@usefewersyllables
I haven't considered when going overseas.
I've always thought about a burner phone, but going back to default settings I'll consider.
Actually, there is a new movement to go back to landlines in the home, primarily to benefit young kid's by helping them socialize with friends by actually speaking with them instead of texting in intermittent conversations.
Carrying a one on one conversation is becoming a lost ability with the younger generations who have become ingrained with text messenging as a primary means of communication.
I see it as less intrusive of unwanted calls and sales pitches.
Dunno, wonder what they even look like now days.
Saw a video recently showing some young kids trying to figure out how to use a rotary phone.
Funny.
Have a good trip.

have just booked some international travel, including another trip to the UK, for better or worse. We want to visit certain places before we become too feeble and broke, and you can't make omelets without breaking some eggs.

Since the UK has now criminalized essentially all speech, and the US Customs and Border Protection people aren't far behind, I've now taken a number of steps to attempt to minimize our potential hassles in traveling.

I have now completely erased all of my social media presence, everywhere but here. I'd prefer not to give up this community. But everything else- Facebook, Reddit, Discord, Telegram, Twatter, whatever- I've deleted all the content and nuked all the accounts. That may seem extreme, but I'm simply not interested in having there be any places where the dobers can easily find something that might be considered "objectionable".

I know that the Internet never forgets, and that if they really want to, they can dig up my entire history from their Total Information Awareness archives. But at least a casual shakedown at a port of entry will provide less contemporaneous fodder for the dobers, should they decide to dig through my phone.

I will only take my phone. I've already used the mechanism of completely clearing it back to factory defaults whenever approaching a port of entry, and restoring it from cloud backup after clearing customs. It takes a while and burns a lot of data, but that strikes me as being better than having to allow the dobers to easily maraud unfettered through my history to find Something Objectionable. If they really want to keep it at Customs and Irrigation, they are welcome to it at that point.

I'm *this* close to simply leaving it at home and just taking a burner phone, but I haven't got there yet. But if I get shaken down on any of our upcoming journeys, I will consider that final Rubicon to have been well and truly been crossed.

Can't wait until I figure out a way to go expat, and get away from this bullshit present unpleasantness on a permanent basis.

So, if the idea is to suppress (some) speech, it sure is working.

Meanwhile, I'll just sing the praises of Our Dear And Infallible Leader and his Pure And Unimpeachable Minions, as one now must in this age of putative precrime. Nobody wants to listen to me anyway.

Oh, and it was a mix of rain and snow this morning (at 44degF) when taking the dogs out. So- fall is here, too. Whee!