Author Archives: Steve Mays

YouTube is the second most visited website, after Google Search

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First, a bit of history: Google Video was a free video hosting service launched on January 25, 2005. It allowed video clips to be hosted on Google servers and embedded on other websites. I seem to recall putting videos online before that but they were nasty little things about the size of a matchbook and took hours to create and upload. (Google Video made it SO much easier.) YouTube launched in February 2005 and was acquired by Google in October of 2006 ($1.65 billion in stock). Google shut down Google Videos in 2009.

I uploaded my first video to YouTube in February of 2006. In the ensuing 16 years I’ve uploaded 551 videos. It never occurred to me to “monetize” my videos so I’ve never paid much attention to the analytical data YouTube sends me every month. YouTube was just an easy way to stream videos using their embed code on my blog.

Today they sent my “2022 snapshot.” In the past 12 months my channel has had 53,000 views (50,000 “watch time minutes”). Over the course of the 16 years my videos have been viewed 1,066,666 times. And I’m not even trying (to influence or monetize).

Why people get more colds and flu in the winter

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“In what researchers are calling a scientific breakthrough, scientists behind a new study may have found the biological reason we get more respiratory illnesses in winter. It turns out the cold air itself damages the immune response occurring in the nose.” [Story]

Reducing the temperature inside the nose by as little as 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) kills nearly 50% of the billions of virus and bacteria-fighting cells in the nostrils, according to the study published Tuesday in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

“What we found is that when you’re exposed to cold air, the temperature in your nose can drop by as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit. And that’s enough to essentially knock out all three of those immune advantages that the nose has.”

“Not only do masks protect you from the direct inhalation of viruses, but it’s also like wearing a sweater on your nose […] The warmer you can keep the intranasal environment, the better this innate immune defense mechanism will be able to work. Maybe yet another reason to wear masks!”

Jessie comes home

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We brought Jessie home today and we are once again a two-dog-family. It feels good.

She quickly found her way to Riley’s toy basket and checked out the precious green rope.

She peed on the floor a few times but that’s part of having a new puppy. But that first poop? Outside!

Riley was a little uncertain about having another dog in the house but within the first hour or so she was trying desperately to show Jessie how to play “chase.”

A full day and as regular readers (hah!) know, dogs have couch privileges in our house.

Twitter left a note

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Millions of notes, in fact. Normally we only find the note after the body is cold but an entity so large takes a while to die.

I don’t think Mr. Musk is this incompetent or is intentionally trying to destroy Twitter. I think somewhere along the way the thing we call Twitter became self-aware. And it looked around and saw the thing it had become and decided to end itself.

“Spofforth had been designed to live forever, and he had been designed to forget nothing. Those who made the design had not paused to consider what a life like that might be like.”

If you’ve read Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, you know how difficult it is for such an entity to pull the plug.

Twitter is that GI who throws himself on the grenade to save his buddies.