Today is Easter, so it seems I missed the official Holy Thursday gumbo Z’Herbs. I didn’t realize Easter was so early this year. I still have the small garden growing and I still plan to make some green gumbo but it will probably be toward the end of April. When is Orthodox Easter?

Also found this Bluebonnet sprouting in our front garden. This garden is basically xeriscaped and suitable for cactus. And the Big Freeze killed most of the plants, including a nice palm. Funny the last couple of years I bought big bags of wildflower seeds and put them in the middle of the lawn, but never got a single flower.

533 million Facebook users’ phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

Stupidity, analyzed.

The Five Universal Laws of Human Stupidity

Our old refrigerator died early in the pandemic. We found out that there was some sort of appliance shortage and it took a while to get a replacement. But all in all the new fridge is a big improvement. It is “internet enabled” and I installed the app, which was fairly useless. I suppose I can check my fridge and freezer temperatures remotely, if I ever have the urge.

I actually found the published REST API and was able to write some python to contact the refrigerator, but alas, I wasn’t able to get it to do anything. Couldn’t even get it to send me back a temperature reading. Did a bit of googling and it seems nobody else out there could get it to work either. No matter, I don’t need to be writing code from my kitchen appliances anyway.

Yesterday I noticed a red light on the panel inside the door. It seems out ice maker has a filter that needs replacing every few months. Ok. Read the docs and it turns out you need to turn off the water to the ice maker to change the filter. I’m not sure how other houses do it, but the water connection and valve are behind our refrigerator. I would have to pull the refrigerator completely out to replace the filter.

Surely this can’t be true. But it is. Reading the comments by other owners discuss this. Many turn off the water to their entire house to change the filter. Ok, a little better, but not much. People also warned not to try to change the filter with the water on, or you would get sprayed and fill the bottom of your freezer with water.

Screw it. I’m just going to go into the app and turn off the little red nag light. Except I couldn’t. Further googling indicates that this part of the app is broken, but the manufacturer says if you unplug the refrigerator for 15 seconds it will go off. Ok. Maybe some other time.

I decided to just ignore the red flashing light inside of the fridge. Went back to reading (Thomas Pynchon’s “Beelding Edge”) when my pad began beeping. An alarm from my fridge. Time to change the water filter. I turned off the audio beep alert, but I keep getting text warning alerts. I suppose I could turn then off all together, but not much point in having an internet connection fridge at that point.

With all this talk of making Washington D.C. a proper state with senators, one thing concerns me. How do you make a flag with 51 stars? Plus you will need to change the seating around in Congress. I have a modest proposal that could take care of this and fix an historic wrong. When we add Washington D.C. we should combine North and South Dakota into a single state called “Dakota”.

It turns out that a single Dakota was part of the original plan, but politics led to a last minute change. From Wiki:

On February 22, 1889, outgoing President Cleveland signed an omnibus bill that divided the Territory of Dakota in half. North Dakota and South Dakota became states simultaneously on November 2, 1889. President Harrison had the papers shuffled to obscure which one was signed first and the order went unrecorded.[12] The bill also enabled the people in the new Territories of North Dakota and South Dakota, as well as the older territories of Montana and Washington, to write state constitutions and elect state governments. The four new states would be admitted into the Union in nine months. This plan cut Democratic New Mexico out of statehood and split Republican Dakota Territory into two new Republican states. Rather than two new Republican states and two new Democratic states that Congress had considered the previous year, the omnibus bill created three new Republican states and one new Democratic state that Republicans thought they would capture. The Dakota Territory was divided into the states of North Dakota and South Dakota on November 2, 1889.

As far as population, North and South Dakota are two of the bottom five states in population with only Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming having fewer people. Combining them would only move them to around number 39, between Hawaii and West Virginia. Maybe pick a new capital, or maybe just alternate every other session in Bismark and one in Pierre. Let the people of Dakota sort it out.

Covid-19 deaths are almost certainly underreported. One thing to look at is “excess deaths”. The number of people dying around the world and from any and all causes is fairly easy to predict. Anything outside of these predictions in 2020 is probably Covid-19. Mexico is looking at twice the reported rate, near 400k. I expect many other countries will see similar actual rates when people look at the real data.

Mexico’s Excess Deaths Far Exceed Official Coronavirus Toll

Fracking in Texas results in vast amounts of otherwise useful natural gas being simply burned. There is so much gas burned it can be seen from space, looking like illuminated cities. A good article, but there are still questions. Why couldn’t these wells just temporarily stop production gas? I have to assume it is because they would have to stop prodducing oil, which is the part that makes money. I suppose given the cost curves in renewables this will all be over soon, but what a damaging waste. From the New York Times.