Yes but that won’t teach him how to do it. And just downloading something is fraught with peril and confusion. Then whatever I download will probably periodically bug him to update or something, and he’ll send me a panicky email every time that happens.
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There are some good charities. Check out GiveWell.
I’ve given them tons of money over the years and never received a single phone call, mailer, or even email, FYI.
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Either ubuntu or mint I think.
The one good thing I use Facebook for is a Facebook Birthday Charity Drive for GiveDirectly and the only way I found it is through effective altruism.
I believe there is pretty good resesrch into cognitive games and puzzles showing a decrease in future decline of those functions. Id look into that. There are a number of apps that purport to do things like that but I havent (yet) looked into which are the best.
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My work will match my donations to charity up to 10k / year. We’ve started giving every paycheck to a local diaper bank. It’s a common need (‘Down to My Last Diaper’: The Anxiety of Parenting in Poverty - KFF Health News), I don’t think they have a marketing budget, and they don’t have our names anyways. I’m quite happy some parents don’t have to make horrible choices to stretch diapers or not pay some other necessity.
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Eh, for a lot of laptops it’s even more straightforward than upgrading RAM on a desktop, since there’ll usually be one specific panel to unscrew and expose the slots, less room to get lost and mess something up. If it’s a popular enough model to have a YT video for it she’ll be fine, assuming she actually buys the right DIMM.
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Have her go to https://www.crucial.com/ from her laptop. It will tell her exactly what is possible.
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My dad called the other day (from his landline) and said he was feeling so sick he could die. After a brief panic attack with thoughts immediately going to Covid, it became clear that he wasn’t actually sick he was just upset. He lost his cell phone and was up all night searching his apartment. I had taken him for an ultrasound and labs the day before, so I called the hospital and had them check around all the nurse stations and lost & founds without any luck. Checked my car and nothing there. Of course we made sure that he had called himself and walked around his apartment listening for the ring, which he said he did like 20 times. He insisted that he had turned his apartment upside down and it wasn’t there. So my wife left work and went over to his apartment because I was in meetings all day, rings his cell once, and immediately hears the cell phone ringing in the cushion of the recliner lol.
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If my parents ever told me this I would have never stopped laughing.
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Curiously what kind of phone is it? On iPhone you have find my iPhone that you can use to beep it until you find it. For this situation it would also tell you where the phone is so you would know it is still at home and not at a different location. I assumed Android had similar utility.
It’s one of the worlds last in use non-smart flip phones.
Where’s My Droid. You can set it up with a code that you text to it and it will ring, give you its gps location, and some other stuff
Ah…okay then 
Just a thought as a gift or something if you think he can handle the upgrade. You can keep tabs on him and your phone then.
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Is he getting his hearing checked?
This is a man that still uses his VCR even though he has cable service with DVR.
He was literally a rocket scientist and has advanced degrees in engineering lol.
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Just got to do it. I thought my mom was never going to get with the times but I got her an iPhone and an iPad mini and she became a candy crush addict.
She was a technophobe for sixty plus years before that.
My thoughts are maybe get her one as a gift and she might feel because it’s a gift she has to give it a go.
Otherwise if you can find some use that ties into her interests that would be good too. Yeah
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Yeah if grand kids in play video calls seem no brainer even if not she might want to see her kids face.
Oldmadspartan (MSU ‘55)
Was a teacher, a businessman, and the last 20 years president of a small town bank.
Still vulnerable to scams online. He in his late 80s and a young neighbor (75) Google and searched about kindle repair and called the number. The guy in the phone let convinced dad to let him take remote control of his computer and install some anti virus software for the low price of $300. (Wtf the computer had nothing to do with his kindle).
Was quite the effort to get them to back off. His credit card company, US Bank was not sympathetic. Finally brow beat them to deny the charge.
And fuck Google for that site to be the first hit. Fucking scam.
Oh and fuck apple for not allowing remote control of his iPad. Trying to trouble shoot a 90+ year old with macular degeneration is a nightmare.
But those devices are his lifeline to the world. He can’t read regular print anymore.
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So turned out dad had some sort of gastrointestinal cyst or something like that. Apparently his red blood cell count was basically in half. Made it home from Michigan, but went straight back into the hospital for now to look over him.
Back in April dad had to go to the same hospital for something else unrelated. Mom said service at that time was excellent. Service this time was terrible. Apparently dad had to wait in the waiting room for 5 hours where he was continually getting worse before they could see him. Hmm…what has changed since April???
HEY FUCK ALL YOU MOTHERFUCKING ANTIVAXXERS! YOU WANTING TO DIE HURTS OTHER PEOPLE AS WELL! FUCK YOU!
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