Open Thread - Wednesday November 11, 2015
Good Morning 99%'ers!
I am a dinosaur. I do not think of myself as being backwards or out of date, but I am a dinosaur. Mentally and emotionally, I like to think of myself as being forward thinking. I do not particularly like nostalgia. I am not one who spouts off about the good old days or looks down upon those younger than me. In fact, I embrace them and think they are far smarter than I am about what they want to see in their world and I should not stand in their way with obsolete thinking or ideas.
But technologically, I am a dinosaur. I saw that at my high school reunion this past weekend. Everyone was using their smart phones to take pictures and I had just gotten my very first smart phone one week ago. So I am still clueless as to how to use everything on it. You who are reading this are probably incredulous. How can anyone go this long and never have a smart phone? Who are you woman? Did you just crawl out from under a rock or what? Well, I plead guilty. Yep, that's me.
My friend, Sharon who was the chair of the reunion committee is affectionately known to all of her friends as the gadget queen. If a new gadget, appliance or technology comes out, she is the first to have it and is a whiz at using it, whatever "it" is. Meanwhile, I was perfectly comfortable with my old fashioned flip phone. It was small. It fit easily in the back pocket of my jeans. It was lightweight. You know all the excuses. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
There were times when I wished I had a smart phone to access emails, or the internet to check on weather when I was away from home. But overall, I was content to be a blissfully ignorant dinosaur. And then it happened. It was the offer I could not ignore and so I pulled the trigger and got a smart phone.
For now, the smart phone is a heck of a lot smarter than its owner, but I intend to not let it get the upper hand. I will learn how to use it and use it well. Perhaps that will temporarily relieve me of the burden of being just another dinosaur until the next technological innovation comes around.
Now for a little musical interlude from the days when phones were much dumber and life was a little simpler.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPu_G-T28iU]
Surveillance has become a part of our daily lives, even more than most of us would want to believe. The tools of surveillance are being used in extremely intrusive ways that can affect the way in which we go about our daily lives. The genii was let out of the bottle long before we even were aware of it and there appears to be no way to combat it. The security industry has become big business and has been marketed under the guise of keeping us safe. We are being watched everywhere and it has become so ubiquitous that most of us do not even care any more.
Even if you are not bothered by the speciousness of the legal justifications, or you are already desensitized to government invasion of your privacy, there is a danger grounded in everything we have learned about how humans respond when put in positions of unchecked power.
Small things can become large when they begin to affect too many people negatively. Recently, the City of Tallahassee decided to remove the highly unpopular red light cameras which had been installed at several major intersections five years ago. While marketed by the vendors and sold to the public as being a safety measure, it was, in effect, an intrusion into our lives that generated revenue for the state and the vendors. One of my main objections to the red light cameras was based upon the fact that the owner of the car was being ticketed, instead of the driver.
The cameras were derided by critics as a cash grab by the city when they went live in the summer of 2010. But the program turned out to be anything but — most of the money went to the state of Florida and the vendor who installed and maintained them, Affiliated Computer Services, which later was acquired by Xerox.
As of December 2013, red-light cameras in Tallahassee generated $6.3 million. About $3 million went to the state of Florida, $2.8 million went to the vendor, and less than $500,000 went to the city's general fund.
The red light cameras were removed in September and the event gave a brief respite to all those drivers angered by them. But this small victory may not be permanent as the City of Tallahassee has put the public on notice that if violations increase, the cameras may be reinstalled. But still, the idea that big brother is always watching is something that no one should ever be comfortable with.
I recently read this article from the Intercept about how the United States government has surveillance blimps hovering over the streets of Kabul and how it has affected the lives of those who reside there.
"I was informally told by the PR person at the embassy that I didn’t have the right to shoot it. And I was like oh, wow, I’m not allowed to shoot the sky? Really? Even though it’s in every one of my shots? Then I started asking people on the street what they thought it was, and what it meant to them. People said things like, “It can see underground.” “It can see underneath burqas.” To some people it was feeling like a transgression in their lives. Then other people totally didn’t care. They thought it was completely ineffective. That god is much more powerful than this little thing in the sky. So there was a huge spectrum of responses to it. I’ve long been a person who’s thought about what Foucault wrote about Jeremy Bentham and the Panopticon, and these institutions where you create setups for people feeling like they’re being watched all the time, even if they’re not necessarily being watched all the time."
Now I have my smart phone and as a result, more than ever before, I am being surveilled by a government so paranoid of its own people that it must know everything about me that it does not already know through legal means. My smart phone just made it a little easier for them to collect even more data on me than they already have. Will this genii ever be pushed back into the bottle? Despite this recent ruling, I doubt it.
Reiterating his prior ruling which found the U.S. government's surveillance of civilians' telephone records to be unconstitutional—"Orwellian," even—a federal judge on Monday ordered the National Security Agency to halt its bulk collection program.
"This court simply cannot, and will not, allow the government to trump the Constitution merely because it suits the exigencies of the moment," Judge Richard Leon wrote in his 43-page decision in the case Klayman v. Obama.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMOGaugKpzs]
So what is on your mind this morning?
Comments
The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month
marks the end of the Great War, the War
to End All Wars .... Today marks the 97th
anniversary of the Armistice that ended
that war. I can't help but wonder what
will mark the end of the United States'
pugnaciously declared
GlobalWorld War of 2001.Just feeling somber this morning. Thanks
for the OT, gulfgal.
Only connect. - E.M. Forster
Thank you, dancing rabbit
I seriously debated about writing about Veteran's Day and war, but felt that I could not do it justice. My recently deceased father fought in World War II with the 1st Marine Division in Okinawa. He never wanted to talk about it, although later in his life, he wrote a brief memoir that he sent to the Marine Corps archives.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Good Morning, gg, excellent OT,
from one dinosaur to the next, I think we are soul sisters. So far I have not yet succumbed to buy a smart phone, but I will and I am not happy about it.
For me it's even worse, because I refuse to use facebook's messaging system, all the young folks in my extended family do. I can't get them to email me, instead they try to force me to use facebook albeit not consciously. I simply can't believe why the majority of them is so naive and trusting, when it comes to the privacy surveillance activities on the net.
Surveillance is everywhere and I consider it a gross violation of my privacy. Too much of the internet interactions between user and content providers are grossly disrespectful of your "private spaces and your dignity". I am the most harmless dinosaur on earth, yet I am surveilled as if I am going to be your friendly grandma con-artist terrorist next door. To be forced to use a technology that is that much in violation of privacy rights is just unacceptable. I foresee major civic problems arising out of that situation. I think, once it is too late, people will strongly oppose the technology. But then it's too late and there will be huge suffering because of it. As JtC said yesterday, you can check out, but you can never leave. It was a funny response by him, but actually, it's not really funny to be imprisoned by your technology and watched every second of your earthly existence and moves. I just seem to hate it more than the average person.
Really loved your OT today.
Check out but never leave
is from Hotel California by the Eagles. It is a wonderful line from a great song and it would definitely apply here in this Open Thread.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrfhf1Gv4Tw]
I use Facebook to keep up with old friends, but to me it is not a great vehicle for real conversation. I figure that I am already on some government list for being in Occupy and the local Peace vigil. So I am probably already branded by the NSA.
Thank you for your comment, mimi!
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Good morning~
The government must be awfully disappointed in my smart phone usage. It almost never leaves the house, it doesn't give them restaurant pics of attractive food...just a few texts on where my kid is, and some art pics. How dull for them! I do toss in the random "fuck you, Keith" whilst I'm chatting on my landline, you never know who's listening.
I got a ridiculous complaint in the Snowden fb group--when they joined they expected a lot more info on Snowden and what he's doing and less on security and such. So, I'm guessing he's another fanboi who actually isn't very privacy minded. I'm tempted to ask: well, perhaps you think somebody should spy on Snowden to keep you informed, yes? oy.
I shave my legs with Occam's Razor~
I love it!
This deserves a big thumbs up!
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Good morning everyone....
Thanks for doing the OT this am. Thinking of my deceased father on this day, his birthday. It is a somber day.
I'm glad you enjoy your class reunions. I avoid mine like the plague. While I certainly had a lot of friends in HS from many different grade levels and cliques, many of them grew up and turned into Teapots. I even block them on FB because I just don't want to hear or see their right-wing posts, pro-Hillary pledges, and pictures of their food. I tend to be introverted, selective abut who I call a friend, and anti-human anyway. Give me a choice between an ATM and a person, and I'll take the ATM anytime. I sound like a profile for the disgruntled loner. Good thing I'm not a young, white male in a militia.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
The way I look at it
Each of us has to be true to our ownselves. Afterall, the only person we have to live with 24/7 is our ownself! Good for you for doing just that dk.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I like this story - to distract you a little bit
Japan researchers find chimps caring for disabled infant
I find that resembles human behavior. Mothers who take care of their severely disabled children often won't accept their own care to be replaced by an outside caretaker. I had such an example very close in my family and though the care of that disabled child (could not sit, not eat, needed pampers changed, not speak among others) was her life's overwhelming task for almost 40 years, it was very hard for the aging mother to let go the child into a near-by care-taking facility (which she could visit her child in daily) for the last two years of that child's life. Nobody would be able to take care of that child like her, that was accepted fact.
Animals are a totally different story.
I love animals, particularly furry ones.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Young people staying home, staying single
link
I just have to send your graphs to my daughter.
She has a middle child that I think in a part of that.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Oddly, this data syncs with
the marital habits of our entire family (for decades). Some of it had to do with pursuing advanced degrees; some of it, due to a preference for enjoying our independence for a bit longer.
Mr M and I married the youngest in two generations--age 26. Most of our family members were in their early to mid-thirties, which, admittedly, was a bit of an anomaly when my parents married in the early 1940's. But honestly, I've never thought that marriage in one's mid-twenties was particularly odd--at least, not for the Boomer generation, forward.
Bottom line, I think that this is truly a 'positive' trend.
Mollie
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."--Helen Keller
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Democracy's big win in Myanmar
link
interesting to see daily kos being dragged by Bernie movement
the old he said/she said of subjective politics is getting harder to maintain and the issues are dominating even dailykos
issues like TPP could be used by the corporate media to understand why legislative branch has a 10% approval rating.
Neither one of us
has a smart phone. Shahyrar has a flip phone and we have a land line that nobody calls on except scammers and bill collectors. Nice OT thank you gulfgal. I don't believe for one minute that smart phones are smart. I also think that computers are freaking dumb. Is intelligence nothing more then binary data? Data itself doesn't seem like the be all of intelligence. Perhaps turning our brains over to digital gadgets makes humans stupider. The constant stream of information certainly seems to numb them to the reality of the world they inhabit. Used to be when someone walked around talking and shouting to themselves you thought they were mentally ill. These days it just means they have a blue tooth in their ear. As for security forgetaboutit. The watchers in the sky, wires and airwaves do not make anyone more secure.
What is security anyway? To secure a more perfect union? There is nothing secure about life at all as it is a temporal condition. They took away our hard won human and civil rights. Those inalienable self evident truths which gave us all some security from the evil fucks who now watch our every move. In exchange we now can have a refrigerator that tells us when we need to buy more milk or a smart phone that allows you to snap a picture of your meal in a restaurant and share it digitally with your friends. The Luddite 'primitive' people who think that a camera steals your soul have a point. We seem to have no respect for boundaries cultural, personal or societal. Is this progress?
I guess I'm an anti-science Luddite. I say as sit in front of my computer contributing to the addictive stream of binary babble. Think I'll get some coffee and wire myself so I can wrestle with trying to impose my intuitive creations on a stupid machine. Automated software that tells me I have to color within the lines some mad geek programmer has devised to draw a circle or cut out a shape. Once I move the pixels around in the software's paths and layer and lock the damn thing the intelligent machine is going to fling the tortured circle into a file that will be impossible to move or find. I hope that the watchers have as much trouble connecting the dots as I do. Snowden a former watcher, read between the lines and stepped out of line and look what happened to him.
Have a good analog day everyone and see you all later.
Well,
I still drive a stick shift and so does my husband. Mine is 2003 PT Cruiser and he drives a 2000 Ford F150. It is almost impossible to find a truck with a stick shift now so we keep hoping that the truck stays viable for a long time.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Good morning! Sort of.
I spent the morning hanging out with my laid up friend (the one who got hit by a car). Luckily she's not too bad off, but she does need help getting from appointment to appointment, which is why I'm over her place today. Even though the air conditioning took a nosedive a few days ago.
I can handle heat. Spent a couple of days in the field in Panama on a survival course, back in my Army days. Heat, humidity, unrelenting rain (yay, rainy season). Ended up passing the course barefoot, with an empty poncho that once held a few wild chickens that I had caught, cooked, and eaten along the way, and my waterlogged boots. My uniform...that was a disaster. It was not fun peeling it off. But it was a fun experience and I didn't freak out.
Whenever Veterans Day or Memorial Day pops around, my Facebook feed explodes with my old Army buddies posting things, and other friends of mine who were veterans. I look at the few old pics that I had, and think, "Damn, we were young back then". And then my mind goes to July 23rd, 1999. The night I lost five friends. Army releases names of soldiers killed in Colombia crash. The news pissed me off, because it was all JFK Jr. all over, and next to nothing about my friends.
Captain Odom was my OIC (officer in charge) when I worked in the S3 shop. She was the first person from my unit, D Co 204th MI BN, that I had met when we ended up at the Replacement Detachment at Fort Kobbe, Panama. We worked together for a year. She was your typically stern West Pointer, but she was cool and fair and always had my back.
Captain Santiago was a cool guy, young officer type--everyone loved him.
CW2 Moore and I had beers once or twice...he was a really funny dude (though, to be honest, most warrants were). Kind of like Jeff Foxworthy.
Bruce and Ray were the first two enlisted guys who I had met when I signed up at the unit. They convinced me to join them at the NCO club that first night, even though I didn't want to go. They were great guys.
The 204th was a small unit. It may have been a Battalion sized element on paper, but it was probably the size of your typical platoon in a division. Everyone knew each other, everyone was generally cool with one another. Being a military intelligence unit, we had a lot of leeway on how we operated. This was during the height of DADT, and we had several lesbian and gay soldiers who the brass left alone. The night before I ETS'ed (End Term of Service--basically headed back to civilian life or reserve service, for the uninitiated), there was this huge going away party for me. I'm not going to lie, but yeah--the waterworks were in full effect. But that's how the 204th was--it was family.
I really do miss those good old days.
Wow!
What a wonderful and sad story! Thank you for sharing it with us. You have lived and are living a very interesting life, cybrestrike!
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Heartbreaking story.
but love the way you tell it, cybrestrike. Do you ever consider writing a book one day?
There is some incredibly good storytelling just in this small post.
Hope your friend is on the mend and making a good recovery.
Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.-Lucy Parsons
It's like your post reached out
and squoze my heart.
I shave my legs with Occam's Razor~
I appreciate your tribute to your Army buddies, Cybrestrike.
Let me add that in my decades of federal service I had the honor of knowing many soldiers (Army) and airmen (USAF) who were very good and decent folks, too.
Some suffered ergregious injuries--like one of my Army Officer superiors who had a steel plate in his head from an injury in Vietnam; or, the 20-year-old airman that I saw in the hospital critical care unit with burns over close to 95% of his body, who was medevaced to the Brooke Army Medical Center, the Army's premier burn unit, at Fort Sam Houston, TX.
I saw the solider after a kerosene heater exploded on him during a USAF winter arctic exercise (Alaska) at 60 degrees below zero.
At any rate, it is my feeling that the military members that I dealt with believed that they were serving the great good. Your words were more eloquent than mine could ever had been. So, again, thanks.
Mollie
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."--Helen Keller
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
Quotes
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason.
But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right."
- John Kenneth Galbraith, Age of Uncertainty
“Misdeeds, once exposed, have no refuge but in audacity. And they have accomplices in those who are fearful in their complicity.”
-Tacitus, Annals
Greetings All! Thanks for this topic, Nancy--I'm the 'Gadget
Lady' in our family--can't get enough of 'bells and whistles' (electronically), so I'm usually relegated the duty of doing the research into the latest electronic 'gadgetry' whenever we make an electronic purchase.
We are required to have more than one carrier, and I have found that prepaid service is a much better deal--especially if you need to travel a bit, and go in and out of various service areas. (And, if you don't mind buying your own phones.)
Two of our most used carriers will not pick up in the area of our family firm (hundreds of miles from us), but, luckily, another carrier--a backup, which only costs $2 per day, unlimited usage--is great in the area. So, it is not a costly option. And, there is no cost, if you don't need to use the service.
It sure beats what happened to us with T-Mobile over fifteen years ago. We were in a two-year contract, and T-Mobile didn't renew their 'roaming' agreement with Verizon--leaving us with virtually no service, but stuck in a contract. Whew!
Neither of us could function without our excellent news, and Twitter feeds--which is not necessarily a good thing, I know! I'd like to 'do Facebook,' but I'm worried about the privacy implications.
Anyhoo, glad you are enjoying your new phone. I rarely learn all the functions of a phone, but so long as it does 'what I really need,' that's okay.
Have a good afternoon, Everyone!
Mollie
"Every time I lose a dog, he takes a piece of my heart. Every new dog gifts me with a piece of his. Someday, my heart will be total dog, and maybe then I will be just as generous, loving, and forgiving."--Author Unknown
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
I'm a natural born Luddite
And that has to do with being born in the back woods of Northern MN, I suppose.
Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.-Lucy Parsons