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How to get a bug out of your ear

This morning I had the traumatizing experience of having a moth fly in my ear. This is something that you might have heard could happen. I know I've heard that you could get a bug in your ear, but never knew anyone that had it happen to them. It's definitely not an experience I would recommend. Though, if you are in such an unfortunate circumstance at some point in the future. The linked article has various ways to solve the "bug in the ear" problem. Thankfully, I had someone who was able to call a medical professional and get the advice. (While I was busy going bananas.) "Pour lukewarm water in their ear" and it worked. Hopefully you will never need this kind of information, but I thought I would share. Hope your day started out way better than mine!

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/cdc-eases-covid-quarantine-distancing-advice-in-case-you-still-follow-those/

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its pandemic guidance today, offering slightly looser recommendations that likely won't change much about how Americans handle the pandemic these days.

According to the updated guidance, people who are not up-to-date on their vaccinations—i.e., unvaccinated people or people who have not received the recommended number of boosters—no longer need to quarantine if they know they've been exposed to someone with COVID-19. Instead, if a not up-to-date person is exposed, the CDC now recommends they wear a mask for 10 days after the exposure and get tested for COVID-19 on day 5. Currently, roughly 68 percent of the US population is not up to date on their COVID-19 vaccination.
[...]
Currently, the CDC is reporting that 40 percent of US counties have high levels of COVID-19 Community Levels and should therefore require masking in public indoor settings. Nearly 94 percent of counties, meanwhile, have high COVID-19 transmission levels, according to the latest CDC data.

COVID-19 Community Levels (Looks somewhat similar to a population density map.)

Jury holds Charter responsible for death of woman murdered by cable technician

A Texas jury last week found that Charter Communications was responsible for the death of an 83-year-old woman murdered in her home by a Spectrum cable technician who is now serving a life sentence.

        A six-member jury at Dallas County Court awarded the family of murder victim Betty Thomas $375 million in compensatory damages, of which Charter would have to pay 90 percent ($337.5 million). The jury unanimously found that Charter's negligence was a proximate cause in the 2019 death and assigned 90 percent of the responsibility to Charter and 10 percent to convicted murderer Roy Holden, according to a court document [dallascounty.org]. Holden, who robbed and murdered Thomas one day after a service call, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison in April 2021.

        Charter's financial liability could end up being much higher because the jury has not yet decided on punitive damages. The punitive damages phase of the trial is scheduled to begin on July 6.
        [...]
        According to other testimony at the trial, "Thomas' family later received a $58 charge for Holden's service call, and the bills continued to come after the murder and eventually they were sent to a collection agency," the Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote [star-telegram.com] on Friday.

https://www.theonion.com/man-who-lost-everything-in-crypto-just-wishes-several-t-1848764551

Man Who Lost Everything In Crypto Just Wishes Several Thousand More People Had Warned Him

Out of curiosity has anyone here actually made money with the likes of Bitcoin?

I tried mining once upon a time. My connection at the time was so horrific, it couldn't do anything, so I just gave up.

Just noticed a sweet refurb GTX1650 4GB going for $15 less than original retail value, with a $40 discount that Newegg is offering for a limited time. As in, the $40 discount makes it $15 cheaper than the same price as the brand new GPU 2 years ago.
https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-1650-gv-n1656oc-4gd-rev-2-0/p/N82E16814932488?Item=N82E16814932488

I mean sure, it was released 2 years ago and is a refurb, but it's a semi-okay GPU price still a price gouge I guess!?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_16_series

GeForce GTX 1650[7] April 23, 2019 [...] $149[8]

Edit: (Was looking at what I assumed was a release price.)

https://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/

Oddly, this statistic can have the exact opposite intended effect. Some gamers argue (https://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-more-male-than-female-gamers-Or-why-does-it-seem-like-there-are-only-male-gamers) that the study bundles gamers across platforms and genres, and is thus unrepresentative of the “real” PC/console gamers. Or that the apparent gender parity means there are no longer gender biases in game design. A game dev we recently chatted with mentioned that some designers she works with still assume that only 5% of core gamers are women, and that the quoted 41% of women are primarily casual gamers.
[...]
The Gamer Motivation Profile allows gamers to take a 5-minute survey to get a personalized report of their gaming motivations, and see how they compare with other gamers. Over 270,000 gamers worldwide have taken this survey. The 12 motivations that are measured in our model were identified via statistical analysis of how gaming motivations cluster together.
[...]
1) Match 3 and Family/Farm Sim Gamers Are Most Likely To Be Female.

In fact, these two genres are head and shoulders above any other genre in terms of percentage of female gamers. The next highest genre is a full 27 percentage points lower in its proportion of female gamers.
2) Tactical Shooter and Sports Game Players Are Least Likely To Be Female.

Sports Games (with an average 2% of female gamers) have the smallest proportion of female gamers of all the genres we analyzed. Although the percentage of women in both Shooter categories is low, there is a noticeably lower proportion of women in Tactical Shooters compared with First-Person Shooters (4.3% vs. 7.2%).
[...]
8) Genre Findings Align with Primary Motivation Differences.

In a previous blog post, we compared the primary motivations of male vs. female gamers. Much of those differences seem to underlie the current genre findings. For example, genres with more women emphasize Completion and Fantasy (the top 2 motivations for women). And genres for men emphasize Competition and Destruction (the top 2 motivations for men).

        The differences in primary motivations between male vs. female gamers seem to underlie the current genre findings.

Noone ever built a statue to a critic.

Statue of a critic:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/25/roger-ebert-gets-life-size-interactive-statue-in-illinois/

Weird MOTD:

*** System shutdown message from root *** System going down in 60 seconds

I mean, I guess, it's where the MOTD goes. So, it's not an actual warning, but people put warnings in weird places sometimes. MOTD trolling is par for the course, I guess?

Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/top-fda-regulators-blast-us-booster-plan-after-announcing-resignations/ [arstechnica.com]

Two leading vaccine regulators who had previously announced their resignations [arstechnica.com] from the Food and Drug Administration have now come out against the Biden administration's plan to offer COVID-19 booster shots.

In a viewpoint article published in The Lancet on Monday [thelancet.com], Marion Gruber, the outgoing director of the FDA's Office of Vaccines Research and Review (OVRR), and Phil Krause, the outgoing deputy director of the OVRR, argue against the current booster plans.

"Currently available evidence does not show the need for widespread use of booster vaccination," the pair, along with colleagues, conclude in the article. Even if there are benefits from boosters, the shots still carry risks, and any benefits "will not outweigh the benefits of providing initial protection to the unvaccinated," they write.

Gruber and Krause penned the Lancet article with 16 international colleagues, including several high-ranking experts at the World Health Organization. Krause is listed as the first author of the article and a corresponding author.

The pair's public opposition to boosters comes just weeks after they announced their resignations from the FDA. Their departures are set for October 31 and November, respectively.
[...]
Gruber, Krause, and the other authors are careful to mention that boosters may be needed at some point in the future—if protection wanes significantly and/or if more dangerous variants develop. However, the decision to boost should be made with strong data, which is currently lacking.

The position is only likely to create more tension this week in the run-up to the Biden administration's planned rollout of boosters starting next Monday. The FDA is convening a public meeting of advisers this Friday [fda.gov] to review data on booster shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

SEATTLE—It's not every day I hear about unannounced Nintendo products over guac. Thanks to a chance encounter last month, I've been sitting on one of the weirder scoops in my 25-year writing career—one that will simultaneously set many gamer tongues wagging and bore other gamers to death. It's about Nintendo, and I should start by making abundantly clear that I didn't get the information double-checked or verified by anyone who has particular access or insight into the gaming company's plans (neither did I ask my uncle who—promise, swear—works as Mario's personal driver). But I have been turning over this minuscule scrap of information in my mind ever since. What I heard is both simultaneously a resounding "duh" for a company like Nintendo and yet also possibly illuminating about the industry giant's near-future plans. So I invite you to sit with me, grab a chip, and pick at this bowl of game-industry-news guacamole.