today i learned...
(a way for me to offload floaty info + see a mini diary from that day)

==========

2025/06/30 - a solid underscore in the corner of the screen while trying to boot your computer means the bios is searching for a boot device. if it doesn't go away, it can't find it and you need to hook up (or unplug) or (re)format a drive that could be the issue. a blinking underscore can indicate boot conflict

2025/06/12 - seriously wikipedia holed last night. here are the greatest hits from my reading list
  i knew that screens going weird when you look at them with sunglasses on was because of *waves hands vaguely* """polarity""", but it's actually way cooler than that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birefringence
  in didactic contexts, a metasyntactic variable is employed to emphasize the content of the instruction so the example variable itself can be ignored - like a variable for a variable. when you're actually programming you'll replace the metasyntactic variable with something actually meaningful, like "windowInitialize". common examples include "foo", "bar", "hoge", and "quuuuuux" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasyntactic_variable
  it actually is true that it can be potentially dangerous or at least make you feel like utter dogshit to consume durians and alcohol at the same time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldehyde_dehydrogenase#Mechanism
  a "flash in a pan" is a whole lot of show to no result because sometimes the flashpan (i.e. of a muzzle-loaded gun) would go off but not the actual projectile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_pan#%22Flash_in_the_pan%22
  there's a thing that involves ritualistically plunging someone into a quasi-conscious state via sexual exhaustion to help them commune with spirits and deities? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroto-comatose_lucidity

2025/06/11 - apparently kiwi fruit is named after the bird and NOT the other way around; originally the fruit was called "chinese gooseberries" and yes they came from china but it's too much of a mouthful so don't worry about it.
jesus christ the previous entry is from the fucking future

2925/05/15 - all legit dice make a 7 with each opposing side, like 5 and 2, 6 and 1, 4 and 3.
card counting is both legal and easy - cards lower than 7 have a value of +1, higher than 9 (ace included) have a value of -1, 7-9 cards have a value of 0. bet low when the deck value is down, and bet high when the value is up

2025/04/30 - i've always known that it's bad (in my brain it feels spiritually "unhygienic") to just throw your fingernails outside, and that they should be buried or put in a trashcan instead. despite the fact that i couldn't remember where it originated, this is one way i still allow myself to be a bit superstitious. yesterday i finally looked up why; apparently it's a verse from the talmud: "the righteous bury their nails, the pious burn them, and the wicked carelessly discard them"

2025/??/?? - apparently benjamin franklin was into milfs. and the reason lead fucks you up is that it mimics calcium