You’ve heard of Bridezilla. And the Wedding Guest from Hell. Now meet The Mad Bomber Groom. Guess you gotta give him points for creativity. Not brains. Definitely not brains. But creativity.
Death panels. Not a good thing. But yes, they’re real (Hellllooo, Canada!). And in the eyes of those who think we’re too stupid to make our own decisions, they are a good thing. (Terms like slippery slope and camel’s nose come to mind here.)
You can filter spam. Your grandmother can filter spam. Thunderbird can filter spam. Everybody and his uncle’s ISP can filter spam. The NSA … not so much.
So go. Monkeywrench away. Instead of abandoning Gmail and Hotmail and all those other snoop-ready services, you can, should you so choose, make the very, very best of them.
I’m working on one of those Big Idea blogs. Not sure how long it’ll take to bring form out of the void. In the meantime, here’s some cheer. All these are related to the piece I’m working on.
The first three images I stole from Ragnar’s Freedom Outlaw page — the only thing on Facebook worth bothering with.
Next, here’s one from Random Acts of Patriotism. I never visited that site before, so I can’t vouch for its POV. But it did win my favor by linking to this article noting that v*ters have a higher opinion of hemorrhoids than Congress. (See, not all v*ters are stupid.) Anyhow, I grabbed this from there:
And finally, here’s a report from old online friend Shorty Dawkins (now of Oath Keepers) about the weekend’s takedown of Obama’s Barrycades in DC. Got some good pix there, including this one:
“Dogs are people, too.” At least in their abilities to feel and anticipate — something that will come as no surprise to anybody who’s lived with them, but is apparently news in neuroscience. (Tip o’ hat to MLS)
Federal theater of the absurd. (I also agree with Carl that the Crazy Horse monument is so superior to Mt. Rushmore in every way that even after the silly feddies remove the barriers I’d still just drive on past and watch free enterprise at work a few miles down the road.)
Erm … I don’t usually read Glamour. But I found this heartfelt smackdown of a money-hungry bride on a forum I frequent. Even as a young girl, I hated the notion of weddings; these days when they’ve become big excuses to put families into debt while the couple collects big cash gifts, this response from a guest is a touch of sanity.
Here’s another “non-journalist who wouldn’t be entitled to First Amendment freedom-of-press protections if TPTB have their way.
You may have heard that the dollar ain’t worth sh*t these days. Well ….
And finally, here are three from the Commentariat: How to tell your mother and your boss why they should object to the surveillance state; Choosing the gun that’s right for you; and seriously now, here’s some Pollyanna in rose-colored glasses on some serious mind-altering drugs who sees benefits in the surveillance state. (H/T finders, one and all!)
Ever since Pamela Jones shut down Groklaw and announced she was not only abandoning the site but quitting the Internet entirely in light of the Edward Snowden revelations, I’ve been thinking about this.
At the time, though I found her reasons poignant and pertinent, I thought she was overreacting. Now, I don’t know.
Personally, I’m not on the verge of quitting. A big part of my life is here. And all of my career (such as it is) is here. That’s been true since 1986 when a client bought me my first 300-baud modem and set it up so I could electronically submit stories to him. It was certainly true in 1993 when I met my Significant Sweetie (now ex, but still friend) on a FIDOnet gun-rights bulletin board. It’s definitely true now when I’d likely starve to death and blow away without the ‘Net.
Still, I think most of us (and most notably a lot of tech types hereabouts) feel the temptation.
We’ve always been independent sorts around here. We avoid being messed with by power trippers. If we can’t avoid, we “mess back.” But right now, there’s nothing we can do to counter the electronic offenses being committed against us and against freedom by the UberGoverment whose all-probing eye peers out from Mordor on the Potomac.
Oh, sure, we can play the old “keyword” game with our emails. (There’s even a new Firefox/Chrome browser add-on to let us do the same thing with URLs and HTTP headers now.) That’s fun. And it’s always true that irritating and misdirecting the bastards is worthwile, even (or perhaps especially) as tyranny grows. We can also use GPG, dump Windows for Linux, use TOR, etc. etc. etc. And eventually heroic tech wizards may save us — and the Internet — from NSAuron.
But now …? Now …? Now we seem to be faced with using dodges that may or may not help or simply shrugging and going on because, realistically, there’s not much else to do. So …
Would you quit the Internet? If so, what would you do instead? If not, how do you adapt to knowing that everything you do online (or on the phone) is probably recorded and analyzed, even if it then disappears into the maw of a datacenter’s godzillabyte storage capacity, never to be seen again?
—–
Now, that said, I’m “quitting the Internet” for the next three days. I may pop in to post some cute dog pictures tomorrow, and I’ll check in to moderate comments at least once a day. Otherwise, I’m away for a bit from the Bad News Net.
Swarms of tabs are buzzing ’round my head again. Some contain news that fills me with such loathing I can’t decide whether to blog about it or run for cover. I’ll avoid the most loathsome for now and merely blog the good, the bad, the indifferent, and the funny to clear my browser and my head.
The NSA disguised itself as Google to enable even more spying. Part of me says this is bad in the same sense that the CIA’s longstanding practice of disguising its agents as journalists is bad (for the health of actual journalists). Part of me sez, “Hey. Wait. You mean somebody still thinks Google isn’t the NSA?”
Got an E-Z Pass (or your local equivalent of one)? You’ll be very unsurprised to learn that you’re not solely being tracked at tollbooths. Article applies only to NYC, but was sent by S, who’s pretty sure the same thing’s happening where he is, also. Convenience. Why do we expect we’ll never be made to pay — and pay and pay — for it?
Oh goodie. Our Masters now want to decide who’s an authorized journalist and who isn’t. If this goes anywhere, those without a federal stamp of approval would not be entitled to First Amendment freedom-of-the-press protections. Hm. We’ll see about that …
News of the weird: Did the Vatican steal Jesus’s … um, body part?
Oh well, gotta laugh about it all. Here, thanks to Brian Wilson, is the ObamaCare version of the Capitol Steps’ “Ten Pills and You’re Fine”:
