I spent Thursday night and Friday rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic my office due in part the second overheating issue on my computer in less than a year.
The way I previously arranged things had the computer up against the window, which faced east. It got a lot of sun throughout the day. The computer walls are glass, so all that light and heat comes through, though the side facing the window had a darkened section to hide the bottom of the motherboard. But it occurred to me that maybe moving it away from the window might help prevent the overheating. (Though it turns out the CPU is known to have an overheating/stability issue. Intel has issued multiple BIOS updates and put 13th- and 14th-gen CPUs on an extended warranty plan.)
So I figured while HemisphereDancer is off to the shop again, now might be a good time to rearrange things.
I’d originally thought about moving the desk to the south end of the sunroom (it’s been in the north end since we moved here). That presented a power access issue since there’s only one set of outlets on that end. It would have involved moving the freezer, big filing cabinet, and big bookshelf, too.
Then we considered just flipping things from the northeast corner to the northwest corner. Less of a power issue, but that would put the desk right up next to the main doorway.
Next I wondered about rotating it 90°. That would have put my back to the main door or to the back yard, neither of which gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling. It’s that whole ex-cop thing again.
I ended up turning the desk 180° so I’m facing south instead of north. I’m still in the northeast corner though. I think it’ll work. I won’t know for sure until the computer comes back, which could take a while. It shipped out to California Friday and I think the last time it was gone for about three weeks.
Cold Case
What a fascinating cold case story out of South Carolina.
In 1780, the Colonial Army and the British Army clashed in and around Camden, about twenty miles northeast of Columbia. The Continentals outnumbered the Brits by about two-to-one, but the Redcoats routed them, killing 900 capturing 1,000.
Now, advances in forensic genealogy are allowing researchers to try to bring names to these fallen veterans.
Political Violence
My mind’s racing at the news of Charlie Kirk’s death.
Back in 2023, Kirk said, “”You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It’s drivel. But I am—I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe.” He was speaking at a Turning Point USA Faith event just a few days after an attack at the Christian Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.
Talk about being tone-deaf. These comments make his death all the more ironic.
I didn’t agree with him politically or religiously. He was unapologetic in his positions. He was obstinately pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-women’s-rights, and a Christian nationalist. Kirk didn’t seem to care about who he might hurt or upset with his comments, and I can’t think of many laypeople who did such an poor job of representing Christ.
He seemed to thrive on fomenting division and anger between the political left and right. Part of me is thinking, “You reap what you sow.”
I wish his widow and his children peace and strength.
But I also don’t agree with politically oriented violence like this.
In general, it’s nothing new. Politically-oriented assaults and murders have been a thing since the days of Caesar, if not before.
And I’ll admit as I write this in the first hours after the news broke that the conspiracy theorist in me has already considered that it could have been a right-wing person deliberately setting out to martyr him. It’s clear this will galvanize both sides, driving a bigger wedge between them than we’ve seen in the past. Most of my more conservative friends and family members blamed the left with no suspect identified.
And in this era of conspiracies—there are still people talking about 9/11—even if the attacker is identified, who’s going to believe anything they might say?
Or, even more ironically, maybe it was someone on the right who thought he wasn’t conservative enough?
I’ve seen a number of posts saying that anyone who celebrates his death is a terrible person and that the poster will unfriend anyone who does so.
I’m not going to celebrate his death.
Neither am I going to mourn him or canonize him as so many seem to be doing.
I hurt for what his family and friends are going through. I do. And I wish they weren’t dealing with this, and that he hadn’t been shot. But I’m not mourning him. Mourning suggests a level of emotional attachment and appreciation that I just can’t summon for him.
Other Reactions
All he wanted to do was to show people that we can disagree on issues, just as long as we had dialogue so we could learn from one another.
I saw this comment on a veteran-oriented message board. I never got the impression from any of the video clips I saw of him that he was really interested in any kind of dialogue or learning from anyone he debated. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I just didn’t see that from him. He always seemed to talk over the other person or just argue with them. I never thought he was open to having his mind changed or learning from the other person.
I note that the reaction Wednesday was an overwhelming assumption that the attacker was trans or leftist or a Democrat. But now that someone is in custody and we’re learning more about him, it sure seems like the killer was even farther right than Kirk was, and that’s saying something. It’s more than a little ironic. It’s funny, too, but in a schadenfreude way, which I’m trying to control.
I wrote the first section up there Wednesday afternoon, including the line about it being someone on the right. I really had no inside information at the time.
Disconnecting
Those lines I wrote above about not celebrating or mourning come from a post on my personal FB page. It cost me three people from my friends list, including one block. I was surprised at one person who disconnected, and surprised by the block. The third one? I was surprised she was still around, as we hadn’t seen eye-to-eye on things for a while.
Some of my other friends mentioned similar responses, or that they were considering winnowing down their own friends list.
I try not to disconnect from people over things like this. I’ve got friends on both ends of the political spectrum, of all races and genders and sexualities and backgrounds. I don’t want to end friendships over politics, but on the other hand, if some of my friends seem to hate some of my other friends, who do I owe my allegiance to?
I’ve got several friends who are gay or bi. I’ve got other friends who absolutely supported what Kirk said when he talked about stoning gays. How do I reconcile such diametrically opposed viewpoints? It’s one reason I stepped away from the church and people who want to impose certain biblical laws on others. And it’s only certain laws, mainly those about sex. They don’t seem to care about the laws surrounding food or clothing. Interesting how that works.
Reading
There’s obviously quite a bit of 9/11 coverage on the web this week as we mark 24 years since the attack. This piece about digitizing photos and video from that day was pretty cool. Original CNN coverage: 24 years after 9/11, previously unseen images are still emerging. This group finds and publishes them Archive: https://archive.ph/84eHE
What Are Flashbulb Memories? examines the fragility of memory and how it decays over time. It has a lot of bearing on how cold cases are handled.
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