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How to clean your glasses (yawn)

August 7, 2025
MThomas

Daily writing prompt

Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.

Seriously, this is an “NBC Select” article: https://www.nbcnews.com/select/shopping/how-to-clean-your-glasses-rcna175677

I wear glasses. I have worn glasses since I was in elementary school 2nd grade — the “aviator” style made of cheap plastic that I frequently broke during recess kickball games and then had to tape together so I could wear them.

I have never figured out how to keep my glasses clean in the subsequent four+ decades of my life.

But I seriously doubt this is “newsworthy.” Cringeworthy, maybe.

Fifteen years and counting…

February 21, 2025
MThomas

Hi, everyone. I know I haven’t posted in a while now (about three months).

Things happened. I’ll see if I can deal with that in a post this weekend before returning to regularly blogging about astronomy and etc.

Winter is still here! (In the northern hemisphere.) Going on walks and hiking in 3C windy weather only makes hot chocolate taste that much better…

☕️

Interstellar! If only…

September 26, 2024
MThomas

According to Thorne, who served as a consultant on the science of Interstellar, quantum mechanics could hypothetically explain a way to time travel via wormhole. So far, it’s a thought experiment that leads to the conclusion that you’d lose information along the way—not very practical.

First off, I’m incredibly annoyed at the way WordPress has screwed up the “quotation” function. It seems they are more focused on encouraging bloggers to use AI to write.

Uh. I don’t need AI. I blog. The end. WTH is the point of using AI to write my thoughts? It’s already being trained to USE my blog in the first place! Idiots.

OK. Second, the Popular Mechanics article I’m linking to is entitled “Interstellar travel is possible if we break into a higher dimension, scientists say.”

Only, that is NOT what scientists say. It’s still a thought experiment!

Sorry for the long absence…

September 2, 2024
MThomas

Haven’t posted anything in about five or six weeks. Sorry!

I was going to initially post something about the Boeing crew that got stranded on the ISS, but NASA kept delaying their decision to use SpaceX. It was a given that they’d have no choice.

Boeing, quite obviously, cannot be trusted to spend millions of taxpayer’s dollars and make a proper spacecraft.

Anyway, I’ll start posting something more interesting soon.

In the meantime, here’s a Star Trek TOS selfie by Catwoman. I mean Lee Meriwether. (S3:14, That Which Survives)

BLOCK

June 16, 2024
MThomas

This is how I’ve been feeling the past couple of weeks…

Just too hot. And too busy. And tired.

And my favorite baseball teams keep losing.

At least for Father’s Day my wife got me nice food and drink. Maybe that’ll help get my mojo back…

(The image is of my youngest daughter’s art bag from last year. She has also complained of not being able to write much lately…)

As George Carlin said…

May 15, 2024
MThomas

Are you a leader or a follower?

“Lead, follow, or get out of the way!”

I obstruct.

When Google Gets it Wrong

May 10, 2024
MThomas

Technology is becoming marvellously intuitive. After booking a holiday with friends, we were surprised to discover Google had already added the dates…
When Google Gets it Wrong

Google Maps initially listed our house with the correct address but also my family name —- because it thought it was a company.

It took them half a year after I complained about privacy violations to take the name off…

And they also took off the address!

And there is an abandoned house repurposed as an arts and crafts society event place that has the same address as us!

Annoying.

Not the arts and crafts society folk. They’re pretty cool. 🖼️ 📷 🎨

Yet another Gen Z vague question?

May 8, 2024
MThomas

What was the last live performance you saw?

Last live performance of what?

I saw a baseball game last September. That was live. Does that count?

Oh. Do you mean “live” in the Japanese sense, i.e., a live performance by a musical artist?

As in a live concert?

At a club?

Or just that the musicians were alive and actually wrote their own music and played their own instruments rather than danced around and lip-synced?

Yes. I am a snarky Gen-Xer. Wave the flannel.

(FWIW I think the last live musical performance I’ve seen was in a Japanese club in Osaka around 2000 or 2001, and before that in mid-1999 in a club somewhere in Boston. It’s hard to get out when you have a family and need to actually go to work in the morning.)

More quotes and quotes about quotes

May 1, 2024
MThomas

Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

I don’t think I “live my life” by a quote (too busy surviving), but I do think a lot about:

“Keep on keeping on.”

“Keep on trucking.”

“何とかなる (nantoka naru – “it’ll work out”)

“Das lassen sein (let it be)”

But also oddly:

“Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!”

Today’s quote

April 13, 2024
MThomas

When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed. And when you’re older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
Charlie “Casey” Stengel

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