When you die, it is entirely plausible that “you” will wake up, take off your high tech VR gear, and say “Wow, that game sucked!”

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I just got mine back from repair yesterday afternoon.

Via The Verge:

Apple has officially acknowledged that there are problems with its “butterfly” mechanism built into the keyboards of the recent MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops. The company is now offering an extended keyboard service program for computers affected by the issue, via iMore.

The extended warranty covers replacement of one or more keys or the whole keyboard, depending on the extent of users’ problems, and it covers eligible laptops up to four years after the computer was bought at retail. (Every MacBook and MacBook Pro model with the butterfly switches seems to be included.) That’s dramatically longer than the limited warranty the computers ship with or even Apple’s extended AppleCare Plus.

According to Apple’s service page, the program covers the following issues:

●  Letters or characters repeat unexpectedly
●  Letters or characters do not appear
●  Key(s) feel “sticky” or do not respond in a consistent manner

Complaints from users about Apple’s recent laptop keyboards have grown in the past weeks and months, with people saying that the keyboards tend to fail entirely when encountering dust and the fragile design makes them difficult to repair. And while it’s certainly taken longer than most users would probably have liked, it’s good to see Apple is finally taking steps to solve the problem.

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You don’t realize how much muscle memory you have until you move the apps around on your phone.

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…that I haven’t written much about the tragedy occurring along the Texas border. It’s not because I don’t want to. It’s because I can’t. Since news started breaking of the orange shitgibbon’s tent cities/concentration camps, there has been a knot in my stomach that will not go away. With each passing day’s news of some further atrocity, I am becoming fully convinced that demons are real and they walk among us, circling the dotard like moths to a flame.

People ask how Hitler was allowed to rise to power in Germany. This is how. We are witnessing history repeat itself. It’s not like we weren’t warned. The tiny glimmer of hope is that we do have history to look back on (unlike the Germans), and that this horrific treatment of children is causing a lot of people to wake up and say, “Not only no, but HELL no!”

Cheetolini may—may—have finally overstepped to such a degree that this will be his undoing, and will hopefully bring down the entire Republican party with him.

It can’t happen soon enough.

If the GOP can’t be bothered to care about children being shot dead in school, they certainly aren’t going to worry about a few thousand brown babies being separated from their parents. In fact, they seem to be reveling in it.

I want to go Nuremberg on their asses. I want to see them all swinging from ropes.

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As if we didn’t love him enough already.

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Me opening Twitter:

Thirty Seconds later:

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…that thing made a THUD when it hit the table.

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The one thing Q-Tips tells us not to do is the only thing we use Q-Tips for.

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The Walking Dead is a more apt description of the show’s production at this point than its characters or plot.

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One of my all time favorite “hard” sci-fi books.

There has been talk for years of a film; most recently Morgan Freeman had supposedly taken the helm, but I’ve heard nothing more since. A teaser trailer on YouTube from 2015 notes a 2023 release.

I’d rather have them take time and do it right rather than rush it and leave us with another Dune.

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It took nearly a decade, but I finally had a truly horrific encounter at Apple’s Genius Bar.

This was the third time the keyboard on my year-old MacBook Pro has gone out. This time it was the “b” and “n” keys. As of yesterday morning, both were either double-typing or not typing at all.

We arrived a few minutes before my scheduled appointment. Our genius acknowledged our presence and a few moments later had us at the Bar. Unfortunately, he was simultaneously servicing four other customers at the same time, and it was nearly 40 minutes before he actually addressed my issue.

Ben had a similar but worse problem with his MBP a few months ago. At that time my faith in Apple had been restored because instead of more bullshit sending the unit out for another top case replacement, the Genius spoke with his manager and simply swapped out the entire laptop. That is the Apple of old.

No such luck with me last night. First, the Genius insisted on taking the laptop to the back to blow out the keys—even though I’d told him I’d already done that multiple times with no improvement. That obviously did not solve the issue, so instead of proposing swapping the machine out, he said it would have to be sent out AGAIN for top case replacement. He didn’t even consider speaking with his manager to get it replaced outright.

Seriously? THIS IS THE THIRD FUCKING TIME IN A YEAR. Am I going to have to go through this every six months? It was obvious the guy was either new or had drunk too deeply of the Apple Kool-Aid. While he admitted that I was having trouble with this keyboard, he refused to acknowledge that this was a systemic problem affecting most of the 2016/2017 models. (Maybe they have a corporate gag order in place since they’ve been slapped multiple class-action lawsuits over the design of this keyboard.) In any case, it was obvious he was simply working from a script and not even considering deviating to “surprise and delight” the way Ben’s Genius had done.

I’m in a quandary about what to do when I get it back from repair (probably next Thurday or Friday). I can either sell it to a local reseller for a third of what I paid for it and possibly get a used 2015 or 2014 model that does not have these keyboard issues for a reasonable amount of money, or I can keep it and probably go through this bullshit every six months until my Apple Care runs out.

Except for the keyboard breaking down, I do genuinely like that laptop. It’s fast. The display is amazing. Touch ID is undeniably convenient. All things that are painfully obvious as I type away on Ben’s old 2010 MBP that I am so incredibly thankful we didn’t sell after he upgraded. (I’ve had to transfer my profile back and forth so many times now I’ve got it down to a science!)

And please, don’t tell me I to buy a Dell or an HP. I support those things at work, and the only thing I hate more than the 2016/17 MBP keyboards is Windows.

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I am increasingly disheartened when I have to go back and find something in this here blog thingie and discover along the way that nearly all the YouTube videos I linked to have disappeared. I know the nature of the Internet is to be both ephemeral and forever, but c’mon guys…

That’s why I’ve started saving the videos and linking to them locally.

“It’s the only way to be sure.”

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Based on my own experience, it would appear that calling a Congressman is about as effective as Thoughts and Prayers.

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The Daily Beast reports:

Paul Manafort is going to jail. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled Friday morning to revoke his bail, meaning the president’s former campaign chairman will be incarcerated until his July trial. The move came after Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s team moved for the judge to change the terms of Manafort’s bail. Mueller’s team alleged that Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnick—a former Manafort colleague of Manafort’s who the special counsel recently indicted—tampered with witnesses in the months after being charged with a host of crimes.

Hopefully his trial will be delayed a very. long. time.

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From NBC News:

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — The Trump administration has selected Tornillo, Texas, for the construction of tents to house the overflow of immigrant children, many of whom have been separated from their parents under a new “zero tolerance” policy, according to three sources familiar with the decision.

The Department of Health and Human Services will erect a “tent city,” full of large tents whose walls touch the ground, that is estimated to hold 450 beds for children, say the sources.

It will not be the first time the U.S. government has erected tent cities to house immigrants. U.S. Customs and Border Protection used tents to house an influx of immigrants in 2014 and at the end of the Obama administration. But now the overflow of a particular immigrant population — in this case, children — is a government-created problem.

The increase of children who are alone and in need of care at the border is the product of a new Trump administration policy that on May 7 began criminally prosecuting all adult migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry. As a result, the Department of Homeland Security separates any children traveling with those adults before prosecution.

One shelter in Brownsville, holding nearly 1,500 boys aged 10 to 17, opened its doors to reporters on Wednesday. NBC News was among the first to tour the facility, which closely resembled a jail and allows children outside for only two hours per day.

The overflow of children at HHS facilities has caused backup at border stations, the first stop for immigrants crossing into the United States. As of last week, over 570 unaccompanied children were in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol, and nearly 300 of those had been held for more than 72 hours, the limit for holding an immigrant of any age at a border station.

Ron Vitiello, acting deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told MSNBC on Thursday that about 1,500 immigrants are being arrested each day for crossing the border illegally. Vitiello said the policy is meant to deter families of immigrants from coming to the U.S.

“If you apply consequence to illegal activity you get less of it,” he said in defense of the policy. “They are only in these shelters long enough to be reunited with their family members. That’s the purpose of them.”

The facility in Brownsville is holding children for 52 days on average. They are sometimes sent to foster homes if relatives in the U.S. cannot be found.

“HHS is legally required to provide care and shelter for all unaccompanied alien children referred by [the Department of Homeland Security], and works in close coordination with DHS on the security and safety of the children and community,” a spokesman for HHS said in a statement.

I don’t mind telling you that after hearing of this news yesterday I had a knot in my stomach that still hasn’t gone away.

This is what America has become.

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For when you’re drooling over all those nekkid men online…

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If Apple built people, their penises wouldn’t fit any other people.

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Okay heads up for all Americans eligible to vote:

The Supreme Court just issued a ruling allowing Ohio and other states to purge voters from their election registration rolls due to their failure to cast a ballot in previous elections.

This is a major victory for the Trump administration and the GOP, and a direct consequence of the Supreme Court being stacked with more conservative judges (the votes were 5-4). This is also a huge part of what Trump/the GOP were counting on to save them in the 2018 midterm elections, which is where Democrats have been hoping to take back a majority in the House, giving them more power to combat Trump’s abuses of power and Republican legislation.

What this means is YOU CAN NOT ASSUME THAT YOU ARE REGISTERED for the 2018 elections, just because you SHOULD be. Thanks to this decision, red states can purge voters’ registration based on their not having cast a ballot in even just previous federal elections, NOT just the national Presidential elections. Effectively, if you haven’t voted in previous senate races or for congressional representatives in the past few years, that’s all they need now to say you’re no longer registered and you will need to register again.

They’re deliberately counting on people assuming they’re still registered and so not checking until after registration deadlines have passed, or showing up to vote this November and only then finding out they’re no longer registered, when its too late to do a damn thing about it.

And this is absolutely targeted at marginalized communities, low income voters, disabled voters, and basically anyone who simply can’t always AFFORD to keep on top of every federal election and show up to vote in every senate race, etc. Which not so coincidentally happen to be all the communities and voters who have the most to gain from Democratic victories in the 2018 midterms and are the least likely to cast votes for GOP candidates at this point.

This was absolutely a calculated effort aimed specifically at keeping the GOP in power with a majority control of the government come November, and unfortunately, it has a DAMN good chance of accomplishing just that if it goes by unacknowledged. I’m not looking to alarm or panic anyone, simply to say:

If you are a registered voter in a red state at this point, please please please do not take your registered status as assumed. Check on your registration status, look up all relevant voter registration deadlines for your state and district, CIRCLE THAT SHIT ON YOUR CALENDAR, and check your registration status AGAIN right before those deadlines pass, so you can be sure of it before its too late to do anything about it til the next voting cycle.

Here’s a Twitter thread with resources for voters in every state to check on their registration status:  https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status/1006221580458790912

Make sure you check it periodically because the newest voter roll purges likely haven’t happened yet.

IF VOTING DIDN’T MATTER, THEY WOULDN’T BE TRYING TO TAKE AWAY YOUR RIGHT TO DO IT.

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