I haven't flown commercial since shortly after 9/11 as well. It was embarrassing how much they felt me up in front of the crowd and showed everyone the contents of my suitcase. It is purely security "theater", and I can't stand it.

I have flown a bunch in the private aviation sector though and there are two things that have changed: 1) The general security theater is way different, and in many places, simply absent altogether. 2) It is really sad to see that private aviation is shrinking dramatically. Hardly anyone new learning to fly nowadays.

It is worth noting that flying in private aviation is still fun though, even after all this, and the community in general is still pretty alright IMHO.

No, not at all. I am a stereotypical programmer with the lights out in my office, so I have the backlight set for low light all the time.

I used to have the same issue. However, in recent years I have upgraded to a much larger LED backlit display and soon discovered that it's easier and more comfortable to read at the computer desk than any other way. Some of it has to do with the rendering software as well. If it's a bad app, it makes for a bad reading experience. I am picky about the software. Kindle, for instance, is not very good, but I can live with it.

But we have absolutely no proof whatsoever that any other lifeforms either began or are beginning. Surely there would be some hint to be found after 4 billion years of trying. But there's not even a hint. It's like insisting aliens exist, because it would make sense, and yet we have no proof. Heck, at least with aliens we have some mighty interesting sightings and anecdotes. We don't even have that with non-existing DNA lifeforms on earth. Nothing.

So maybe there was other life before the end of the Late Heavy Bombardment, you're right, we don't know. But we have no fossil evidence of any other "line" of life existing on earth since then. All known life on earth contains DNA in common with all other known life. Therefore, logically, all known life descended from one single common ancestor that lived about 3.5 billion years ago. So we only have evidence that life started only one time in earth's 4.5 billion years of existence. To me this is profound. But it gets even more profound when you consider that the universe itself is only 13.8 billion years old, which is only about three earth lifetimes. The first large chunk of the universe's existence was cooling down and creating higher elements in supernovae. If you take the Fermi paradox and accept that life only started one time in earth's 4.5 billion years... We might actually be alone in the universe.