It was sunny yesterday, O wonder of wonders. I spent the day painting the back porch. It’s a tiny porch, but has four different colors and a couple different wall textures and it kept my body occupied for hours.
But my mind had better other things it wanted to do.
—–
I found myself thinking about Amy Fischer, the “Long Island Lolita” and her main squeeze with the perfect tabloid name, Joey Buttafuoco. Why the heck would I be there in the sunshine thinking about some long-eclipsed “crime of the century”? I have no idea.
That’s so 1992.
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I thought about whether the “Starbucks for pot” would work out.
Great idea. But you gotta do something about that unpronounceable name.
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I thought this was the most hysterically funny headline I’ve seen all week.
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I was thinking about people who have no sense of responsibility. It scares me that about half of all the people I’ve hoped I could count on over the years don’t have one.
I wondered if the neighbor I just hired to trim shrubbery and cut brush would actually show up and do it. He seems bright, eager, and knowledgeable. But I realize I’ve quit expecting anything until I see it happen.
I thought about the first time, many years ago, that I got an inkling that a lot of people make promises they don’t try to keep. I was coordinating a community project and a young woman never showed up to do her bit. Nor could she be reached for days beforehand. It turned out she’d known all along she was going to be out of the country that week.
When I asked incredulously, “Why didn’t you let me know?” she shrugged as if anyone with a brain would understand. “It was only a volunteer project,” she sniffed.
I was too dumbstruck to ask, “So your word only counts when you’re getting paid?”
I sometimes wonder if I’m a self-righteous ass***e about things like this. It’s possible.
—–
I thought, “Nope, I’m not going to poke that hornet’s nest again.” But 35-year career Marine, Dr. Jimmy T. (Gunny) LaBaume, now he can poke at it all he wants
——
I wondered whether the Hancock clan’s new plan for their Freedom’s Phoenix newsletter will do well. After 24 issues focused on events in the world, they’re taking it more personal with articles like this on neighbors and suburban survivalism.
Great pix. Great ideas. Would like to see more words to make the concept clearer.
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I thought about Yahoo Mail going the way of Gmail. Sigh.
Funny that they ask their subscribers to consent to scanning and targeting of all their mail — but folks who merely write to their subscribers aren’t given a choice in the matter, even though they get just as thoroughly spied upon.
Before Gmail launched, I swore publicly that I’d never correspond with anybody with a Gmail address. It was an empty threat. So many people, including close friends, embraced Gmail that I never carried through (oops, does that mean my word can’t be counted on, either?).
Now I’m seriously thinking about renewing that pledge, for any known spyware email system. Maybe. Problem is, if the hints are true, there are darned few email systems that aren’t somebody’s spyware, these days.
Katherine Albrecht’s and StartPage’s StartMail sounds promising, though details are lacking at this point. Beta testers wanted (at the link).
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I thought about Potemkin prosperity. (H/T Wendy McElroy)
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I sent some thoughts (and hope you will, too) toward Bradley Manning, whose trial finally begins today. He’s already spent three years in durance vile, sometimes subject to inhumane conditions, and could spend the rest of his life in prison. All for trying to make government more open, just as the politicians are always promising to do.
—–
Then the sun headed down. I washed up my brushes, rollers, and pans. I admired the paint job for a while (as much as I was allowed to admire it with Ava dropping her tennis ball at my feet 3,000 times a minute, which she does any time I don’t appear occupied; she must think I’m stupid for being so slow to take her hints). Then my mind and I wandered on into the house, tired but satisfied.
Re: responsibility: “I sometimes wonder if I’m a self-righteous ass***e about things like this.”
No. But you are in the minority these days.
I signed up for info on StartMail and Beta testing. _Anything_ is better than what I currently have, and I do feel comfortable with StartPage.
I think I might switch as well, you aren’t the only friend of mine who hates g-mail.
The world is full of irresponsible people, a majority I’m sure. I finally gave up on expecting most people to do what they promise. Those few that always honor a commitment I treasure like the gems that they are.
I use gmail but only with an alias and I open new accounts and cancel old ones on a regular basis. When I open a new account it is always from behind a proxy that shows a country of origin other than my real one. I never use gmail for any purpose but obfuscation.
Hmm. Can I respond to the email bit without necessarily implying it’s all I read? Because it wasn’t…but:
It’s actually pretty easy to set up your own mail server. I use a Rackspace virtual server, because I move around a lot. FWIW they don’t have any passwords to the machine, and while I’m certain they could hack in if they wanted to spend the time, I’ve also modified the version of Linux it runs so their standard tools (that do things like creating a copy of the virtual machine for “backup” with a new root password) don’t work.
So…not perfect, but they’d probably have to be pressured by more than a simple subpoena to turn stuff over to anybody. And no company can mine that data.
Beyond that, I keep very little email on the server anyway. Anything more than a week or two old is either deleted or put in encrypted storage.
I use Postfix for the server, and I like Djigzo with it (Djigzo’s developer is a good guy and very responsive to questions). With this, I can:
1. create as many email addresses as I like.
2. sign and encrypt whatever I want, either in the normal and cumbersome way or via password-protected PDFs.
3. let people log in to create their own passwords, or send them via text messages for each document, or find another non-automated way.
So I do other things, like creating a unique email address for each company that wants one from me & auto-routing all mail to a single inbox (until I blacklist an address). I get to see who’s sharing my addresses with whom. And I have a domain that uses Gmail for email storage–but it still goes through my server, so all data on Gmail is encrypted & Google doesn’t have a key to decrypt it.
Anyway. The cost for this setup is a domain nanne (of which I have several anyway) and about $16/month. It took a few days to figure out, but I haven’t had to mess with it for months.
Might be worth thinking about?
Stupid fingers. Domain name, not nanne.
And it’s probably worth mentioning that the email addresses I use for companies require no setup at all. If Company X wants an address from me, I give them something like “companyx@mydomain.com” and it just works. I use Thunderbird for email, so I can actually set up an alias & appear to send from that address if I want to.
Okay, I’m done-er now.
My android phone requires gmail to operate so I just go with it for convenience purposes and because I’m already uncle sam’s indentured servant anyway…it’s hard to care anymore. I gotta imagine that there’s some dude that looks like the red stapler guy from office space that keeps track of what I read and buy and post on facebook and probably has a flash drive full of skype chats I’ve had with my girlfriends over the past 2 years. Kinda doesn’t bother me when in the here and now I’ve got some moron with a high and tight in my room on a Saturday sticking his hands in my face and screaming at me that I’m a slob and I’ll never amount to anything for having a small bit of garbage in my garbage can.
Either way…I would like a different one for actual correspondence
Thunderbird is that thing that plugs into firefox? I’m getting that…
On responsiblity, the lack of it is just another example of societal and cultural breakdown. I have observed that to many people, saying they will do something equates to doing it and they believe they should get equal credit for saying it as they would if they actually did it. Action and completion whether paid or free is not required. An example would be Obama promising to close GITMO. He believes promising to close it is as good as closing it and doesn’t understand why people call him a liar for not following through. A simpler example is when a family member tells me they will do the dishes. I normally reply, I don’t believe you. Experience has shown me that saying they will do something is not the same. It extends to proffesional services as well. Locally it is almost impossible to get a plumber to show up on time. The ones that do give you a 4-8 hour window and consider that reasonable.
I understand the angst about Email. It has been my personal belief for many years that electronic communications are compromised. The government can and will listen, copy, hack, decrypt etc anything they want to when they want to, constitution be damned. I also beleive the corporations that provide these services will do the same thing. I no longer gnash my teeth over it. I also believe that the good old snail-mail was monitored and read much more often than anyone ever expected. It is harder and slower to read paper mail and probably targeted, but is still done. Don’t discuss serious thing electronically and don’t mail your secret plans to your henchpersons.
Bradley Manning is screwed. I believe he is the patsy/fall guy for the government leaking their own information to the press. He got caught for a relatively minor leak and all the rest will be pinned on him. He is doomed.
Responsibility-
That one is covered by two of my “Unfortunate Truths”:
#2: No one ever does what they assure you they will do, and the more they assure you, the less likely it is they will do it.
#3: Nothing is ever as important to the other person as it is to you.
Winston- Thunderbird is an email client. Easy to use in multiple operating systems.
On Bradley Manning…I don’t have a lot of heroes left. He’s one of them, and it doesn’t really matter what he does from now on. The guy’s under tremendous pressure.
The best move the govtypes could make would be to enlist his aid in damage control. I hope for his sake they’re smart enough to offer him the chance. And I hope he takes it if they do.
OK, I know this comment is going to have many thinking I live under a rock and I just might. I had never heard of Startpage, nor of Katherine’s book on Spy Chips. After Claire posted something about it a while back I tracked down the book and read it. Now I can say I am truly scared for our privacy.. ignorance was bliss I guess.
Now ONLY use Startpage as my search engine swearing off Google for good. I know late, I am sure, but better late than never.
Strangely, I have never gravitated to gmail. I have an account because I needed it for a web service I signed up for a zillion years ago, but I have never logged into the account and never sent a single email from it. I never will.
A bit off topic here. I’ve just seen this captioned photo over at the Lib. Enterprise.
http://ncc-1776.org/
And I agree, compared to him Nixon’s a piker. Although they did have to start somewhere, for precedent.
The folks behind Ixquick have a mail service? I must look into this.
(No, my gmail is not my normal mail. Just something I can through up for people who only know my Interwebz pseudonym.)
Did the painting make you think more, or did the thinking make you paint more? Either way, you got a lot done all at once.
I must be missing something as to the whole privacy thing. I can’t imagine anyone being interested in my emails or whatever I search for online. I’m pretty boring, in a sly kinda way. I am somewhat guilty of purposely searching for something that may raise someone’s eyebrows, once in a while. But I really think no one cares what I do or where I go.
I can understand how other people may have to be careful. My online activities are pretty boring, and it’s meant to be that way 🙂
An Android phone doesn’t require gmail to operate. I’ve had mine for over a year, and still no Google account at all — no Gmail, Blogger, Picasa, or any other Google-owned properties. And, BTW, I wouldn’t have gotten the thing at all had I not put my old phone through the wash — it was a stressed out week, and I wasn’t in the mood for taking the time to do the right thing and find a used phone to replace it. And I figured at some point there’d be almost no choice anyway.
The vast majority of people I know either are oblivious or don’t care about the privacy issues involved with using a service such as Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo!. I once had a guy put my e-mail address into evite.com, and then get pissed at me when I called him on it. This is the typical level of concern I encounter. The people I do encounter who have some realization about privacy — most of them shrug with the justification that it’s already too late. This is the Scott McNeally response. “Get over it.”
It’s a lot of effort to safeguard privacy these days. Very few people will go to even the simple lengths I do to combat web tracking, so I don’t expect very many people to set up their own mail server. I could do it, but most people aren’t into being a sysadmin. I don’t do it, because the price of a COTSE account is pretty small.
The worst thing about web-based e-mail is that there’s no good way to do encrypted e-mail, that I’ve heard of. What the web needs is a browser plugin that lets you hightlight any text in a text box, and encrypt / ascii-armor it in place. For that work, JavaScript would need to be enabled, and that violates another of my privacy / security constraints for web stuff, but most web mail doesn’t work with JavaScript these days anyway, so anyone using Gmail etc. is already just leaving it enabled.
Meanwhile, here in CO, our DNA-swab law has been found Constitutional. Yay!
So, for some comic relief, I thought I saw something earlier today about diving dogs competition, and couldn’t find the specific item, but I guess it’s a national deal these days. http://www.dockdogs.com/dockdogs-events.html
Also, do you think Ava would enjoy the playground?
http://cheezburger.com/7533499136
If we’re going to be talking about taking pet out for some fun, how about teaching your dogs to fly.
http://www.reviewjournal.com/columns-blogs/ron-kantowski/high-flying-dogs-make-big-splash
Some of those dogs can really take off.
I have several email friends that I’ve given up on trying to get them to use the BCC: function when they are sending out emails. And/or taking out all the address info from the body of messages that came to them through multiple forwards.
Interestingly enough it is the *women* that are the biggest offenders of the above.
I wrote this article about privacy (although Strike-the-root seems to be having problems lately):
http://strike-the-root.com/privacy-conundrum
I have bought a private email service, neomailbox.net. I haven’t broken away from my old provider yet (on my to-do list) but neomailbox’s fielding of my support questions has been very poor, I am sad to report. It sorta removes the incentive to switch over.