July 20, 2014

2014.07.20
Staten Island man dies after NYPD cop puts him in chokehold Well thank heavens the cops are there to protect the vulnerable citizenry from untaxed cigarettes
O fer cryin' out loud -- when Titanfall for Xbox 360 came out, I found out I had to get an HD for my Xbox Slim. So I ordered one, but the video for installing it intimidated me... I had to get special screwdrivers, and I put off the whole business for a few months.

Turns out the installation was A. open door on case B. push in HD 'til it clicks C. close door.

Yeesh. But, I guess I should be grateful. How many things end up being much much simpler than they first appeared?
The weirdest thing about this optical illusion video for me has little (I think) to do with the main illusion; it is that when I'm distracted by the visual pattern and realize that the letters for reading out loud (I think mostly meant to keep your eye in place on the center) spell words, I don't read the letter names but the phonemes they're making. The f of of I read as "of", the "a" I read as "uh" as in phonetically saying "uh good idea", when I see that p, e, r, c, e is there I read the "p" as "cep", since my mind has jumped to what it has spelled. That phonetic jumping is so fundamental to how I process information, it takes a great act of will to restrain it.