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Category: Privacy and self ownership

Owning our own information and telling Big Brother to get lost

Tuesday links

Published April 4, 2017 8:58 am by Claire
  • Will Obamacare really require Dominos Pizza franchises to post calorie counts for 34 million potential variations of pizza? Kevin D. Williamson examines the profit-killing absurdities.
  • Yet another court justifies yet another literally unwarranted shooting-by-cop. Hershel Smith turns up the outrage.
  • More on Tim Berners-Lee’s plan to re-create his monster creation, the worldwide web. He wants to return its power to the people.
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    • Midweek links

    Published March 28, 2017 1:50 pm by Claire
  • A civil rights lawsuit is in the works against warrantless searches of laptops and cellphones. According to the article there were as many such searches last month as there were in all of 2015.
  • You might think it would be a waste of money for the National Park Service to spend $150,000 on Bigfoot research. But rest assured the money isn’t entirely wasted. It’s also covering research on sea monsters and mysterious lights.
  • This demonstrates exactly how dumb “smart” appliances are. A brand-new dishwasher with a security bug that was the hottest new thing … 20 years ago.
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    • Weekend links

    Published March 26, 2017 2:42 pm by Claire
  • Thanks to a link Shel dropped into comments on my “Theda’s Kin” post, I fell down a rabbit hole of the brain’s striking ability to make accurage snap judgments. Here’s a short version of what Shel was getting at: how we can tell criminals from non-criminals with only their faces to go by. And similar accuracy turns out to apply with our “gaydar,” “mordar,” etc. (What’s mordar, you may ask? Why, it’s our unusual ability to quickly recognize Mormoms, even when they’re not walking up to our doors wearing suits and ID badges.)
  • But then, sometimes, as in this short story, identity is a trickier matter. (H/T. MJR)
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    • Friday links

    Published March 24, 2017 10:30 am by Claire
  • Utah adopts the nation’s lowest blood-alcohol limit for DUIs. This affects gun owners, too. And may soon infect many more states, as the NTSB recommends the (absurd) limit. Do I smell a government looking for more opportunities to make money by creating new offenders?
  • How the fedgov made health care more expensive and made heroin cheaper.
  • Flash story: “The High Cost of Contact.” Favors delivered by force do tend to be expensive. (H/T MJR)
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    • Life in the microwave lane

    Published March 20, 2017 11:46 am by Claire

    The dog is just because. —– After a scattered and exhausting weekend, I woke up today to a long email from a friend that reminded me of the connections between freedom, creativity, and spiritual strength. I breathed deeply, grateful for the message. I resolved to refocus. My resolve lasted until I went to give the critters their breakfast and discovered the microwave was dead. I ended up focusing on DIY repair sites for a while. Along the way, I ran into this snarky article, “How to Turn Your Microwave Into a Camera.” The title of the just-posted Advertising Age piece…

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    Midweek links

    Published March 14, 2017 12:55 pm by Claire
  • A (semi) mainstreamer observes that there really is a liberal media bubble and tries to understand why.
  • The residents of Trier, Germany, don’t seem to want that gift statue of Karl Marx. But not because … well, you know, Marx. And the hundreds of millions of deaths his ideas led to. But because they don’t like the giver.
  • Which is more unjust? That a possible war criminal got away with it for decades? Or that “justice” now calls for extraditing a 98-year-old man?
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    • Outlaws of the Endarkenment

    Published March 10, 2017 2:06 pm by Claire

    Endarkenment. Been hearing that word a lot — most recently in this must-read Bill Buppert piece. (Via Joel) Barring some one-in-a-million chance, we are sliding into a long, dark time. When you have an intellectual class that’s gone insane, a wealthy elite that’s building bunkers for itself while looting the last of your liberty and prosperity, and a crusading enemy breeding new generations of superstitious intolerance, you don’t have a lot to build a future on. Unless it’s a future of rage, savagery, and chaos. But then, look on the bright side. The Endarkenment is a great age for Outlaws.…

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