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My favorite radio talk show hosts pointed out some facts this morning. Republican voter turnout reached historical numbers this year. More Republicans voted in the primaries than ever before.

Kinda cool - but more noteworthy than that is, Trump has recieved more votes that any other potential nominee, ever.

Bear in mind that the season opened with 17 potential nominees. Early voting was split 17 ways. Not split equitably, of course, but split. The least favored nominee may have only won 10 votes in the first primary, but those were 10 votes Trump DID NOT get. So, with a 17 way split, Trump has defeated not only the 17 contemporary candidates, but EVERY OTHER CANDIDATE IN HISTORY! Wow.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/05/republican-party-sets-primary-turnout-record-28-million-votes-5-states-left/
Trump has received more than 11 million votes to date in the state elections according to www.thegreenpapers.com. This is 42% of all Republican votes received to date.

The Republican Party has set a party record this year in pre-convention state election turnout with over 28 million votes to date which is 136% of the record high voter turnout in 2008. That’s four million more votes than the Democratic primary race this year.

So - with Republicans voting in record numbers, and clearly stating which of the available candidates they are willing to accept - what about that other party?

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/04/26/exclusive-data-analysis-democrat-turnout-collapses-4-5-million-nearly-20-percent-2016-versus-2008/
Democrat Turnout Collapses Down More Than 4.5 Million, Nearly 20 Percent In 2016 Versus 2008

Wow. Even with Sanders' almost rabid following, the Democrats couldn't be bothered to turn out to vote. All this time, I thought Sanders was doing a helluva job, getting people out to challenge the DNC's annointed one. But, even with all of that, the Democrats are staying at home in droves.

We have witnessed not one, but two, political revolutions this year. The R's were adamantly opposed to the Trump - but voters over rode the party. The D's were just as adamantly in support of Hillary, the voters very nearly over rode the party, but the D's played two trump cards. Wasserman Schultz is Hillarys BFF, and that BFF has in turn played the super-delegate card. The voters were beaten in the Democratic revolt.

So, the question is, what might all of this mean in November?

Despite a significant number of sour-grapes holdouts who won't endorse Trump - I expect Republicans to turn out again in record numbers, and to mostly vote for Trump.

I expect Democrats to stay home again, in droves. Some disaffected Democrats will vote for Trump, to spite Hillary and Wasserman Schultz.

The swing vote - of which I am a member - is probably going to swing toward Trump. Not all, but a deciding number will go that way.

And, incidentally, a lot of the swing vote is going to vote for Johnson. I've talked to a number of people who are talking about it, anyway. Last evening, a guy told me, "I can't stand either of the choices, so I'll probably "waste" my vote on Johnson." We discussed that "waste". He audibly put that word in quotes to start with. I counseled that "Well, if the Libertarians get that magic percentage of the vote, they'll get federal campaign funds. So, a Libertarian vote IS NOT "wasted"!"

Rumors, grumbling, bitching, complaining - the "outsiders", the "swing vote", the "Independents" aren't happy with the current state of affairs. They are more unhappy with the Democrats, but they are also unhappy with the Republicans.

At this point in time, I think I expect Trump to win, and Johnson to capture enough votes to win federal funding. And, the Democrats are going to be big losers this year.

Of course, it's not to late for the Republicans to go full retard, and hand the election back to the Democrats. Trump is a wild card, after all. He COULD run off at the mouth, and alienate EVERYONE. The Republican Party could go just as crazy. But, I don't really expect that. All the stuffed shirts in the party are going to suck it up, and get behind Trump, or at least, STFU and sit down, so that Hillary doesn't win.

President Donald Trump. What a weird sumbitch - but still a better choice than what the Democrats are offering.

Driving home this morning, listening to Walton & Johnson, I heard that someone is shot in Chicago just about every two hours. The city of Houston was compared to Chicago, because the two cities have a lot in common. Population, and many demographics are similar. Yet, Houston doesn't witness a shooting every two hours. Hmmmmm . . . .

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/last-72-hours?page=8&sort=asc&order=State

That site tracks gun violence. That page lists gun violence for the past 72 hours.* Wow - in all of Texas, two gun deaths. In Chicago, excluding the rest of the state, six gun deaths. To be fair, we are trying to compare two cities - so the tally is Houston - 0 Chicago - 6. Clearly, Chicago is winning.

But, how can that be? Chicago has common sense gun laws, and Houston does not.

In Houston, we have open carry, concealed carry, hip carry, boot carry, pocket carry, purse carry, butt-crack carry, palm carry, hat carry, crotch carry - uhhhh - vaginal carry? Basically, you can tote a gun any damned way you want to carry a gun.

In Chicago, possession of a gun is a capital offense, execution taking place as soon as an LEO views your weapon - especially if you're a young black male with a weapon.

With a population of 2.7 million, Chicago has a violent crime problem, with their "common sense" gun laws.

With a population of 26.96 million, the entire state of Texas can't kill off as many people as Chicago does.

Common sense. The solution seems pretty obvious. Chicago should pass "Constitutional Carry". The constitution guarantees an American citizen the right to keep and bear arms. No permit, no jumping through hoops, no begging the sheriff for permission, no deviant sex acts committed in the alley behind the court house. Constitutional carry - I'm a citizen, I get a gun if and when I want. Or, when I can afford it, anyway.

http://heyjackass.com/ another site demonstrating how violent Chicago is.

* The page updates periodically, so the totals may look quite different when you look at them.

There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
        Taken literally, this is patently false, as anyone with a grandmother knows. You may say “well, Grandma paid for it so it isn't free.” But it is free – to you.
        I have a fruit tree in my front yard, and all its fruit is completely free.
        What this old saying means is “never trust a salesman”. If a salesman offers to buy your lunch, it will cost you.
        From a physicist's perspective, it means you can't break the three laws of thermodynamics; you can never get more energy out of a system than you put in.

You get what you pay for
        This is another salesman lie, with the sales lady getting you to believe that the higher priced item is always better than the cheap item. But you don’t always get what you pay for. Often the less expensive item is equal or superior, with over-the-counter drugs being an excellent example. Aleve costs three times what generic naproxin does, yet is the exact same drug.
        And of course there are swindlers. If someone sells you a counterfeit Rolex at a real Rolex price, or a diamond ring with a zirconium stone, you have been swindled and certainly didn’t get what you paid for.
        You usually pay for what you get, but often you pay far less than you otherwise did. Just yesterday I saw a “going out of business” sign at a Radio Shack, and since I needed a new soldering iron I went in. The iron and solder were a third what I would have paid had I not procrastinated, and I got a TV antenna for five bucks. I got a lot more than I paid for.
        Get what you pay for? Usually, but sometimes you get more than you paid for and sometimes a high priced item turns out to be utter junk.

What goes up must come down
        This was true until July of 1969, when astronauts left man-made objects on the moon. They're not likely to ever come back down.
        There are robots rolling around Mars. These, too, are unlikely to ever come down.
        Then there are the Voyager spacecraft, which are now outside the entire solar system. It's a certainty that these machines will never return to Earth.

Money doesn't grow on trees
        Of course it does, orchards grow lots of money. Not only does it grow on trees, it grows on corn stalks, tomato plants, soybean bushes...

A picture is worth a thousand words
        If it is, then draw me a picture that says “a picture's worth a thousand words.” Pictures can be aids in communication, and a picture is better than a description, but it's impossible to teach using only pictures.
        However, it is true in a monetary sense, in that a thousand word magazine article will garner a commercial writer less than the artist who made the cover art did.

What doesn't kill me makes me stronger
        Nietzsche was an idiot. Just ask any brain-damaged quadriplegic if he's stronger than he was before the accident.
        Oh, and also, God isn't dead, Nietzsche is.

You can never be too rich or too thin
        Whoever started this stupid meme was a gold plated idiot. Of course you can be too thin. Bulimia and anorexia have killed people.
        The “too rich” is subjective. I'd say if you have more money than anyone could spend in a lifetime when there are hungry people, you're too rich. How can someone like that live with themselves?

Lightning never strikes the same place twice
        It amazes me how gullible most people are, believing everything anyone tells them. They even believe stuff that was proven untrue centuries ago, as in this saying. It was believed for at least hundreds of years and likely longer until Ben Franklin disproved it with his kite and his invention of the lightning rod. If lightning never strikes the same place twice, lightning rods wouldn't work.

Only the good die young
Well, they showed you a statue, told you to pray
They built you a temple and locked you away
Aw, but they never told you the price that you pay
For things that you might have done
Only the good die young
That's what I said
Only the good die young – Billy Joel
        I've heard this nonsense all my life, and can’t understand why people actually believe that tripe. Yes, some good young people do die way before their time.
        But if only the good die young, then why are so many inner-city young men killed in gun battles with rival gangs? Good people never die in gang battles unless they're not a part of the fight and simply get caught in the crossfire.
        Why do so many young people get drunk and die in their cars when they wrap them around trees? Good people don't drive when they're drunk.
        And if you're Christian, remember that Jesus said “none are good, except God.” Only the very young; the small children who die innocent are good. But bad young people die all the time.

http://en.zimagez.com/zimage/screenshot2016-05-1508-21-36.php

This is just a screenshot of my desktop - took it while playing around with different wallpapers. I may add some different screenshots later - or not. Pulled both of these wallpapers from this site: http://racodesign.com/

Feel free to post shots of your desktop! It may give me ideas.

Oh - this is Linux, in case someone failed to notice that. Specs?

guy@sabayon-pc /opt/foldingathome $ inxi -F
System: Host: sabayon-pc Kernel: 4.5.0-sabayon x86_64 (64 bit)
                      Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 Distro: Sabayon Linux amd64 16.04
Machine: Mobo: Supermicro model: H8DM8-2 v: 1234567890
                      Bios: American Megatrends v: 080014 date: 10/22/2009
CPU(s): 2 Hexa core Six-Core AMD Opteron 8439 SEs (-HT-MCP-SMP-) cache: 6144 KB
                      clock speeds: max: 2800 MHz 1: 2800 MHz 2: 2800 MHz 3: 2800 MHz
                      4: 2800 MHz 5: 2800 MHz 6: 2800 MHz 7: 2800 MHz 8: 2800 MHz
                      9: 2800 MHz 10: 2800 MHz 11: 2800 MHz 12: 2800 MHz
Graphics: Card-1: NVIDIA GK208 [GeForce GT 630 Rev. 2]
                      Card-2: NVIDIA GK208 [GeForce GT 730]
                      Display Server: X.Org 1.17.4 driver: nvidia
                      Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz, 1920x1080@60.00hz
                      GLX Renderer: GeForce GT 730/PCIe/SSE2
                      GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 358.09
Audio: Card-1 2x NVIDIA GK208 HDMI/DP Audio Controller
                      driver: snd_hda_intelsnd_hda_intel
                      Card-2 Plantronics driver: USB Audio
                      Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.5.0-sabayon
Network: Card-1: NVIDIA MCP55 Ethernet driver: forcedeth
                      IF: enp0s8 state: down mac: 00:30:48:c8:16:72
                      Card-2: NVIDIA MCP55 Ethernet driver: forcedeth
                      IF: enp0s9 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full
                      mac: 00:30:48:c8:16:73
Drives: HDD Total Size: 8561.7GB (6.6% used)
                      ID-1: /dev/sda model: MKNSSDCR240GB size: 240.1GB
                      ID-2: /dev/sdb model: WDC_WD3200AUDX size: 320.1GB
                      ID-3: /dev/sdc model: HUA722020ALA330 size: 2000.4GB
                      ID-4: /dev/sdd model: HUA722020ALA330 size: 2000.4GB
                      ID-5: /dev/sde model: HUA722020ALA330 size: 2000.4GB
                      ID-6: /dev/sdf model: HUA722020ALA330 size: 2000.4GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 22G used: 15G (69%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
                      ID-2: /home size: 168G used: 3.0G (2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
                      ID-3: swap-1 size: 33.56GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda3
RAID: Device-1: /dev/md127 - active raid: 5 components: online: 4/4 - sde1 sdc1 sdf1 sdd1
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 65.2C mobo: 52.5C gpu: 50C
                      Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: 0 fan-1: 0 fan-3: 0 fan-4: 0 fan-5: 0 fan-6: 0 fan-7: 3132
                      fan-8: 3375
Info: Processes: 333 Uptime: 1:08 Memory: 2759.9/20078.0MB
                      Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.2.19

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/05/13/flight-logs-show-bill-clinton-flew-on-sex-offenders-jet-much-more-than-previously-known.html

Flight logs show Bill Clinton flew on sex offender's jet much more than previously known

Former President Bill Clinton was a much more frequent flyer on a registered sex offender’s infamous jet than previously reported, with flight logs showing the former president taking at least 26 trips aboard the “Lolita Express” -- even apparently ditching his Secret Service detail for at least five of the flights, according to records obtained by FoxNews.com.

Clinton’s presence aboard Jeffrey Epstein’s Boeing 727 on 11 occasions has been reported, but flight logs show the number is more than double that, and trips between 2001 and 2003 included extended junkets around the world with Epstein and fellow passengers identified on manifests by their initials or first names, including “Tatiana.” The tricked-out jet earned its Nabakov-inspired nickname because it was reportedly outfitted with a bed where passengers had group sex with young girls.

“Bill Clinton … associated with a man like Jeffrey Epstein, who everyone in New York, certainly within his inner circles, knew was a pedophile,” said Conchita Sarnoff, of the Washington, D.C. based non-profit Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking, and author of a book on the Epstein case called "TrafficKing." “Why would a former president associate with a man like that?”

Epstein, who counts among his pals royal figures, heads of state, celebrities and fellow billionaires, spent 13 months in prison and home detention for solicitation and procurement of minors for prostitution. He allegedly had a team of traffickers who procured girls as young as 12 to service his friends on “Orgy Island,” an estate on Epstein's 72-acre island, called Little St. James, in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Virginia Roberts, 32, who claims she was pimped out by Epstein at age 15, has previously claimed she saw Clinton at Epstein’s getaway in 2002, but logs do not show Clinton aboard any flights to St. Thomas, the nearest airport capable of accommodating Epstein's plane. They do show Clinton flying aboard Epstein’s plane to such destinations as Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, China, Brunei, London, New York, the Azores, Belgium, Norway, Russia and Africa.

Among those regularly traveling with Clinton were Epstein’s associates, New York socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein’s assistant, Sarah Kellen, both of whom were investigated by the FBI and Palm Beach Police for recruiting girls for Epstein and his friends.

Official flight logs filed with the Federal Aviation Administration show Clinton traveled on some of the trips with as many as 10 U.S. Secret Service agents. However, on a five-leg Asia trip between May 22 and May 25, 2002, not a single Secret Service agent is listed. The U.S. Secret Service has declined to answer multiple Freedom of Information Act requests filed by FoxNews.com seeking information on these trips. Clinton would have been required to file a form to dismiss the agent detail, a former Secret Service agent told FoxNews.com.

In response to a separate FOIA request from FoxNews.com, the U.S. Secret Service said it has no records showing agents were ever on the island with Clinton.

A Clinton spokesperson did not return emails requesting comment about the former president’s relationship and travels with Epstein. The Clinton Library said it had no relevant information and does not keep track of Clinton’s travel records.

Martin Weinberg, Epstein’s current attorney, did not respond to multiple inquiries. Epstein said in a court filing said that he and his associates “have been the subject of the most outlandish and offensive attacks, allegations, and plain inventions.”

However, hundreds of pages of court records, including reports from police and FBI agents, reviewed by FoxNews.com, show Epstein was under law enforcement scrutiny for more than a year.

Police in Palm Beach, Fla., launched a year-long investigation in 2005 into Epstein after parents of a 14-year-old girl said their daughter was sexually abused by him. Police interviewed dozens of witnesses, confiscated his trash, performed surveillance and searched his Palm Beach mansion, ultimately identifying 20 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 who they said were sexually abused by Epstein.

In 2006, at the request of Palm Beach Police, the FBI launched a federal probe into allegations that Epstein and his personal assistants had “used facilities of interstate commerce to induce girls between the ages of 14 and 17 to engage in illegal sexual activities.”

According to court documents, police investigators found a “clear indication that Epstein’s staff was frequently working to schedule multiple young girls between the ages of 12 and 16 years old literally every day, often two or three times per day.”

One victim, in sworn deposition testimony, said Epstein began sexually assaulting her when she was 13 years old and molested her on more than 50 occasions over the next three years. The girls testified they were lured to Epstein’s home after being promised hundreds of dollars to be his model or masseuse, but when they arrived, he ordered them to take off their clothes and massage his naked body while he masturbated and used sex toys on them.

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida prepared charging documents that accused Epstein of child sex abuse, witness tampering and money laundering, but Epstein took a plea deal before an indictment could be handed up.

On Sept. 24, 2007, in a deal shrouded in secrecy that left alleged victims shocked at its leniency, Epstein agreed to a 30-month sentence, including 18 months of jail time and 12 months of house arrest and the agreement to pay dozens of young girls under a federal statute providing for compensation to victims of child sexual abuse.

In exchange, the U.S. Attorney’s Office promised not to pursue any federal charges against Epstein or his co-conspirators.

Florida attorney Brad Edwards, who represented some of Epstein’s alleged victims, is suing the federal government over the secret non-prosecution agreement in hopes of having it overturned. Edwards claimed in court records that the government and Epstein concealed the deal from the victims “to prevent them from voicing any objection, and to avoid the firestorm of controversy that would have arisen if it had become known that the Government was immunizing a politically-connected billionaire and all of his co-conspirators from prosecution of hundreds of federal sex crimes against minor girls.”

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida did not respond to a request for comment about the deal.

Other politicians, celebrities and businessmen, including presidential candidate Donald Trump, have been accused of fraternizing with Epstein. Trump lawyer Alan Garten told FoxNews.com in a statement Trump and Epstein are not pals.

“There was no relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump,” he said. “They were not friends and they did not socialize together.”

It's my own fault, I suppose, but... OUCH! I'm hoping there is a solution in the collective wisdom of my fellow Soylentils.

My primary browser is Pale Moon (PM), a fork of Mozilla's Firefox (FF), which I run on Win 7 Pro x64.

Scenario: I tend to leave my browser open for days/weeks at a time. I regularly have 30+ tabs open with everything from SN's main site and editor-related pages, local weather forecast/history, Folding@Home stats, a few blogs I follow, etc. On occasion, depending on what I've been working on, I find myself with 70 tabs open. That is not a problem.

Once in a great while, I'll find myself switching back and forth between two tabs so often (like when submitting/reviewing a story), I find it easier to move one of the tabs to a separate window, so that I can see both on my screen at the same time. Or, on other occasions, I'll do a 'view page source' on a tab which is then opened in another browser window.

Event: On rare occasions, I need to reboot my system, or reload PM (after an update). I pre-emptively close PM and see a warning dialog displayed which states something like: "You have 37 tabs open; do you really want to close Pale Moon?" This is good! Yep, I know that I have a whole bunch of tabs open, no big deal. I let it shut down. Do whatever I needed to do. I relaunch PM and all my tabs are sitting there waiting to be reloaded. Usually.

NOTE: I suspect this capability may be a result of the Tab Mix Plus (TMP) addon I have installed, but it has become critical to my workflow and I don't want to lose the settings/features I've enabled, so I do not mess around with disabling it.

Problem: The problem arises when I have multiple Pale Moon windows open. I'll have, say, my main PM window open with those 37+ tabs, and another PM window open with a tab or two. I close the main window, get the dialog, confirm, and only then do I discover that I have another PM window open, with its one or two tabs. I complete closing this last instance of PM. Here's the problem... when I restart PM, I now only see the one or tabs from the last window I closed -- the other 37+ tabs are lost. (The workaround is to go through my browser history and try to find and reload all the prior tabs, but that is a major, time-consuming, error-prone pain.)

WIBNI: (Wouldn't it be nice if) What I would like to see is the warning dialog not only caution me that I have 37+ TABS open, but also warn that there are 'N' other WINDOWS open, as well. At that point, I could merge windows into one, or close the tabs in the other, non-main window. Only after closing all the other PM windows, would I then close my main window. Then, when I reloaded PM, I'd find all my tabs in all the same places and ready to reload.

Request: Has anyone else here run into this problem? Is there a setting, whether in TMP or PM, that I am missing? Do you know of a setting or addon that warns me when I am closing one of multiple windows? Any other suggestions on how I can avoid losing my window/tabs context for later restore?

Well - I work in a plastic factory. Production makes thousands of identical parts, every night, some of them to be assembled with other parts before they leave the plant. Parts need to have flash trimmed off of them, sometimes, and various other tasks have to be performed before packing the parts into boxes for shipping. All light work - the worst part of the work is the heat. Plastic has to be melted before it can be injected into a mold, so it's hot. That really is the worst part of the job.

Well - this week, we've had THREE new hires walk out of the plant, mid-shift, literally CRYING! Crying, because they can't perform the tasks. Worse - it was one female, whom I can overlook, and TWO MALES, which is very damned hard to overlook. Women have always had license to cry, but GUYS?!?!?!

I might understand, if the job were difficult. It really isn't though. No one in production lifts weight over - ohhhh - maybe twenty pounds. There is no physically demanding task to be done. Well, aside from standing on your feet for eight hours. Just a little moderate coordination, just a little bit of strength, and just the tiniest bit of perseverance, you get through the shift, and then you can sit and rub your tired feet all you want.

And, three millennials walked out of the plant, CRYING, because they couldn't handle it.

FFS, what is this nation coming to? I'm beginning to believe that we DESERVE to be eclipsed by the rest of the world, where they still raise young men and women willing to work.

My first paying job, for which I needed a Social Security number? A place that was competing with McDonald's. I spent my sophomore year in high school working there, but when summer came, I wanted a REAL JOB. A few months of wimpy-assed work, serving burgers and wiping counters was enough for me, I wanted a MAN'S JOB! So, the summer between 10th and 11th grades, I got a job with a roofer.

How many of you knows what a bundle of shingles weighs? Typically, people want 270 weight shingles on their roofs. 270 pounds per 100 sq ft of coverage, each bundle covers 33 sq ft, so a bundle weighs 90 pounds. Here I am, an 85 pound runt, looking at those 90 pound bundles. Hmmmm - heft one onto my shoulder like the other guys are doing, and head on up the ladder. Holy SHIT people, my legs were flaccid rubber by the time I got up there! Did I walk off crying? FEK NO!! Ease on down the ladder, look at that next bundle, flop it up on my shoulder, and off I went again. THIS WAS MAN'S WORK! If they had tried to run me off, I'd have fought them! It took a couple weeks before I built up enough strength to carry ten square of shingles up on the roof without panting like a winded horse.

I haven't spent all of my life doing such strenuous work, but I've always done work that involved some physical labor, at least.

Plastics. This work is EASY! There's just nothing to it. My mama did this work when she was 70 years old. A little bitty tiny woman handled this at 70. Mama was tough as nails when she wanted to be, but she wasn't some hulking Amazon!

And, this week, I see THREE apparently healthy youngsters walk out of the plant, CRYING, because the work is "to hard"!!!

I just don't have the words to express my contempt for the people who are going to be running our country in the years to come. I simply can't imagine how they are ever going to make anything of themselves. Flabbergasted, I am.

I guess it's payback time. The US has exploited much of the world over the past 100 years or so. With candy asses like these set to take over this country, I expect that the US is going to be exploited right up the ass. China is already showing us that they are able to work their asses off. India as well. Korea, and much of the Pacific.

Maybe I'll join all the damned fool progressives who promise to renounce their citizenship if Trump is elected. I can't stand to watch weenie babies trying to do easy work, and failing. I don't have much in common with Koreans, or Indians, but I could stand to spend my last years watching honest men and women earn a living. Watching crybabies whine because simple tasks are "to hard" may just drive me to suicide. Or, drugs, which amounts to the same thing.

Ten years ago I wrote a humorous article titled “Useful Dead Technologies” about technologies that are no longer used that I sorely miss, like furnaces that still worked when the power went out, or things made of durable steel instead of today’s fragile and short-lived plastics.
        A couple of the things on the list have improved since then. Shoelaces, for instance. Ten years ago I wrote:
        “Shoelaces have been designed for hundreds of years to keep your shoes on your feet. No longer. Today's shoelaces are designed with one purpose in mind – to annoy you.
        “What are they making shoelaces out of now? Nylon! Good old frictionless nylon ‘because of its strength’. One wonders if today's engineers even need a college degree, as it seems that some things, like today's shoelaces, were designed by “special ed” students.
        “Because now, not only are they made of a friction-free material, they're round rather than flat, further eroding their ability to stay tied.”
        Since then, they’ve been making them of both cotton and nylon woven together, with all the friction of cotton and the strength of nylon.
        And they’re flat again.
        Another item was knobs on car radios. At the beginning of the century they had buttons for tuning and volume, so you couldn’t turn it up or down without taking your eyes off the road. It was dangerous. Thankfully, they’ve gone back to knobs, even though they’re digital rather than potentiometers.
        The radio in my car now really annoys me, because the morons who designed it stupidly put the volume knob right above the tuning knob rather than the time tested volume on the left side of the radio and tuning on the right. Often when I try to adjust the volume, I’ll grab the wrong knob.
        I also miss the way presets worked back in the analog age. They were simple to operate: to set a preset to a station, you tuned the radio to that station, pulled out on the button, and pushed it back in. These days you simply cannot tune a station to a preset while you’re driving, at least unless you’re a suicidal maniac. What’s worse, every radio has a different way of tuning a preset button, and many are impossible to figure out without an owner’s manual.
        The worst thing about that radio is I can’t change the time on the clock. The car came with a manual, but they put three different models of radio in those cars, and the manual lists all of them. But each of the three says to push a button that simply isn’t on the radio!
        And I just discovered by watching a commercial where they were trying to sell new cars – the morons took the knobs away again, and now it’s even worse than the buttons. Now they have touch screens. There’s no way possible to change the station or volume without taking your eyes off the road!
        I’m all for hiring the handicapped, but I wish they wouldn’t hire idiots to be engineers. Touch screens for automobile controls are brain-dead stupid.
        The following items haven’t all become extinct in the last decade, I simply didn’t think of them when I wrote it. Here are some more.

Thermostats that don’t need batteries
        In the twentieth century, thermostats were simple yet clever devices: a mercury switch on the end of two dissimilar metals. The metal would bend one way or the other depending on temperature. When the metal reached a certain shape, the mercury would roll down the inside of the switch and close the circuit.
        Shortly before the turn of the century they came out with programmable thermostats, and they were indeed superior despite the one disadvantage of needing a battery; perhaps it could be done, but I don’t see how you could have a programmable thermostat without one. But they could be set to turn themselves down at bedtime, then warm the house back up before you arose in the morning. More comfort, lower heating costs.
        Fast forward to a couple of years ago when the landlord had a new furnace installed in my house. With the new furnace came a new thermostat. The old thermostat was programmable, the new one isn’t.
        But it’s digital and still needs batteries.
        At first I thought they had to be digital because mercury has been shown to be toxic, but on second thought you could simply have a copper ball replacing the mercury. Such a switch would be easy to engineer.
        Folks, digital thermostats have been in use for a couple of decades now. Why aren’t new homes designed to have a low voltage DC supply to thermostats so batteries wouldn’t be needed?

Sticky Menus
        When GUIs first came out they were a great improvement over the old CLIs. Easy to use and hard to screw up. Click on a menu heading and the menu drops down. Nothing happened until you clicked somewhere. If you clicked on an empty space the menu closed. Click on a different menu and that menu opened.
        So some moron had the bright idea that if you had the file menu open and simply mouse over the edit menu, File closes and Edit opens.
        This incredibly stupid change drives me nuts, especially in Firefox and GIMP. I have nested bookmarks in Firefox, and after clicking a folder I have to slowly and carefully slide the cursor over, making sure the cursor never goes over a different folder, as the folder I want will close and the one I don’t opens.
        GIMP drives me nuts, too, especially trying to select the “rectangle select” from the “selection” menu, as the “filters” menu will open when I’m trying to navigate to “rectangle select”.
        Folks, losing sticky menus was an incredibly stupid, productivity killing thing. BRING THEM BACK!

Rectangular cabinets
        Stuff used to have cabinets made of wood. The better stuff had rounded corners, because they were safer.
        Every large CRT TV I ever owned was rectangular, before 2002 when I bought a forty two inch Sony Trinitron. It takes up a huge amount of floor space, and you can’t set anything on it because it’s stupidly shaped. My DVD and VCR and converter box should be able to sit on it, but nothing can.
        The rectangular shape is far from extinct, but more and more things seem to be eschewing it.

Useful user manuals
        Some would criticize me for this one, saying user manuals always sucked, and they would have a valid point. When I was young, user manuals were complete – and completely unreadable to many if not most people. I had trouble making heads or tails out of more than one, and I could read at a post-doctoral level at age 12 (although I didn’t understand the math).
        DOS 6.2 came in a box with two floppies and a thick user manual. Windows 95 came with a very thin manual. I don’t remember what XP’s was like, but the manual for this old Acer laptop was really thin.
        Then my phone. Honestly, come on, now, a smart phone is a complex, sophisticated piece of equipment but its user manual is three by five inches and a dozen pages?
        The worst was the “Seagate Personal Cloud”, which is really a network hard drive. Tiny pamphlet with pictures and few words. Look, folks, pictures are good for illustration but lousy for information. I spent twenty useless minutes studying the thing, then finally just plugged it in and turned it on. It didn’t even need a manual!
        I did find a detailed, very good manual for it online. Its printed manual should have added its URL.

Automobile hoods and trunks that didn’t need props
        Before the 1970s, to open a hood you opened the hood latch, and springs opened the hood and held it open. It was an ingenious design where it didn’t spring open, you lifted it a little first. Trunks worked the same way. It didn’t matter if it was a Volkswagen, a little Plymouth Valiant, or a big luxury Cadillac.
        Then the Arab oil embargo hit in 1974 and the price of gasoline doubled in a matter of months. People started replacing their American gas guzzlers with compact Japanese cars that had far better mileage.
        The more weight a vehicle carries, the worse its mileage is. Part of the raising of gas mileage was replacing the heavy steel with a lighter material when possible, and those springs and the rest of the steel assembly for them were jettisoned, replaced with that stupid hood prop.
        Soon American auto makers started following suit. I don’t know if big sedans and luxury cars ever went to hood props, but I know my ‘67 Mustang had no hood prop, nor did my ‘74 LeMans. My 76 Vega did, though, as did every other car I owned until I bought an ‘02 Concorde. Rather than springs or a hood prop, it had lightweight hydraulic struts for both the front and back.
        It was far better than a hood prop, but not as good as the spring mechanism. Those springs lasted forever, but the struts fail in a few years and you wind up propping up your hood and trunk with a stick. Either that or shell out for new ones.

Bumper Jacks
        All cars and trucks used to have bumpers, and there was a slot on each end of each bumper. The slots were for flat tires. If you had a flat, you got the jack out of the car, hooked it into the slot, and jacked it up with its handle like you were pumping water out of a hand operated well pump. This was easy on the back, as you were standing up. It took very little effort to jack up the vehicle.
        Now they all have scissors jacks, and I hate them. You have to get down on your hands and knees to slide it under the car, and jack it up by cranking it. It always takes skin off of your knuckles and takes twice the effort and three times the time.
        Yes, the new jacks take up far less space, but the trade-offs simply weren’t worth it.
        I miss the full sized spares, too. If you had a flat, you changed the tire, got the flat tire fixed, and simply put that one in the trunk instead of having to change the “doughnut” to put your real tire on.
        At least we have fix-a-flat now.

It's that time again. Time to pay tribute to those willing, nay eager, to say that which a lot of people do not want to hear. Be their motives sincere or simply to wind you up, they are the souls brave enough to be unpopular with the masses. Here are the top ten by sheer number of times modded Troll and (of the top 50 of the previous group) the top ten by percent of their comments that have been modded Troll. These are not an "all time" list, only the ones that haven't fallen off the end of our moderation log table. By count: NickTrolls%Troll Ethanol-fueled50117% Runaway19562617% jmorris18412% The Mighty Buzzard18111% aristarchus1558% Hairyfeet1459% frojack1262% zugedneb8624% khallow706% VLM672%

By percent: NickTrolls%Troll zugedneb8624% Ethanol-fueled50117% Khyber2015% jmorris18412% The Mighty Buzzard18111% jasassin3010% Hairyfeet1459% aristarchus1558% Arik418% TLA148%

Yeah, so someone suggested a pretty good name for the April 1st theme and I utterly lost track of it. Which is a shame because it's currently named "april1". Anyone have a link, remember what it was, or have a suggestion of their own? Best my brain is kicking out is GeoShitties and I don't particularly want to put "shit" in community-facing site stuff (code comments are another matter entirely).