To … erm, brighten your day. (Source — and H/T REW)
Category: Free speech
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…
I don’t have to tell you that this isn’t the sort of “roundup” where you get to go, “Yipee-i-o-kyaaay!” It’s the sort where you go, “OMG, what will learn next about these creeping, peeping totalitarians?” Some of the newest nooz: Got a smartphone? NSA can get your data. Not yet a mega-scooping data project; they have to really want your particular data to get it. Mega-scooping? That comes next year, no doubt. And when it comes it’ll be with the help of “Mr. Civil Rights” Obama himself. Seems two years ago the secret court, responding to a secret request, made…
(Source) This Labor Day morning I found myself singing one of the greatest working-man songs ever. “Sixteen Tons” found its perfect voice in Tennessee Ernie Ford, who made a bazillion dollars off it in the 1950s. A few years earlier, its original author/singer didn’t fare so well. He got a visit from the feds, among other things. For writing a subversive song and being a “communist sympathizer” (though in fact songwriter Merle Travis was a patriotic country boy). Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Today the armed hysterics would just use different terminology about people they fear. —-…
Yikes. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be away from the blog this long. Expected to be back with you by Sunday afternoon, but each time I hoped to sit down at the computer, chaos piled on the chaos that was already piled on top of the chaos. And that on top of an Internet connection that’s extremely sketchy and drops entirely every five or 10 minutes. So give me a couple more days to really get coherent, please. By Wednesday I should also have a functioning ‘Net connection, too. Knock wood. Cross fingers. Throw salt over shoulder. Burn incense to…
Carl-Bear (who occasionally traffics in science fiction) makes his best guess about what Elon Musk’s mysterious new “hyperloop” transportation system will be. And finds it familiar. One more (rather weird) way that the rich are different than the poor. Different toxins in their bodies. Government forces one privacy option out of business (in the creepiest way). A new privacy option is born. Not in the U.S. of course. Nobody in their right mind would base a privacy service in the U.S. from here on out. Small business? The IRS wants to know what you’re doing with your cash — and…
Beware. Stewart Rhodes and Dan Johnson the latest targets, but not the first. Via Sipsey Street. As the Dutchman notes, this is probably an “Empire Strikes Back” attempt. But even if it’s only a “friends of the empire” trick, it’s a filthy dangerous one.
Well, look at that. Here all these years you thought Microsoft products were just buggy. But where the NSA and MS are concerned, those aren’t bugs; they’re features. (H/T H) New: Prism-Break.org. Products to use instead of the Usual Suspects.* One of those is StartPage, of course. And while you’re in the position of having to take their word for it, this is a pretty good statement of principle. Why skipping college could be a good idea. And UnCollege.org. Jim Bovard (that is, Mr. Bovard, according to the WSJ bio; have I been too informal all these years?) on the…
Just in case you were wondering — you know, for future use and all — at least two publications have recently weighed in on the best places to seek asylum from the U.S. government. Business Insider has a list. But then, they would. They’re a bit (a bit!) sensationalistic and love to come up with pictorial twists on things in the news. Really surprised me, though when the staid old National Geographic came up with such a list. Some crossover, some differences, in their choices. Did you ever think you’d see the day when seeking asylum or “defecting” from the…
Anybody who grew up in a dysfunctional family knows one of the cardinal rules: The person who mentions a problem is the person who caused the problem. Let some low-on-the-family-totem-pole person raise a destructive issue that’s hidden in plain sight and all hell breaks loose. No, the family doesn’t suddenly wake up and say, “OMG, you’re right. We have to do something about that!” Instead, everyone within earshot rounds on the poor sap who dared mention the family secret and the bullying begins: “Why are you always such a troublemaker?” “If you’d just learn to keep your mouth shut, everything…