November, 2023:
- My 2020 novel Dreamhealer was at heart about lucid dreaming. Now a startup is attempting to create a wearable device that can trigger lucid dreams on demand. I wish them all the best, but my own research on lucid dreams and dreams in general suggest that it may not be as easy as they make it sound.
- The Raspberry Pi 5 has been a huge success since its release in October, but it runs hot compared to older versions. Here’s a review of RPi5 cases and coolers (and cooler cases) from Tom’s Hardware.
- I missed this piece last year, but it’s an overview of what software can be had to make a Raspberry Pi usable as a desktop PC. Most of this I’d at least heard about, but the notion of Zoom running on an RPi threw me back in my chair.
- This may strike some as clever. It may strike others as deranged. But what better way to make ice cream cake the standard dessert for Thanksgiving dinner than making dessert look like…thanksgiving dinner? BR’s Turkey Cake is an ice cream cake in the shape of a turkey, with caramel glaze and two sugar cones for legs. But it gets better: There is also Turkey Fixins Ice Cream, which contains spiced sweet potato, honey cornbread pieces, and swirls of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce. Yum? You tell me.
- On the other hand, a similar effort from Brach’s is certifiably deranged: Turkey Dinner Candy Corn. Each bag includes six different flavors: Cranberry, Green Bean, Stuffing, Roast Turkey, Apple Pie & Coffee. I burned out on candy corn when I was 9 or 10. Green-bean flavored candy corn will not bring me back into the fold. I will give thanks that this, um, turkey is not getting anywhere near our house.
- The largest lighter-than-air airship since the Hindenburg is about to begin testing. What surprised me the most is that the German dirigible firm Luftschiffbau Zeppelin is still in business (since 1908!) and built the new airship’s gondola.
- New(er) research suggests that Viagra and Cialis are not preventive against Alzheimer’s Disease, as was reported with much fanfare back in 2021. Bummer.
- Who could have seen this coming: Microsoft’s MSN news portal is pumping out tons of news pieces created by generative AI, and quietly pulling the items reported as false or simply absurd. Sigh. People who pretend to think seem to be drawn to software that pretends to think.
- They’re having a problem in Montana: Overfilled railcars spill grain on the tracks; rain wets the grain and starts it fermenting; bears lap up the ferment and get drunk and try to outrun the trains. The race ends as you probably suspect. The state wildlife people aren’t sure what to do: The railroads want full cars, and the wildlife people want live bears. Getting there could be a challenge.