and culling out a few to sell or donate: “a few” turns out to be a stack about 3 feet high! The need to de-book and de-typewriter (and de-etc.) has become a priority now, with my new commitment to Swedish Death Cleaning and all. I am a one-quarter Swede. 😎

The weather was traitorous today. We were supposed to get “excessive rain” according to The New York Times. But I think they must have been referring to the overnight precip, which was indeed excessive! Today has been horribly glorious, with the sun taunting us mercilessly. We could have hiked! We still could, but it’s getting late. The sun will start dipping and it’ll be dusk before we know it. I guess I’d rather continue to putter here inside. The kitchen needs attention badly, e.g., etc., fwiw.

Okay, there’s a blog. Type atcha later.

I read lots of old books

Dec. 16, Thurston Hills Natural Area, BPA transmission tower

Hello blog. A week on from the URL switchover and I’m still liking Blogger aka Blogspot. It’s a little bit loosey goosey, but that’s charming and random-positive. Like, I’m not always sure why formatting happens in certain ways, but I’m starting to learn. Clicking between HTML and Compose views is helping shed light on mysteries.

* * *

Radio Free Random: I have re-upped Mixcloud Pro for 2025—the whole year. If you think in terms of “real” radio, it’s a damn cheap license to broadcast (and covers copyright fees). The total price at $15/month would be $180, but the Mixcloud annual discount price is $135. Well worth it if I’m going to be on the air at least weekly. This week I had three broadcasts. Go to RFR’s Mixcloud profile page for a list of archived recordings.

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If you read on Kindle (or a Kindle app) and buy books for your device, check out ereaderiq.com, a site where you can build a list of books or authors to watch for price drops. I’ve been using it for years, and it’s quite a treat to be alerted to the fact that a $15.00 book, for example, has suddenly dropped to $2.00!

If you are a reader of ebooks on any device, note that January 1st is Public Domain Day in the United States, and a bunch of new (old) books will be entering the public domain—and thus will be free—no cost—to download. Explore Project Gutenberg for public domain titles. I read lots of old books, and there is no reason (except maybe fancy new formatting, new illustrations, or added commentary) to pay money for ebooks over 100 95 years old.

In 2025, books by William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Dashiell Hammett, John Steinbeck, Agatha Christie, Robert Graves, and many many more will added to the US public domain. (I use the amazing Calibre software to ensure that my newly downloaded ebooks are in the correct format for the Send-To-Kindle feature on the Amazon website.)

Rampant depravity and violence

Fern Ridge Wildlife Area, looking north from near Tern Island (shot with new TG-7 camera)

I finished Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur a couple days ago. Appended to the end is a poem called "Sea"—which I also read and liked—that he composed sitting on the beach over the course of his time at Big Sur. It feels rather Joycean in its wordplay—using French, Spanish and made up words in addition to English. It's pretty cool. Here’s a review of the book, with photos of Mansanto’s (Ferlinghetti’s) cabin and the scary bridge, both of which feature large in the novel.

* * *

Inspired by my journey through The Silmarillion (at 15% now), with its creation story and lists of begats, I have started reading the Old Testament. Even though I was raised in a heavily Bible’d religion, I only ever memorized isolated verses and read key doctrinal chapters and summaries of various Bible stories. I never read the complete Bible. Now, many decades after leaving the church and embracing a much more agnostic (but still admittedly “spiritual”) view of life and the cosmos, I’m curious about what is actually in that ancient patchwork collection of texts.

I’m culturally Christian if not personally a believer, which I suppose makes me even curiouser. And man oh man, just in the book of Genesis, I’ve found some real humdingers! Rampant depravity and violence, much of it committed by supposedly godly people! For example, I didn’t know that Lot’s daughters got him drunk and raped him! And more than one man was killed for basically looking at someone wrong, or saying the wrong thing. I could go on, but I won’t. Basically there’s a lot of crazy shit in just the first book of the OT. I’m well into the book of Exodus now, still tallying murders and deviant behavior.

* * *

One last thought, random and unrelated to literature: when I was growing up in the '60s, we didn’t have supermoons or atmospheric rivers or bomb cyclones. I don’t think we even had El Niño or La Niña yet—not that I recall, anyway. The moon and the weather seem to have acquired marketing departments sometime in the last decade!

Simpler is better

We spoke with Mrs. Random’s oncologist today. She’s “go” for chemo tomorrow—carboplatin and gemcitabine. Next week it’s gemcitabine only. Then she’ll be done with chemotherapy, yay! He wants to see her for a follow-up appointment in four weeks to get a final blood test and set up every-three-weeks Keytruda infusions (for a year, I believe). That’s the immunotherapy drug, as a preventative. Next, within four to six weeks after the last chemo infusion, is surgery: bilateral mastectomy. That will allow analysis of the tumor. Best case scenario: it’s already completely dead tissue. In any event, hitting it with chemotherapy drugs since last July will have made it much smaller than it was when discovered, making its complete removal from her body much easier. She’s opting for a double mastectomy simply to eliminate the chance of any more breast cancer (she had it before in 2010)—as well as maintaining symmetry; and she’s not going for any reconstrutive surgery or any prosthetic options. These are personal choices, and different women have reasons for different choices, but there is wide agreement that simpler is better!

Yuleness

Random Xmas Breakfast 2024

Merry Christmas! Mrs. Random made a little feast for breakfast: cranberry scones, breakfast sausages (Applegate Farms brand from the Capella Market freezer aisle—a tad sagey for our taste but we ate ‘em), a peeled navel orange half each, and goat cheese frittata. Yum! After breakfast, we opened presents from family, friends, and ourselves. Always fun. My Christmas gadget this year (picked out by me, as per usual) was an OM Systems TG-7 camera. If you followed my old blog over at Wordpress(dot com), you are aware of my recent lust for this thing. I opted for the RED version over the black (which pleased Mrs. R).

TG-7, getting its battery topped off

[Later…] I was already starting to write a paragraph about how wimpy we are—not going outside today, sitting on our butts, etc. But, lo! We did goad ourselves—and behold! We DID go outside! And forthwith we drove ourselves to the west end of Royal Ave. and hiked out to the first ford, near Tern Island, and back! I shot 188 images with the new camera; just now transferring them to my hard drive for inspection. We feel much better about ourselves having braved the wet and wind. It wasn’t so bad once we were out in it.

Birdhouse poles, Fern Ridge Wildlife Area

TG-7 close-up test in our backyard

Dark Energy ‘Doesn’t Exist’: Scientists Reveal a ‘Lumpy’ Universe Driving Its Own Expansion

https://dailygalaxy.com/2024/12/dark-energy-doesnt-exist-scientists-reveal-a-lumpy-universe-driving-its-own-expansion/

"For decades, the enigmatic concept of dark energy has been central to cosmology, serving as an explanation for the accelerating expansion of the Universe. However, researchers at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand have proposed a revolutionary alternative: dark energy might not exist at all. Using a new approach to analyze supernovae light curves, the team suggests that the Universe’s expansion is not uniform but instead “lumpier” and more varied than previously thought."