If I had more time, I would love to write. In fact, I have an idea for a science fiction novel that I am toying with the idea of writing. I think the idea is a bit unique and would make a fascinating story, but my problem is time. I don’t know how much time and effort I can devote to this and will I stick with the project until the end. I wish I could tell you more, but I don’t want to leak the idea in case I go forward with it.

I have written short stories, mostly for myself, family, and college, but this is different. I’m not quite sure how to proceed. What I envision is to flush out the plot, break it into story elements, develop some characters and their stories, and then start writing. I’ve never written anything of this size though so it’s a little intimidating right now.

Toying with the idea anyway….

This blog post by A Forest Door really encapsulated what I have felt since I started this journey. It seems I’m always running across posts or questions asking what the gods really are. The truth is that we cannot say with certainty. They are mysterious beings that surely exist and interact with us at times, but defy clear, objective definition. Still, if you have ever had a close experience, in ritual or out of ritual, you can never forget the feeling and experience that we have.

It’s true that we often try to box them into neat, little categories and descriptors. But it’s easy to forget as we study the mythology, they are beings that are as diverse as we are, if not more so. They are not going to fit neatly into a single category. The best thing we can do is study, learn, interact, form a relationship, and grow. The rest will be our personal insight.

This blog can now be found at jakelacaze.com.

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This is more stuff.

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This is test.

하고 싶은 일을 하면서도 왜 피로한가 봤더니, 어느새 기정사실이 되어버린 통찰의 패러다임을 그대로 가져다 게으르게 쓰고 있었더라는 것에 대한 에피소드.

이제 그 사실을 알았으니, 좀 나아지지 않을까?

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3XJ51M4LLaF4gJxdnhjSAB?si=xZDAtU_hRQ6jiFDid5DvlQ

인간이란 간사하기도 하고, 킹 천재같기도 해서, 생각만으로도 스트레스가 왔다갔다 하니까. 요즘 이곳저곳에서 내가 사실 스트레스를 받을 필요가 없다는 것을 상기하게 된다.

이를테면, 에피소드에서도 언급되는 세스 고딘의 말 같은 것:

https://youtu.be/04pdq5IppL8

그리고 다시 또 한 번, 정말로다가 그 커뮤니티를 만들고 싶다. 창작자들을 위한 커뮤니티. 내 친구들을 위한 커뮤니티. 나와 내 사람들을 위한 커뮤니티. 시즌2에서 다뤘던 6층 건물의 비도시 버전이랄까. (시골 버전이라고 하기엔 시골이라고 결정하진 않았는데, 아무래도 도시는 아닐 것 같음. 왜냐하면 도시는 비싸고, 한아임은 우리를 위한 농사까지 눈독들이고 있으니까.)

이 모든 것들은 다 말랑하지조차 않은 흐릿한 초기 상상의 단계에 있다. 한 5년 있으면 좀 구체화되려나?

그러나 중요한 건, 5년 후에 생각을 시작했으면 그로부터 5년이 걸렸을 것을, 나는 지금부터 생각해서 5년 후에 구체화할 것이라는 것…! 저 시즌2까지 생각하면 벌써 반 년 이상을 무의식중에 생각해 온 것…!

외국어를 하나 더 배우려는 이유 중에는 이것도 있다. 외국어를 하나 더 배우면 어디다가 커뮤니티를 세울지에 대한 옵션이 기하급수적으로 늘어나니까.

전체 녹취록은 여기에.

#아임드리밍 #반짝반짝

Friday 27/Jan/2023

Prayers, etc.: • 05:00 – Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel • 08:10 – Daily Readings for Friday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time, followed by today's Rosary, the Sorrowful Mysteries. • 19:20 – The Hour of Compline for tonight from The Pre Vatican II, Traditional Roman Breviary in English – The Meditation of the day from Magnificat Monthly Magazine. – Fr. Chad Rippberger's Prayer of Command to protect my family, my sons, my daughter and her family, my granddaughters and their families, my great grandchildren, and everyone for whom I have responsibility from any demonic activity; and the Friday Prayers of the Association of the Auxilium Christianorum.

Diet: • 07:15 – applesauce, ½ peanut butter sandwich, ½ big whataburger sandwich • 13:45 – 1 big whataburger sandwich, filipino desert

Chores, etc.: • 05:30 – check health metrics and monitor bank accounts activity • 07:00 – George Santos Is a Drag Queen?! – Ep. 261 The Liz Wheeler Show • 08:30 – many comms with different KofC officers, STM receptionist, etc. • 11:30 – leave home with Sylvia, running errands, shopping, etc. • 13:45 – lunch at home with Sylvia • 14:00 – watch old game shows with Sylvia • 15:30 – de-calcify coffee maker • 16:20 – Steve Bannon's War Room – late afternoon edition • 17:20 – watch TV with Sylvia • 19:00 – begin shutting down my operation for the night.

Chess: • 16:50 – have moved in all pending CC games

Posted 27/Jan/2023 ~20:00 Central Time #DLJAN2023

Intergenerational Trauma and You...

Having lost both of my parents this year I've been thinking a lot about the intergenerational trauma that I've inherited from them and my ancestors. I'm living in the house where my father grew up and where I grew up so there are memory triggers all over the place. Most of the things that I did with my grands and my parents were domestic things around the house so doing daily chores brings back voices from the long gone and the recently gone. This has given me loads of opportunity to sit and visit with those elements of anxiety and control that constitute the majority of my inheritance.

This was something that I really was able to start working on with my mother who, in her Alzheimer's confusion, was very much the frightened and helpless youngest child of six who were guided by a gentle and quiet mother and a domineering father. Her largest daily fear was of making a mess. I found that the best thing I could do for her was to reassure her that if we accidentally made a mess, all we had to do was clean it up. This became more frequent once incontinence was plaguing her, but that became more opportunities for me to say, “All clean! See, everything is okay. Nobody is mad. Nobody is in trouble. This happens to everyone and we can always clean things up because we feel better once we're clean.”

This has given me a guideline for working with the moments of confrontation with my inherited traumas. Every time I hear a learned voice in my head telling me that I'm bad or I'm in trouble or I told you so or It always goes this way I notice that opportunity to say, “This happens to everyone. Now we're going to deal with the consequences of what happened because we'll feel better once we've dealt with it.” And rather than shutting down that voice or silencing it, I invite it to stay with me while I deal with the mess or the bill or the question to a lawyer or doctor and get whatever resolution I can get. Then I show it how things are better for having dealt with it and that there really was no shame in having something to deal with.

Yes, these are the things that those voices have been bred to pounce on and shame over, but even the worst possible things are things that happen to people. Those things we can deal with, we deal with. Those things we need help to deal with, we ask for or hire help to deal with. Those things we can't deal with we mourn or rise up against. None of those options benefit from shame.

I was talking to a friend who is a fellow ACOA (Adult Child Of Alcoholics) about intergenerational trauma the other day. He sounded really ashamed of the voices he had and the traumas that he'd picked up. I said something to the effect of, “It's better for us to tend to those things than to risk passing them on to others.” he said, “Well, I'm not having any children so this line of trauma will end when I take it to the grave with me.”

It was a neat moment for me because I noticed a voice coming forward in my head to pounce on him and shame him for that statement. Like, “Dude, do you think that we pass on our trauma only to those whom we spawn with our own loins? Do we not pass on our neuroses to everyone around us with whom we interact and over whom we have any influence? Do you think that your choice not to breed absolves you of having to work on your own shit?” And I did not say those things aloud because I noticed that the voice of pouncing and shaming was the same voice that pounced and shamed me the other day for spilling sugar in the kitchen.

I mean, cutting yourself off from feeling that you can nurture and care for others is not a painless way out from dealing with something. It is not unlike chewing off a limb to get free from a trap. It's not the easy way. And it is a way that people choose when they can conceive of no other way of coping or growing. Trying to show an alternative to that kind of choice by shaming that choice simply piles shame on top of shame and will reinforce the resolve of that hopeless resolution.

And yet, to myself, and to you who may not be crushed under the weight of your own inherited shame at this moment, I can say that the childless among us are not succeeding in ending our lines of intergenerational trauma. We are all giving away our traumas and our skills in every interaction with have with other beings. Those who see you learn from you. The stranger in line at the store. The other people on the bus. Your friends. Your partners.

It all feels pretty grim, doesn't it? How the shame and the shame about the shame layer up and layer until there is that huge crust of... impenetrable hopelessness. That sucks.

It's not hopeless. It's big. It's scary. But it is something that we can work with and care for. Instead of hearing those voices as powerful evil judgments against who we are and how we live, we can hear those voices as the frightened children that they are. Those voices don't have any power. They are the voices of other children who were repeatedly punished for something that wasn't worthy of punishment. Those children took in those punishments and absorbed them the only way children can. Children can't put blame on the caregivers whose support they need to survive, so they take that blame into themselves.

79 years ago my father and his sister spilled a whole cup of sugar on the kitchen floor. Their mother, stressed to breaking by the great depression, trying to manage having a job and raising two kids and an infant in a shitty apartment in a suffering city, freaked the fuck out on them. She hit them and shamed them and made them clean up every granule, put it on paper and clean it, and then sort it back into a jar.

As an adult I can read that and think, “Wow. That sucked for everyone in that situation.” and I can also see how those children learned “spilling sugar means that you are a bad person” rather than “When life is very stressful, we sometimes freak out hard about things that seem much more important than they maybe really are.”

79 years later, my 47 year old ass is putting sugar into glasses for Turkish Tea and I spill a few bits on the counter. I feel a frisson and I choose to pause and turn to look at my grandmother as a young mother. I give her the same smile that I gave my mother when she felt upset that she'd peed herself. I say, “Whoops. That happens to everyone. It's going to be okay, we'll clean it up and you'll feel much better once everything is clean.”

Then I lick my finger and collect the bits of sugar and press them to my tongue.

This will happen again and again every time I measure sugar or put some in my coffee. This will happen in a thousand ways as I move through my days and the stresses of those who came before me rain down on my mind and body. All I can do is notice it when it happens and set a good example by being patient with those who went before and showing how I can deal gently with situations that have been very stressful. I can offer them an option and I can offer them comfort and I can refuse to shame them or accept any shame from them.

It's not as exhausting as it sounds. It becomes reflexive after a while. It makes life so much happier and while I don't have children, I do not exist in a bubble and I know that my skills and my traumas can be passed along to those around me. Life is rich and full of experiences. Noticing those experiences and being kind and respectful to them and to ourselves can make a huge difference in how much we enjoy and learn from them.

Originally written Mar 27, 2020

The spring swap this year was a surprise swap, so we could make anything we wanted. Since my shop was being built, and would not be complete until reveal week on the swap, I spend a while thinking about what I was going to build for the swap. I decided I'd make a skew rabbet plane. I have an old one which I use, but it's hard to find a nice old plane, and I felt I had okay chances of being able to make a nice-looking plane that was functional.

So I started trying things. I had a bunch of pallets from the hardware store, and used some of the lumber from them to experiment on. The first try had some issues. I couldn't drill the holes for the mortise as precisely as I needed with a bit and brace and without much better workholding than I could achieve on the tailgate of my pickup using a pallet as a workbench, and with only a half-dozen three foot long bar clamps.

The second try didn't go a lot better. The mortise was maybe a little less raggedy, but I had geometry problems with the multiple angles for the skew and the bedding angle and the different sized escapements needed on the two sides. I'm glad I was practicing on pallet wood while working out the details, since it was pretty clear I still had to so some more thinking.

My third try, I decided I'd make it a composite plane. I could then cut the mortise with a hand-saw and get good angles, and drill the sides separately, and most of the complicated geometric issues could be simplified. So I started by gluing a piece of poplar to a piece of ipe that I was planning to use for the sole. I went with the poplar because I still wasn't sure this plan was going to work, and I should have used something a little more stable.

It was about this point that I found that I was sending the plane to Brian in Spain, so I decided I'd keep my schedule as tight as possible so that he wouldn't be waiting on international delivery while everyone else was revealing the goodies they'd received in the swap.

Since clamping (and really any other operation) on this T-shaped piece of wood was difficult, I used a few drywall screws to screw some pallet wood to the sides of the poplar. That turned out to be the real trick, and I started making good progress. I got the mortise and the bed for the blade cut, and was feeling pretty good. The picture below shows the cutting, which was made easier by clamping the piece so I was cutting more or less straight down.

Since I don't have a forge for heat-treating, this was when I roughed out the blade, too. It's a rabbet plane blade from Lie-Nielsen, and while it was a little expensive, there's no way I could've succeeded without it. Then I sent it off to Dave Kelley in AZ for heat-treating, as he volunteered to help out. Thanks, Dave!

This was also the point that I realized I'd made an error in my geometry, and had cut a left-handed plane body. On a skew-rabbet plane, you want the forward point of the blade on the inside edge of the rabbet, since that will tend to pull the plane tightly into the rabbet you're cutting. I decided that I was far enough along that I didn't want to change things to make it a right-handed plane. I've used both left and right-handed, and I can usually manage, even with a plane that goes the wrong way – it's only been a problem when I'm also fighting the grain, and that's why I have both left and right-handed skew rabbets in my collection.

Once I'd gotten the core of the plane cut, I removed the pallet wood sides, and started working on the nice cherry sides that were going to make the final plane. I laid out and drilled holes for the escapement (pictured below), cut a wedge from alder, then drilled in some indexing holes I could use when gluing all the pieces up (also below) so I could keep things from creeping while I was clamping all the pieces together.

Now that I had an idea of how all the pieces would go together, it was time to get the wedge cut and tweaked for thickness. It's not rocket surgery, but it's a lot easier to do when you can take the sides off the plane and look at the angles and draw directly onto the wedge with a pencil so you get things right. With that done, it was time for the glue-up.

Once the plane was glued together, I had a few days to wait for the blades (I made two, in case I screwed one up) to get back from AZ. I rough-carved the escapement at this point, but I needed a blade to know exactly how tall the escapement needed to go to make room for the blade.

I then cleaned up the blade (removing scale from the heat treat, mostly), and put the final edge on the blade to match the actual glued-up plane body. Once that was done, I could fettle the plane, flattening the bed for the blade with floats, opening the mouth up enough to handle the blade thickness, carving the end of the wedge to help steer shavings out the escapement (they curl because of the skew, and I'm still not enough of a pro to know just how tightly they'll curl), and using my belt-sander to bring the plane down to final thickness (you want the plane to be just a hair thinner than the width of the blade so the blade edge protrudes just a bit). With no shop, the belt-sander just got wheeled out into the driveway, and I let the New Mexico winds blow the dust to Texas.

With the thickness right, it was mostly finishing work. Cut the chamfers on the edges of the plane so it feels nice in the hand, carve a little detail in the wedge because I knew Brian would appreciate that, and hit the various pieces with some linseed oil and paste wax.

And here's the note that went in the box:

---

This was a spokeshave I made as a bonus for the 2020 surprise swap. I started with a Hock Tools blade, and these instructions for making a spokeshave. Plus a piece of ipe I had on hand. It went to Brian Johns, and I hope he's happy with it!

#project #swap #woodworking #toolmaking

GAS EMISSION HAZARDS AND WAYS TO PREVENT IT. ©Adedeji, Adewale H.O.K

People use a variety of heat sources to cook food, including gas, electricity, etcetera. Each of these heat sources can create indoor air pollution during cooking. Natural gas and propane stoves releases carbon monoxide, formaldehyde and other harmful pollutants into the air, which can be toxic to people and pets.

When you use a gas stove, it emits poisonous gases called nitrogen oxides, including nitrogen dioxide, a respiratory irritant thought to trigger asthma.

Spending too much of time in an enclosed kitchen, inhaling these fumes causes Carbon Monoxide to build up in your bloodstream, which can lead to severe tissue damage. When too much carbon monoxide is in the air, your body replaces the oxygen in your red blood cells with carbon monoxide. Carbon Monoxide poisoning is extremely serious and can be life threatening.

High levels of natural gas exposure can cause natural gas poisoning, which is characterized by fatigue, severe headaches, memory problems, loss of concentration, nausea, loss of consciousness, and suffocation.

Moreso, very high levels of carbon monoxide in a pregnant woman can result in problems with a baby's nervous system, or can result in miscarriage or birth defects. This happens at high levels in which a pregnant woman may lose consciousness.

About 12% of childhood asthma cases can be linked to gas stove use, according to a recent study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

“There is a health study showing that gas stoves are bad for our health, and the strongest evidence is on children and children's asthma,” said study co-author Brady Seals, a manager in the carbon-free buildings program at RMI, a nonprofit clean energy group. “By having a gas connection, we are polluting the insides of our homes.”

According to Bloomberg News, United State Lawmakers have asked The manufacturer of this cooking appliances for requiring warning labels, range hoods and performance standards.

HOW TO PREVENT HOUSEHOLD HEALTH FROM A GAS STOVE EMISSION

• Install air-hood vent system.
• Ventilate your kitchen when cooking.
• Open your windows while you cook.
• Use exhaust fans to move the gas emissions to the outdoors. Although this will contribute to outdoor pollution, it does lower exposure to unhealthy air at higher concentrations in confined spaces.
• Use air purifiers – Although they do not remove all pollutants, but they tend to improve indoor air quality.

Originally written Apr 2, 2019

Another through-tang carving knife using a Morakniv 120 blade blank. Stabilized sweet gum from a friend's place in St. Louis, with blue and black dye. Also brass bolster from a batch made for me by a friend with a mill.

Learned a few more things not to do while putting this one together, but it came out pretty well. Think I'll hit it with a thin coat or two of shellac before I call it completely done.

#woodworking #project

This post was originally posted on my previous blog site called Jay's Journal on March 31st, 2018.

When I look around, I see an unending amount of examples of people just simply getting in their own way. I’m sure I do this as well, but it’s easier to look outward rather than inward sometimes.

Mainly because I strive to be efficient and save time, without sacrificing quality, every chance I get.

For me, time is more valuable than money. For as long as I can remember, I’ve looked at time in this way. I value it, I hate to waste it, and I resent others who just piss it away freely and without a second thought.

Time is the probably the ONE thing you can’t get back, make more of, stop, or even slow down. And, so, for me, time is a precious unit that I can’t bear to waste.

But, aside from a few exceptions, most people just don’t care how much time they waste. It gets rather frustrating.

Sometimes I feel like I’m alone in a sea of people who all do things in the worst way possible, wasting so much time without giving it a thought, and I’m the one guy who really tries to get it done faster, easier, and with much less stress.

Today is a great example. A week ago, I sent an email to someone detailing exactly what I was needing from them and why. My thought was that if I explain this ONCE, I won’t have to answer questions piece-meal, one email question followed by one email answer at a time.

The alternative would be to drag out a simple 5 minute request to instead be spread across several days, with multiple emails for the one simple request (borrow 2 company laptops for testing software).

In other words, I was trying to be efficient by getting it all done in one shot. I know, silly me, what was I thinking?

My email goes a week unanswered. Sigh. So now, I have to send another email to follow up to the one I already sent, basically re-requesting what I already spent time requesting the first time.

The good news is, the second email worked. The question for me is: Why did it take TWO emails to get ONE response?

Ok, so, in this person’s reply, he adds another person to the CC, and says that he’s directing my request to her and that I can work with her to get what I’m requesting.

Great... another person to have to work through to possibly NOT get what could be given in 5 minutes.

And, so I send the obligatory reply, thanking Mr. One Week for his reply, and then have to acknowledge the new person on the email, offering to work with her and help her in any way necessary to complete my request. (It’s TWO laptops to test some software on, that’s it!)

Which in turn begins another loud-sigh moment. She replied, and adds YET ANOTHER person onto the email, saying that I’ll need to set up some time to discuss my “needs” with her and this new person.

All when the original request is typed out TWICE in the email thread below her message.

So, now I have to set up a meeting to request two laptops that were already requested twice before, so they can understand what I’m asking with at best a 50% chance that they can actually fulfill my request, or instead, and more likely, send me over to someone else.

And I know what you’re thinking, because it’s exactly what I’m thinking. Just write back and reference the other emails below and save the time in the meeting.

And you’re thinking that, and I’m thinking that, because it would be efficient, and the fastest, even easiest way to get things done.

HOWEVER, we’re dealing with people who just couldn’t care about doing anything the easy way. And so, my daily uphill battle in Corporate America continues, just as it always has, and always will... with no improvement in sight.

HOPELESS SIGH...

tags: #observations #rants #thoughts #opinion

Eca perlahan menuruni anak tangga dengan penuh keberaniannya. Saat ia sudah sampai di tangga terakhir, seorang wanita paruh baya yang sangat tidak asing dengannya keluar dari kamarnya. Perlahan Eca menghampiri wanita tersebut,

“selamat malam mama.” sapanya “hmm,” jawab sang mama dengan singkat. “ma, hari ini kaka izin latihan boleh?” tanya-nya.

Tak kunjung ada balasan dari sang mama, akhirnya eca memutuskan untuk kembali ke kamarnya. Rasa sakit hati dan sesak di dada membuat air mata yang terbendung di matanya perlahan keluar.

“lagi, lagi dan lagi ya...” batinnya.

Bukan sekali atau dua kali Eca lagi-lagi harus bersabar dan mengalah dengan sikap mama nya yang tidak pernah mendukung apa yang telah Eca lakukan selama ini. Eca hidup dengan kesendirian selama ini, walaupun dia punya banyak teman di kampus.

Love this track. The tone, the lyrics, the feels, this is what makes emo music great. This one though came out in 2018. This is what grown up emo music sounds like. That's to say, it's still pretty good.

Now my blood turns red to blue And I can't breathe without you Now my blood turns red to blue My blood turns red to blue And I can't breathe without you No, I can't breathe, no, I can't breathe

If I pinch myself so that I wake That means it never really happened 'Cause I can feel my tears finding their way I fear it's worse than I imagined

But I'll hold this memory And I swear I won't forget your face 'Cause pictures always seem to fade away ♪ ♫ ♪

#MaydayParade

Thursday 26/Jan/2023

Prayers, etc.: • 05:15 – Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel • 12:30 – Today's Rosary, the Joyful Mysteries, followed the Readings for the Memorial of Saints Timothy and Titus, bishops. • 19:00 – The Hour of Vespers for tonight from The Pre Vatican II, Traditional Roman Breviary in English – The Meditation of the day from Magnificat Monthly Magazine. – Fr. Chad Rippberger's Prayer of Command to protect my family, my sons, my daughter and her family, my granddaughters and their families, my great grandchildren, and everyone for whom I have responsibility from any demonic activity; and the Thursday Prayers of the Association of the Auxilium Christianorum.

Diet: • 07:00 – 1 pb&j sandwich • 11:30 – meat loaf, bread • 15:45 – ½ Jimmy John's sandwich • 17:45 – snack on animal crackers and raisins

Chores, etc.: • 06:00 – listen to KTSA • 06:30 – monitor bank accounts activity • 08:10 – EPISODE 377: WHY ARE MILLENNIALS STROKING OUT? – Human Events Daily • 09:30 – walked to STM Rectory, returned key to hall • 10:00 – rebuild and begin pring nerw Assembly meeting outlines • 11:15 – phone convo with KofC officer • 11:20 – Devastating Revelations About The Vaccine Should Concern All of Us – (Ep. 1937) – The Dan Bongino Show • 12:20 – received and stocked a shipment of household supplies from Amazon • 13:00 – watch old game shows • 14:10 – World Economic Forum Criticized as ‘Unelected World Government’; Food Programs Include Bugs and Lab-Grown Meat Crossroads with Joshua Philipp • 15:20 – Ukraine Russia War Latest w. Col. Doug Macgregor • 16:00 – Steve Bannon's War Room – late afternoon edition • 17:30 – Right Angle BACKSTAGE: 01/24/23 • 18:30 – Wheel of Fortune

Chess: • 09:03 – moved in all pending CC games

Posted 27/Jan/2023 ~15:47 #DLJAN2023

A curated list of interesting links with an emphasis on news, technology, and more by ldstephens

Homeless mom left her dog with note, ‘please love me.’ A shelter reunited them.

““Please keep my name. My name is Lilo,” the note read. “Please love me. My mom can’t keep me and is homeless with 2 kids. She tried her best but can’t get help. I cost too much for her.” “She really loves me and I’m a great dog and love to be loved on,” the note continued. “Please don’t abuse me.””

Intel's horrible quarter revealed an inventory glut and underused factories

“Intel's December earnings showed significant declines in the company's sales, profit, gross margin, and outlook, both for the quarter and the full year. Investors hated it, sending the stock over 9% lower in extended trading, despite the fact that Intel did not cut its dividend.” I wonder what impact losing Apple has had on Intel?

Bitwarden password vaults targeted in Google ads phishing attack

“On Tuesday, Bitwarden users began seeing a Google ad titled 'Bitward – Password Manager' in search results for “bitwarden password manager.” While BleepingComputer could not replicate this ad, it was seen by Bitwarden users on Reddit [1, 2] and the Bitwarden forums. The domain used in the ad was 'appbitwarden.com' and, when clicked, redirected users to the site 'bitwardenlogin.com.'” Ads have also been targeted toward 1Password. Don't get fooled by these phishing attacks.

As the Colorado River Shrinks, Washington Prepares to Spread the Pain

“The Interior Department had asked the states to voluntarily come up with a plan by Jan. 31 to collectively cut the amount of water they draw from the Colorado. The demand for those cuts, on a scale without parallel in American history, was prompted by precipitous declines in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which provide water and electricity for Arizona, Nevada and Southern California. Drought, climate change and population growth have caused water levels in the lakes to plummet.” “Negotiators say the odds of a voluntary agreement appear slim. It would be the second time in six months that the Colorado River states, which also include Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, have missed a deadline for consensus on cuts sought by the Biden administration to avoid a catastrophic failure of the river system.” Overbuilt!

+ Desalination won't save states dependent on Colorado River water “Desalination (or desalinization) is a complicated process that involves filtering out salt and bacteria content from ocean water to produce safe drinking water to the tap. While there are more than a dozen desalination plants in the U.S., mostly in California, existing plants don't have the capacity to replace the amount of water the Colorado River is losing.”

Things 3.17 Overhauls the App’s Shortcuts Actions

“Things 3.17 is out for iPhone, iPad, and Mac with greatly expanded support for Shortcuts. That opens up a much wider variety of possible automations than ever before. It’s a lot to take in at once, but I’ve been playing with these actions since the end of last year, so I thought I’d highlight what each does and share a few shortcuts that I’ve built with them. At the highest level, these are the kind of Shortcuts actions I like best. They work across all of Apple’s platforms and include parameters and predicate filtering, which allow users to build fine-tuned shortcuts that either weren’t possible before those features were added to Shortcuts or would have required users to jump through many more hoops to achieve.” I'm a long time Things user but not a bug Shortcuts user so this update didn't do much for me.