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A reason (and maybe more) to get excited. A philosophy on how to deal with the world’s irksomes.

If you’re healthy, you’re OK.

If you can walk, play tennis and get excited about something — anything — you’re doing OK.

If your investments have exploded upwards in the last few weeks, you’re doing OK.

If you’re worried to death about Hamas/Israel, Russia/Ukraine, and Forever Trump, join the party.

Worst we can’t engage.

We’re flying a Ukrainian flag outside our tennis club. But the owners (including me) feared that flying an Israeli flag would put our employees and players at risk.

I offered a dear friend to bet him $1000 that Trump would be our next president. He wrote back this morning, “Cant take the bet but he will not be.  If he is, I’ll be looking to establish residency on another planet.”

He and Elon.

We all live in a bubble. We can control things in the bubble, but not outside the bubble.

The good news is that inside our bubble are many things we can improve. Wherever I turn I conclude “What the world needs is….”

And I see ways to improve, to make our lives better, to create new companies, new projects, new products.

That’s a nice focus. I’m working on one now.

I’m excited.

George Santos wonders

He spent his stolen money on Ferragamo, Las Vegas trips and Botox treatments. Susan commented “Botox didn’t do him much good.”

There is huge progress in medicine

I can’t keep up.

The New York Times headlined:

New Gene Editing Treatment Cuts Dangerous Cholesterol in Small Study
+ The trial involved only 10 patients, but it suggests cholesterol can be permanently reduced with a single treatment for patients at risk of heart disease.

This is beyond exciting.

Read about it here.

Here’s another one. This time from Bloomberg:

Wegovy Study Bolsters Use In Patients With Obesity and Heart Disease
+ The drug helped control blood sugar, reduce inflammation
+ Research is seen as ‘game-changing’ for obesity patients

Click here.

Useful Tricks

+ Good Zoom trick: Log into Zoom Meeting Test. Check your camera, your speakers, my headset, your mike. Takes ten seconds. Make sure your kids haven’t taped  your laptop’s camera. Click here.

+ Zoom calls sound better when you’re wearing headphones. That’s not because I’m deaf.

+ Google Chrome is the best browser for Windows. It remembers passwords, fills in addresses, synch between my laptops. And more.

+ I spent enough preciously money on Verizon while I was in Amsterdam to afford a second iPhone. This time I bought a rejuvenated iPhone 11 at Amazon for $270. Click here.

+ Always limit your emails to one subject. Nobody has the attention span for two, or God Forbid, three.

+ When unsubscribing doesn’t work (like always),  update your profile to something slightly wrong. Like HarryIdiot@idiot.com.

+ USB chargers come in two strengths —   5V/1A for smaller devices like wearables and 5/V/2.4A for phones and big devices.. You can charge your phones with the weaker. But it will take forever.

+ You can get a discount on your house insurance if you have it monitored  by a service (no matter how shonky) and you install a water flow control shutoff device. They’re made by people like Moen and Flologic. Every home should have one. There are a zillion makers Check Amazon here.

+ Windows key plus V  brings up all the things you can paste. It’s really useful.

Go back to the office

If Zoom meetings leave you feeling like something is missing, know that you’re not alone. According to a new study by researchers at Yale and University College London, staring at someone’s face on a computer screen results in lower levels of brain activity and social arousal than meeting them in person.

Go back to the office.

Four favorite liquids

 

Goo Gone: Gets rid of sticky stuff from labels, etc.
Shout: Removes spots your washer won’t.
New Skin: Better than band aids.
Palmolive: Works on dishes, cars and floors. Magic cleaner.

Don’t you love these guys? 

Show them to your grandkids.

From the New Yorker:

Donald Trump talks a lot of trash, of course. But three days after his campaign appearance in Claremont, New Hampshire, on Saturday, some of the words he used are still reverberating. At the end of a long and rambling speech, Trump said the following: “In honor of our great veterans on Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country—that lie and steal and cheat on elections, and will do anything possible; they’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and to destroy the American Dream.”

If the phrase “live like vermin within the confines of our country” sounds vaguely familiar, it should. In February, 1933, days after Adolf Hitler was appointed as Chancellor of Germany, Wilhelm Kube, a Nazi politician, wrote in a propaganda publication, as reported at the time by the Jewish Daily Bulletin: “The Jews, like vermin, form a line from Potsdamerplatz until Anhalter Banhof. . . . The only way to smoke out the vermin is to expel them.” In 1936, when Oswald Mosley’s British Fascists were harassing Jews in London’s East End, they referred to them as “rats and vermin from the gutters of Whitechapel.” Hitler himself used similar language more than once. In a 1934 interview, he said, “If I can send the flower of the German nation into the hell of war without the smallest pity, then surely I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin!”

You can read more here.

There you are. That’ll mess up your day.

So, go back to the top of this blog and read all the positive stuff about technology, innovation, ideas and medicine.

I updated the list of stocks I own. See the right hand column on my web site.

See you later this weekend. — Harry Newton