2/13/2025 12 kills to look into as a designer.
Graham Stephan did a video on Home Affordability:
Quote from Tupac: "Your rent is the MOST you'll pay every month; Your mortgage is the LEAST you'll ay every month."
This got me looking at property tax maps in the USA:
2018, by states:
2021, by counties.
Came across interesting Youtube video by 阿冉, on the theory of how incest was a norm in Latin America world due to the disruption of colonial rape, in spite of the heavy Catholic influence. This is interesting because due to racial distinction today, incest is culturally frown upon, to a point one would wonder why the Bible would even care to put a bar against it. However, the further back we go in history, the lesser racial distinction there is (my theory), thus, the more it was the situation that is similar to the incest due to colonial rape, 阿冉's theory: Father seeing mixed blood daughter or white brother seeing the mixed blood sister not as the same family. The fact that Catholicism was accepted widely in Latin America was due to the hatred against the European "preachers" [colonizers], while the Gospel message was reached (the locals compared their sufferings to the Cross), but it was ironically convenient for them to see their conquerors as the forces of Satan. This video can be controversial between left & right wings, so to properly understand this, obviously, I would need the best source from both sides of the aisle.
阿冉's incest theory breaks into 3 categories:
- The rape of own daughters resulted from the rape of local women by the colonizers - The yellow suffered as Christ against the white devil.
- The separation of different kinds of mixed blood (more white vs. more yellow) due to colonial resource (Cuban sugar, etc.) management (more white looking siblings are looked higher upon, given higher social status), resulting in more white looking brothers sleeping with more yellow looking sisters - White vs. Yellow Catholics.
- This point really doesn't have much ground as he's trying to metaphorically equate St. Mary with their motherland after taking back their land from the colonizers, rebelling against St. Mary's virtue and changing the ways of colonial use of their local resources to something more devastating for immoral gain, thus, as if raping their "mother"-land.
2/12/2025 To build one's own AI LLM. A brief overview from someone's own experience.
WebAssembly (WASM) vs. Virtual Machine & Containers.
2/11/2025 Came across this Presbycast Podcast episode "Pastoring in DC, Planting Differently w/Rev. Brian Lee", at @45:20, when prompted the question how a pastor should respond who he voted for, the host, Brad, I presume, said "Jesus, I voted for Jesus". Though it may have come out as a tongue in cheek, this response is so wrong in so many levels. I'll sum it in two main points:
- Jesus does not need our vote: All Christians obviously should know this already. Even a fake Christian would know this. So this is very bad as a testimony to non-Christians. A mar in the distinction between creator-creature relation, a shallowness in the Kingdom of Heaven understanding, a failed understanding of the cultural mandate, leaning towards the false doctrine of Christomonism, if not SOLO (not SOLA) scriptura also, etc.
- You're not answering the question. To a Christian, this is a sort of avoidance of the truth out of low IQ (foolishness, not seeking understanding), or fear of men. Hence, no difference from the Chief Hinderer of the truth himself, Satan.
Stroop Test - Psychological test using different font colors that are not matching to the words of the colors. Studies show that bilinguals are better at this test than single language native speakers. I'm doing this LinkedIn Learning course just to get a certification for NYGC's PD training.
UX Designers Salaries for 2025 by countries, states, taxes, etc. A good direction to look for jobs in the field. Perhaps with the right combination, I can get it from a high salary paying state while hacking the taxes from somewhere else.
China's at it again with AI - ByteDance's OmniHuman-1 turns photos into videos with audio, such as this Einstein video. To compete with China, I think America really need to get rid of this nonsense about intellectual property and find a new direction:
2/10/2025 "This form is not secure. Autofill has been turned off" this recent (past few weeks) warning message pops up in my custom page search fields in Chrome. Upon search submission, I had to go through an intermission page telling me about the insecurity of the search again. Strangely my Surface Laptop does not show this problem. The fix is as easy as changing http to https in the Form Action.
Aquariums dilemma: We will so be gone for three weeks in Malaysia in April, and though I successfully set autofeeders for both the 55 gal marine aquarium as well as the fresh water mini tank (Betta fish) for the last 2 week Eurotrip, I now have more than just one betta fish in the freshwater tank and some concern with water flow (with constant algae bloom and blockade) for the salt water tank. I believe I just turned off the filter circulation for the salt water tank for two weeks to prevent any unforeseen spilling. Hopefully, I can get the algae down by then and still able to maintain some circulation of the filtration/sump tank. I saw the marine tank low on water today so I added two buckets of water from the dehumidifier, so let's see how long this actually will last before critical dehydration. I should be getting the 4 Stage RO/DI system by next week from BRS.
2/9/2025 I asked the pastor if he watches the Super Bowl, he said yes. I was wrong about him. I guess the Super Bowl really is the norm of Americans. I just told everyone the only thing I like about SB is their commercials.
I think I looked it up before, Basile means King. In Revelation 19:16, King of Kings - βασιλευς βασιλεων tells me that our pastor's full name could be translated as The bearer of Christ the King.
To my surprise, Bob asked me what I do with the laptop during service. Not many people ask and I sometimes would think the worst, that they imagined I was browsing something completely unrelated. Rudy also interrupted by asking me to show him, since I told him before, the drawing-notation I took during the sermon. Revelation is a fun book to make drawings for, Bob called mine "shorthand notation". But I was happy to show Bob the German origin hymn (by Samuel Rodigast in 1675: Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan) I was looking up that was mentioned in the sermon: Whatever My God Ordains Is Right. It's in our hymnal #108 and I tried playing it at home later. As long as the church allows, this laptop thing is very precious for me to really get more relevant matters out of God's providence. I no longer feel sleepy in church services. I wish I know how to influence Nadia in attention.