Those television devices

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I was looking at the latest meme on the internet about the news coverage controversy over some obscure TV show host I’ve never heard of versus the Puerto Rico death count and was thinking once again how glad I don’t own one of those television devices.👿

Not only do televisions consume a lot of power – most people leave them plugged in night and day – their bright fast moving pictures can warp the human mind. I had for a while an HDTV tuner adapter for my monitor until it broke 📺 but I rarely used it because I felt commercial television was all about advertising and selling products that I could never afford or even want. 💸I used to watch the PBS Newshour but lost interest in it after a short while. Television is such a waste of time.

While I don’t have internet for my laptop computer at home, I admit I do like watching YouTube videos down at the park or the library.💻 I kind of find some of the agriculture channels interesting, 🚜I do find the teardowns of electronics and education on the basics of electricity fascinating. I’ve learned a lot that way, especially about Arduino and other simple electronics projects🔌. I also enjoy checking out some of the off-grid living channels and learning how people survive and live the good non materialistic life in the wilderness. Half the time I have the videos playing in the background while I do other things. But I can’t imagine spending a half hour watching the commercial trash they broadcast over the air.

I do try to keep knowledgeable about the news on Facebook and Twitter and checking NPR.org from time to time. Especially in the morning I’ll put on NPR news on my transistor radio to keep updated on what’s happening, 📻although I will turn it off if I think it’s getting too partisan and political as I don’t need to be told what to think by a multimillion dollar enterprise.

An eBay Shopping Spree Helped Bring This Power Plant Back Online

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An eBay Shopping Spree Helped Bring This Power Plant Back Online

"At first glance, the power plant located just north of New York City was certainly living up to a name given the surrounding area 400 years earlier: The devil’s dance chamber, or “Danskammer” in the original Dutch."

"It was 2013, and executives from Mercuria Energy Group Ltd., a Swiss commodities house best known for its oil and products trading, were assessing whether to invest in a waterlogged mess of a power plant. Perched along the Hudson River, the 60-year-old Danskammer Generation Station took on 14 feet of water in Hurricane Sandy, and sat unheated and idle through two subsequent winters. Pipes had burst, pumps and motors failed and thousands of miles of electrical wiring were ruined."

"Yet, Mercuria saw promise. After renovations costing just $25 million, the company now has the plant operating again, putting it among a growing list of private investors trying to spin new wealth from old power plants as the economic model for big utilities cracks apart."

Let’s Stop Talking About The ’30 Million Word Gap’

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Let’s Stop Talking About The ’30 Million Word Gap’

"Did you know that kids growing up in poverty hear 30 million fewer words by age 3? Chances are, if you're the type of person who reads a newspaper or listens to NPR, you've heard that statistic before. Since 1992, this finding has, with unusual power, shaped the way educators, parents and policymakers think about educating poor children."

"But did you know that the number comes from just one study, begun almost 40 years ago, with just 42 families? That some people argue it contained a built-in racial bias? Or that others, including the authors of a new study that calls itself a "failed replication," say it's just wrong?"

Set a ‘Rejection Goal’ and It Might Just Lead to Success

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Set a ‘Rejection Goal’ and It Might Just Lead to Success

"Actors have a saying: You don’t get 100% of the parts you don’t audition for. If you’re an artistic type, or a writerly type, or even just someone who’s looking for a job, you may have found rejections to be so painful that you’ve just stopped applying for things. Social media and streaming TV is so soothing—why would you put yourself out there for stuff you’re not going to get anyway?"

"But what if you set rejection as a goal? That’s what writer Kiki Schirr did at the beginning of this year: She resolved to get 100 rejections by the end of 2018—to apply for anything and everything that interested her, even things that she thought were beyond her grasp, and to treat each rejection as evidence that she was pursuing her goal. "

June 3, 2018 10:44 am Update

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The average high temperature in February 2018 was 8/10th of a degree warmer than in March 2018.

Average High in February was 41.6, Average High in March was 40.8. That said, the mean temperature for March was 1.6 degrees warmer than February as the nights were 4.0 degrees warmer in March.