Sometimes you just don’t feel fresh…

When I get that not so fresh feeling, I delete crap!

This morning I started with the last remaining Twitter Account. Buh Bye Jack, and you can censor the hell out of yourself.

Then I remembered that I still had Google Accounts. Adios Google! It had been a while since I’d checked in on those accounts. Remember when it used to be your search history, Google Drive, Calendar, and an email account? Whoa nellie! Google has expanded their tendrils into a lot more than just those innocuous and helpful things. And their privacy settings have become as tedious as Facebook’s used to be. They’re not my problem anymore. All Google accounts have been deleted. Sure cleaned up my mail and calendar programs too. Without those accounts, I have no need to maintain synchronization anymore.

Facebook has been gone for years and I’m the better for it.

I’d love to 86 Dropbox too. Unfortunately I have one application that uses it, so for the time being they get a reprieve.

Found an OLD Yahoo account – Burned it down!

Right now, I’m feeling fresh as a daisy!

The thing about all these “Services” is that they find a way to collect information on you and that information is a security leak about your daily life. Do you really want your business out there?

The way things are going… I don’t.

Now lets see if I can figure out how to configure my server to handle all the stuff that I was outsourcing…

Have a great day.

Lately things around the house have been breaking…

Most of the things have been plumbing related, which I hate.

The most recent breakdown came as a bit of a surprise. My primary NAS drive has decided to take a dump. 

We use this drive to serve up movies, and store important documents. It’s also used as a share point for things that I help the other half with, music, videos, web sites, etc.

I’ve been noticing little things lately when accessing the drive, but didn’t really think much about it. In retrospect the drive was telling me something was wrong.

As the issues and errors accumulated I started re-evaluating the entire storage method. After doing a lot of research, I’ve decided to go with a RAID array.

The unit i’ve settled on is relatively inexpensive, but seems to provide a lot of bang for the buck.

Configuring it will take some time and the unit may have a steep learning curve. The advantage is that I’ll have 16TB of storage when it’s fully configured and that storage provides 2 hot swappable drives.

That means that up to two drives could fail and the entire 16TB would still be recoverable.

My current situation is a single drive and I have no idea how much data I’ll be able to recover.

What I’m doing may be overkill but I’d like to not have to worry about it for the next 5 years.

I’m also leaning more toward doing gig work and having a ton of space to work with would be a big convenience.

I expect to be locked into some form of digital prison for at least the next week while I bring this puppy online.

“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it?”

“That’s what is to be a slave.” – Roy Batty Blade Runner.

Now we’ve all had a taste of it. What have we learned?

The vast majority of people in the USA haven’t actually been slaves. Yet there are a lot of folks who’d like to enslave us all. These people don’t care what your skin color is. They want you enslaved in a system. Their System.

These are the people that want you to be dependent on their largess. They offer bright baubles of technology, healthcare, entertainment, etc. then make us feel “less than” if we’re unable to afford those baubles.

They offer us a daily dose of fear via the news, & commercials. “More terrifying moments of unrest today in Minneapolis. The President today said, ‘insert daily out of context statement here‘ does this statement mean the end of America? See our report at 11. Suffering from Kidney Failure? Are you going to die? Try our new drug, if you can’t afford it (The implication is your insurance is bad, or you don’t make enough and are therefore ‘less than’) contact us and we’ll help pay your bill.”

They keep us apart by instilling mistrust in each other. “It’s white oppression, it’s black criminality. It’s racist, that person is a Nazi. Wear a mask, don’t wear a mask, wear a mask as a symbol of solidarity, You should wear a mask because you never know who might be carrying a virus. Black Lives Matter=Good speech, All Lives Matter=Bad speech, ACAB (All cops are bastards), Why are the police not stopping this looting?”

With each new presidential administration, there are people who are “Right” and people who are “Wrong” the actual facts of the administration’s accomplishments or failures notwithstanding. The “Right” and the “Wrong” people flip based on how the media presents a particular narrative.

In simplest terms, we’re always being manipulated by headlines, soundbites, and glamorous ads showing us things that a great many of us can’t afford. The ads implicitly extol the virtue of working harder to make more money so that we can afford these pretty things. The thing lots of people miss is that all of us working harder, generates more tax revenue that in turn, fuels the system.

The same system that locks us in our homes, costs us jobs, and vilifies individuals who after doing the math, decide that feeding their families is worth the risk.

That same system almost deifies individuals in protests that devolve into rioting and looting. It makes a sick kind of sense. Either situation creates an “Enemy” that can be pointed to, now or in the future, to maintain the cultural division.

As long as the American people are fearful and divided, the powerful can do as they please in plain sight. Who will question the national guard being brought in to quell riots? Who will question another lockdown because of a spike in Covid-19 cases?

Social Media was supposed to help level the playing field allowing people to communicate with each other directly, expressing thoughts and beliefs freely without bias, other than those biases the people brought with them.

As Social Media blossomed, controls were put into place to silence dissent. Those controls started out innocently to prevent blatant racist and hate from spilling unbidden onto computer screens. Those controls quickly escalated into full blown censorship.

The implied reason for that censorship is that “average people” are unable (too immature, or too stupid) to process dissenting opinions without experiencing angst. Therefore it is assumed they need to be protected from free thought, instead of exercising the freedom of simply choosing not to view items which are offensive to them.

Mind you, what one may find offensive, others may find informative. With censorship instituted on social media no-one has to decide, and everyone is once again placed in a bubble of docile safety and conformity.

Safe, in that bubble, they’re not troubled by dissenting opinion and not forced to think for themselves or form their own opinions. The narrative of those in control is preserved and the correct “Group Think” is doled out 200 characters at a time, by sanctioned influencers.

How are sanctioned influencers picked? They’re approved by Twitter checkmarks and number of followers. An influencer with a large number of followers and a check mark is seen as someone “In the know“. They remain a blessed influencer as long as they maintain the appropriate narrative.

However if an influencer goes off the reservation or someone speaking counter to the narrative, (There are always a few allowed, to maintain the illusion of Facebook or Twitter’s impartiality,) becomes troublesome. Their follower count mysteriously decrements. Their coveted Twitter Checkmark is removed, they end up in “Twitter Jail” or their messages simply vanish, and finally they are banned outright. These people still have online presences, they’re just on other platforms with lower brand recognition.

Platforms like GAB aren’t allowed to post their applications on Google Play or the Apple App store. Other platforms like Parler are allowed to have Play Store or Apple App store presences for the time being.

This speaks to the tight integration between Google, Apple, and the group, or groups controlling the narrative. Not only are specific people exiled from Twitter and Facebook, their ability to be seen by the masses is limited by the corporations who provide the dominate operating systems for smart devices as well.

Isn’t it odd that nudity, violence, and graphic sex is allowed on a platform like Twitter and freedom of political messages is not? Even odder is that Apple and Google provide access to an application which can present these images while at the same time denying access to alternate applications which are largely politically conservative in nature. The only difference being that Twitter filters out comments that present dissenting political opinion?

Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing that is never supposed to happen in a free society?