stuff that makes no sense

Europe should not be defined as a separate continent from Asia; the proper extent for this continent should be Eurasia.  All the other continents are either completely separated by water, or were so narrowly connected by land that 19th Century humans engineered canals separating them (Panama, Suez).

This wholly arbitrary "continental" separation between Europe and Asia supports modern forms of racism in the US -- people whose ancestors are from "Europe" are treated as White, whereas people whose ancestors are from "Asia" are treated as POC.

It seems this idea of Europe as fundamentally separate from the rest of Eurasia derives from the extent of the Roman Empire and its imposition of Christianity as a state religion during the 4th Century (even our reckoning of Time is based on the supposed birthdate of Christ).  Christianity has now spread throughout the world, due to the coercively imperial activities of European navies and trading companies during the 15th to 20th Centuries, but the idea of a Christian Europe and its inherent Whiteness appears stuck within an approximation of 4th Century Roman Christian territory, allowing for some later compromises with both topography (stretching Eastern Europe -- along with its Orthodox Christianity -- toward the Urals) and the rise of Islam (receding from what is now called the Middle East, turning Christianity into another diasporic religion).

At best, we should refer to Europe as a subcontinent, the way we refer to India as a subcontinent.  But that would equate Europe with India, a radically anti-White demotion ;-)

Europe is not, and never was, a continent.  If this makes Europeans feel a bit less superior to the rest of humanity then, heh, I'm not sorry.

30 minutes --> bronze medal

30 minutes is a long time to sit still doing nothing, by today's Internet Age standards. This morning I've awarded myself a virtual bronze medal for consistently incrementing my EFD zazen. I'll try to keep going until I hit 60 minutes.  I'm still in the first round of potentially three rounds, with a perfect score after 26 days.

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Why are there 60 minutes in an hour? 60 seconds in a minute? Supposedly this base-60 or sexagesimal numeral system derives from the 3rd Millennium BC and ancient Sumerian culture.  Ancient Egyptian culture divided the solar day into 24 equal hours.  So, take the amount of time required for the Earth to spin all the way round, divide that into 24 hours, divide each hour into 60 minutes, each minute into 60 seconds.  Thank you, long-dead Sumerians and Egyptians from the Age before Christ, for designing this system for tracking our solar days.

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30 minutes = 1/48 of a solar day.  I've got the other 47/48ths to let my Frog Brain hop hop hop without restraint.

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I was trying to talk with T yesterday evening about how partisanship keeps getting worse in the US.  He proceeded to blame it on the Republicans, which sounded like just more partisanship to me.  I'm seeing and hearing people talk about a Second US Civil War.  How quickly our supposed Superpower status could collapse because we've dividing into two warring camps who cannot agree about anything.

The US has by far the most aggregate wealth of any country, about 30% of the world's total wealth.  Are the billionaires really going to let us destroy all that wealth by turning the US into Syria?

I dunno ... the rich men of Europe destroyed a lot of wealth by fighting WW1, and then the rich men of Asia joined them for WW2.  What's wealth for if you can't use it to finance a war against your rivals?

I'm not going to fight a war for either side.  I'm not going to buy a gun.  If people want to shoot each other I'll do my best to get out of their way.

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Instead of giving more money to my favorite partisan campaigns, is there some sort of NGO that brings Democrats and Republicans together to de-escalate tensions?

Well, there's one called Unite America.  I'll try joining them.  I may be a Green Communist, but I don't hate people who aren't, and I don't think we should start shooting each other over our political affiliations.  We are lucky to live in a democratic republic, compared to the typical human throughout history.  Our Constitution isn't perfect, with its outmoded Electoral College and malapportioned Senate, but we've amended it over the years to be much better than it was -- we could continue amending it to make it even better.

But Congress hasn't proposed a new Amendment to the States in nearly 50 years.  We haven't had such a long dry spell since before the Civil War.  Think about how much has changed in our society during the past 50 years, and we haven't changed the Constitution by even one word during this period?

Leading to the Civil War, the Constitution had a dry spell of 57 years.  Immediately after the Civil War, we amended it three times in five years, to abolish slavery and extend equal rights.

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If we did fight a Second Civil War today, what would we even be fighting over?  The Republican Party currently has no platform, no statement of their collective beliefs.  What would they be fighting for?  For Trump?  It would be a strange Civil War to be fighting over the person of the President and not anything he stood for.  Sounds like the definition of a Cult of Personality.  Killing each other over whether to build a Southern Wall?  Sigh.

And similarly on the Left, it feels like the only unifying position on the Left is hating Trump.

Sure, we could fight a war over whether we love or hate Trump.  I'd rather he dropped dead from a natural heart attack to save us the trouble of fighting a war over him.

How about we set up a big arena and let anybody who wants to shoot people into the arena so they can shoot each other.  They can wear red shirts or blue shirts.  The side who kills more of the other side wins.  I'm not sure what they win, but maybe all they need to do is win.  If they win, then they can go home and go back to watching Fox News and MSNBC, back to sharing fake news on Facebook and Twitter, satisfied with having won.  Make Shooting Each Other Great Again.

If I could assign a book to everybody right now, it would be The Red Badge of Courage.  It's free to read at the link.

WTF -- the "broken" logic board just fixed itself

All the broken laptop's logic board temperature sensors are back online, and now the CPU is running at full blast!!

I'm glad I held off on ordering a new logic board.  Now I have two very similar laptops, LOL.  Mine has twice the RAM (16GB) and twice the hard drive storage (1TB), but T's old laptop is perfectly fine (with 8GB and 500GB).  Otherwise these are the same age, same model.

Now I don't know whether I should unhack the OS.  But there's no need to update the OS right now.  I'm still just going to use it as a spare porn screen, LOL.

So, I fixed it.  Or enough time went by that the interior finally dried out and fixed itself.  Or some combination of factors.

OK, I won't have to spend $250-$400 trying to fix this thing.  And now I have an extra laptop, LOL.

Here's one thing I did that may have made a difference -- as the temperature sensors were broken, I manually set the fan speed to run continuously at a low level.  This continuous fanning may have helped to dry out the innards.  Maybe.  I never got around to popping the hood, so I don't know that the status of the innards were.  I may still do that when I have a block of free time, perhaps while T is on his vacation next month.

my 53rd problem is that I don't want to have a job, or K to move away

Still in a busy/stressful work period.  Today T left the house around 3:30pm to go see RBG downtown, but I couldn't take advantage of any Time to Self until 6:30pm because of work, and then he was to get back home by 8pm, so ... I had a short bit of toy time and then went out to the hot tub.  Have not had an entire night to self at the house in so fucking long.

I'm scheduled to have one more overnight with K tomorrow before he moves away.  I have figured his move will hit me hardest two or three weeks after he's gone -- that happens to coincide with T's vacation, and I'm hoping to take some time off so I can chill at the house by myself for days in a row.  October is also the month, many years ago, when K moved out of the house.

I'll be OK.

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T said I could have two nights away this weekend, but he's been happier the past couple weekends when I took only one night away.  But I've prioritized time with K and haven't had much Time to Self.  I said to K, I can have Time to Self after you're gone.  But I probably need Time to Self before he's gone.  We'll see.

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My exercise routines are back on the slow upswing.  Shoulder is OK, slowly increasing my weight lifting.  Running is better with the cooler weather, slowly increasing my weekly mileage.  And becoming more mindful of my calorie consumption, wanting to lose my Pandemic weight.

I think I'll go on a hike with Dax in the morning.  Then I'll head to the condo and work from there until 3pm.  Then maybe 48 hours away from the house.  I do need a break.  I do need both Time with K, and Time to Self.