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My wife had her surgery today: everything went well and she'll be in the hospital for a day or two or more.

Now that all is fine, I'm left wondering how much it would have cost us if our health care wasn't free. Enough to bankrupt us? Huh.....

As an aside, while waiting (we got up at 4am to be there for 6am for her surgery at 8am and she was in her room at 2pm) I was reading Isaac Asimovs 'study' of the old testament.

According to him, In The Beginning the Bible talked about, basically, polytheism:

"God
The Bible centers about God, and God is brought into the tale at once:
Genesis 1:1
  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The Hebrew word, translated here as God, is "Elohim" andthat
is a plural form which would ordinarily (if tradition were defied) -be
translated "gods." It is possible that in the very earliest traditions on
which the Bible is based, the creation was- indeed the work of a
plurality of gods. The firmly monotheistic Biblical writers would carefully have eliminated such polytheism, but could not perhaps do any-
thing with the firmly ingrained term "Elohim." It was too familiar
to change.
. Some hints of polytheism seem to have survived the editing. Thus,
after the first created man disobeys God's injunction not to eat of the
tree of knowledge, God is quoted as saying:
Genesis 3:22. . . . Behold, the man is become as one of us, to
know good and evil.. . Then too, still later, when God is concerned over mankind's ar-
rogance in attempting to build a tower that would reach to heaven,
He is quoted as saying:
Genesis 11:7. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their
language . . . It is possible to argue that this is not true evidence of early poly-
theism. God might be viewed as using the royal "we"; or as speaking
to an angelic audience; or even, in the Christian view, as speaking in
the persons of the Trinity.
Nevertheless, as far as we know the history of religion outside the
Bible, early beliefs were always polytheistic and monotheism was a
late development in the history of ideas."

I didn't know this. Interesting. (Copy/pasta from pdf is problematic: it seems to go through OCR which is not perfect. Hoping I didn't miss any fixes).

To me, the only 'true' word of God we have are the ten commandments. Why would anyone try to seek the word of God(s) in the Bible (written by imperfect people long after the events) when you just have to look at the Ten (taken down by an imperfect person and translated by imperfect people).

To me, the Bible just boils down to "be a good person". The ten commandments lay out a guide how to do that.

My wife's surgeons and anaesthesiologists were good. Very good.
Or, at least, good enough, thank god(s).
;)

He livestreamed his own murder on Facebook in a North Carolina town

Man fatally shot on Facebook Live had been outing suspected drug dealers, sources say

LiveLeak.

Melania Trump re-emerges amid marriage scrutiny

Can Trump succeed where FDR and Bill Clinton failed?

Florida governor Rick Scott's three-point plan requires gun buyers to be 21 and up

Scott's plan also includes prohibiting a person from having or buying a firearm if he or she is subject to an injunction for protection against stalking, cyberstalking or domestic violence.

Cyberstalking is serious business.

Kylie Jenner just wiped $1.7 billion off Snap’s market cap, and the worst isn’t over for the stock

In One Tweet, Kylie Jenner Wiped Out $1.3 Billion of Snap’s Market Value

Why Kylie Jenner May Be to Blame for Snap's Recent $1 Billion Loss in Value

Tweet

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Yesterday was a great day for me, and for America -- I always, always put America First. Because I held what I call a Listening Session. People don't know what that is, it's something new. Where I sit down with the American people and LISTEN to what they say. I had 44 predecessors, none of them ever did that. So simple, but none of them ever thought of that. But I'm listening, I listened to some of our students & parents. With cameras rolling. And I brought @VP Pence and Secretary @BetsyDeVos. So they could listen too.

And I heard some beautiful, and very smart things. Jonathan Blank, he's one of the students from Parkland, said, "Thank you for everything. You’ve done a great job, and I like the direction that you’re going in. Thank you."

And Ariana Klein, she's another student from Parkland, beautiful student, said, "I would just like to say thank you for leading this country. You’re a great leader, and I appreciate the direction that the country is going in."

Julia Cordover, she's the president of the students -- of the ones that are left -- there in Parkland. Nice looking girl, and very grateful. She told me, "I’m confident that you’ll do the right thing, and I appreciate you looking at the bump stocks yesterday."

Fred Abt, he's a parent from Parkland, he told me about something @BetsyDeVos said at lunch, he said she said "have people in the school -- teachers, administrators -- who have volunteered to have a firearm safely locked in the classroom, who are given training throughout the year."

Let me tell you, I've been thinking about that for a long time. Because she said it a long time ago. And I knew it was a very smart thing to do, but I said we'd better leave that up to the states. Leave it to our great states. Today I met with our wonderful law enforcement officers, our Governors and so many more to talk about school safety, very important talk. pic.twitter.com/WhC2AxgWXO

But maybe, probably, we need to move more strongly. That would be, certainly, a situation that is being discussed a lot by a lot of people. You’d have a lot people that’d be armed. People of talent. Teachers who are adept at firearms, a lot of people with that. They’d be ready. They’re professionals. They may be Marines that left the Marines, left the Army, left the Air Force. And they’re very adept at doing that. You’d have a lot of them, and they’d be spread evenly throughout the school.

And you would no longer have a gun-free zone. Our schools have been gun-free zones for too long. Much too long. A gun-free zone, to a maniac -- because they’re all COWARDS -- a gun-free zone is, let’s go in and let’s attack, because bullets aren’t coming back at us.

We need to do what we call CONCEALED CARRY, very important. Hunter Pollack, one of the parents, he said to me, "If a teacher or a security guard has a concealed license and the firearm on their waist, they’re able to easily stop the situation, or the bad guy -- I’ll put it that way -- would not even go near the school knowing that someone can fight back against them." Concealed carry, if you don't know, it's a secret firearm, a hidden firearm. So nobody knows, is this teacher armed? Or not armed? Nobody knows, nobody can tell which teachers or guards -- principals, nurses, everybody -- who's armed and who's not. Very smart!

And we're going to be doing many things, we're going to do a lot. We're going to look into the background checks. And into the mental illness, we have so many mentally ill people now, how did that happen? I'll tell you, years ago, we had mental hospitals -- mental institutions. We had a lot of them, and a lot of them have closed. They’ve closed. And we have so many NUT JOBS on our streets. Seriously degrading some of our finest and most luxurious shopping districts. It's a very deplorable situation. Some people thought it was a stigma. Some people thought, frankly, it was a -- the legislators thought it was too expensive. youtu.be/vKblXAikzEc

This is about a 12nm "Zen+" chip coming out this year, not "Zen 2".

AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Pinnacle Ridge Processor Single And Multi-Core Benchmarks Leak

The Ryzen 5 2600 is a 6-core/12-thread processor with a 3.4GHz base clock and 3.8GHz boost clock. It also has 3MB of L2 cache, 16MB of L3 cache, and a 65W TDP.

In Geekbench, the chip scored 4,269 in the single-thread testing and 20,102 in multi-threaded testing. Compared to the Ryzen 5 1600, which is a 6-core/12-thread processor clodcked at 3.2GHz to 3.6GHz with the same cache arrangement and TDP, the Ryzen 5 2600 is anywhere from 7-15 percent faster in single-threaded performance, and 22-31 percent faster in multi-threaded performance. The ranges in percentages take into account different scores in Geekbench's database.

Even if going by the low end numbers a 7 percent jump in single-threaded performance and 22 percent gain in multi-threaded work chores is a nice upgrade. Part of the difference is obviously attributable to faster clockspeeds, but performance optimizations underneath the hood also play a role. The gap could be even wider when Pinnacle Ridge ships too, as AMD and its partners will have had more time to polish up drivers.

AMD Ryzen 5 2600 spotted in Geekbench database

Previously:

AMD Expected to Release Ryzen CPUs on a 12nm Process in Q1 2018
AMD at CES 2018

So, my last entry was about Annie, a girl at my coffee shop that gave me her number. I also mentioned that she has a sister that works there too and that I /cannot/ for the life of me tell the two apart.

They are identical twins, so that makes me feel better. I didn't just want to be a white guy that can't tell Asians apart. (I feel vindicated!).

I was in there this weekend, and I tried to ask her sister what her name was. Turns out, this was Annie, the one that have me her phone number. Well fuck... Anyways, I chat her up, and find out her sister's name is Anna. Anna and Annie, identical twins.

They are Chinese, and these are their chosen western names. Their actual, Chinese, names are boy names because somehow it's lucky to their grandparents?

Bizarre... I think I would hate having a basically identical name to my identical twin.

Folks, today is a VERY SPECIAL day. Because it's President's Day. When we honor the greatest President in history. And George Washington. Is it George Washington's birthday? Big debate about that one! Enjoy! 🇺🇸 whitehouse.gov/articles/great-debate-presidents-day-washingtons-birthday

As Peter Thiel ditches Silicon Valley for LA, locals tout 'conservative renaissance'

If the billionaire tech investor and noted libertarian Peter Thiel really does leave Silicon Valley for Los Angeles to escape what he views as an increasing intolerance for conservatives, the city’s growing community of conservatives will be there to welcome him.

Among LA’s right-leaning residents are the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, the political commentator Dave Rubin and the blogger Bill Whittle. There’s also the former members of the defunct Friends of Abe, a secretive group of Hollywood conservatives that fractured in 2016 over the candidacy of Donald Trump.

“Silicon Valley has long despised the American right and it’s beginning to flex its muscles against us,” said Michael Knowles, an LA-based podcaster for The Daily Wire, referring to a lawsuit filed by conservative media site PragerU against YouTube for allegedly “censoring” conservative videos.

“It’s a sign of the time that Peter Thiel is heading down here because there’s been a conservative renaissance in Los Angeles,” Knowles said.

PragerU’s chief marketing officer, Craig Strazzeri, added: “It’s both astounding and sad – but unfortunately not surprising – that there are parts of this country where you are socially and professionally shunned if you support the duly elected president of our country. That might be changing in Los Angeles.”

Previously: Peter Thiel Migrating From Silicon Valley to Los Angeles