Yep.

Hillary Clinton may not be indicted on criminal charges over her handling of classified email, but the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, all but indicted her judgment and competence on Tuesday — two vital pillars of her presidential candidacy — and in the kind of terms that would be politically devastating in a normal election year.

Any “regular” person knows they would’ve gone to jail for a good long time having done the same ill-advised and illegal things Clinton did (yes, mishandling classified materials is illegal even if you “didn’t mean to”).

And yes, I’d say the same thing if Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein or Donald Trump had done the same idiotic thing.

This almost assures Trump’s victory. Might’ve been better for her if she’d been indicted, because now Trump will (rightly) have a field day and every regular person will know definitively that she got special treatment that they never would’ve gotten, re-enforcing her “better than the rules” reputation.

Trump must be cackling with glee right now.

Any other year, this would’ve knocked any candidate out of the race. And her supporters can’t see why it’s even a bit of a problem.

What a year.

Why do older people have such trouble detecting phishing emails?

There’s a guy at work, pretty sharp, who is in his early 60s. Not cognitively impaired in any way. Has worked in IT for many years.

He got some phishing email that said something about, “Some questions on your expense report hotel booking” with of course a link to click on something.

I know because he read that part out loud. And literally before I could say “Don’t click on that!” (which I got the first words out) he clicked on it.

I ran over and pulled out his network cable. Machine completely infected, but no damage done because I jerked the cable within two seconds.

I literally heard the first few words and knew it was a phishing email. How could he not tell definitively?

The company I work for has been a target of various spear phishing attacks because we hold a lot of highly-sensitive corporate data. Suspect some of the spear phishing is corporate espionage attempts.

But the questions remains: why are older people generally so susceptible to such attacks?

Seinfeld was one of the most popular shows ever because it perfectly captured the vacuity and dreadful emptiness of American life.

It was better than any sociological study or ethnography, because it was an amplification from stochastic signals of the anomie and casual cruelty that did and still does dominate modern America.

There is nothing people like more than watching themselves, and at last Seinfeld gave them the perfect pinhole looking in on their own lives. Instead of inspiring revulsion and rejection of this abyss of desolation, people liked what they saw.

It’s no mistake a country like that will probably elect Trump president.

Sharpest ever view of the Andromeda Galaxy.

Arguing that none of those stars have planets with life — even intelligent life (whatever that means) — is dreadfully stupid.

Look how many there are. What makes us special?

If there is anything science has demonstrated is that we have no privileged place in the universe. We are not the chosen ones. This is why many people hate science, by the way. It robbed them of their illusions.

I have no idea if we’ll ever communicate with another form of life not from this planet*. But is it out there? Of course it is.

*Though I do suspect we’ll create our successors, given time. No, I am not talking about the fucking moronic Singularity.