Category: Things that make you say hmmm?

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I used to think I wanted to “Shipjack” alien visitors.

Now, I’d just be content to hitch a ride off this rock to someplace else.

Anywhere else.

It’s not this planet that’s the problem. This world is a beautiful place. The indigenous flora and fauna are spectacular. Except for one species. Even amongst that species there are some very nice individuals. As a group though, the species, Homo sapiens sucks!

Yeah, we’re a bunch of semi intelligent, semi evolved apes. We’ve done some clever things. Our music, art, and literature, explore some interesting existential concepts. We have an interesting imagination and all. But when you come right down to it, we’re not as spectacular as we think we are.

We’ve barely left our world. We’re driven by silly tribalism, religion, and fear. If we were in a zoo we’d be seen as creatures too fascinated by our own poo, to see even a slightly larger picture. One thing we’d miss, might be that we were the subjects of clever psychological experiments.(Hat tip to Douglas Adams) Or perhaps miss the fact that we were in a zoo at all.

Give us shiny trinkets and we’ll be entertained for decades. Give us differences in religion, appearance, or politics, and we’ll entertain ourselves for centuries.

Perhaps it’s a function of growing older, lately I’m less and less concerned with trinkets, religion, politics, trends, or appearance.

All I find myself longing for is simplicity and peace. The view of cities from a distance makes me very glad that I’m not living in one. Being alone and disconnected from Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest of the social media platforms provides me more happiness than my participation in those systems ever did.

I’m no longer concerned with what people think of me, and am happy reading, working outside, or thinking my own thoughts. There are days now when I don’t speak more than a few words to anybody. I go for weeks without seeing anybody other than my dog and significant other.

When I scan the news, with few exceptions all I feel is pity, or sit shaking my head wondering how stupid can people be.

I would gladly pack a few belongings and board a starship to get away from my fellow Homo sapiens. I might occasionally long for the company of other humans if I left. I suspect however, that the next planet or beauty of the universe would be enough to make thinking about distant humanity not worth my time.

Lately I’ve found myself thinking along these lines…

All civilizations fall. If you change your focus just a little bit and look at our planet and all it’s inhabitants as a whole. Divisions disappear and you realize that our technology has unified us in what is essentially a single civilization.

Homo sapiens is not ready for that.

Instinctively Homo sapiens realizes this truth, and is actively destroying this planetary civilization whether they admit it or not.

One need only look at the growing tribalism worldwide. A tribalism that directly or indirectly states, “My beliefs must be ascendant above all others.” What comes next, we can extrapolate from history.

The “Dark Ages” lasted 500 years. During that time, almost everything that had been known was lost. Homo sapiens devolved back into small bands of people drawn together out of mutual need.

Imagine the collected works of Shakespeare used as firelighters, because no-one could read anymore. In 200 years or less, everything that we take for granted will likely become legends repeated around a fire pit.

Will the next dark age last only 500 years? I suppose that depends on how much is lost, what is remembered, and in what context. If some kind of “Green” religion took hold I could see the next dark age lasting 1000 years or more.

Imagine a religion that said something like, “Thou shalt only burn the oils rendered from the fat of thine sheep, for light in the darkness. All other light, save that of the sun, is an abomination before god,” or “Thou shalt only walk upon thine own feet. Any other conveyance is an abomination. Thou shall not sit upon thine animals, nor shall ye ride upon thy wagon, for this is a sin and thee will surely be damned to hell for all time.“

Adherents to a religion like that might take 2000 years to even begin rediscovering technology. If a belief like this were dominant, it’s reasonable to expect that heretics wouldn’t last long. It’s also reasonable to assume that any community with a different view would be burned to the ground. Such is the power of religious fervor.

Religion isn’t confined to God, Allah, Buddha, or any other pantheon of gods. Religion is about belief. Belief in anything.

Belief in and of itself isn’t the problem, it becomes a problem when a belief takes on a life of its own. When beliefs are practiced and never questioned you have a religion. The consensus of all knowledgable people once was that the Earth was flat, and the entire universe revolved around Earth.

Folks who questioned that “Fact” were murdered as heretics. Even when scholars had evidence to support that the Earth was round, and was not in fact the center of the universe, they were hesitant to discuss it with anybody.

Religious leaders in those times, insisted that the world was flat and cited their holy texts to prove it. But nowhere in those holy texts did their god ever say, “By the way, the world is flat and you’ll fall off the edge if you go too far.” Also, nowhere in those religious texts, does God discuss the blueprints for existence or the universe.

There’s the disconnect. Superstition became entwined with religion and the two formed a foundation for persecution and more importantly, a framework of control. Another example was the belief that if someone was sick, they were sick because of demons or evil spirits. Ever wonder how many epileptics were burned at the stake? Just sayin…

I suppose what’s tired me of humanity is that so many “well educated” people are so unlikely to ask questions. It’s not about the vaccines, or the death rate, versus the case rates. My tiredness isn’t about the politics and obvious efforts of politicians to aggrandize themselves by attempting to control all aspects of people’s lives. Those are factors, to be sure.

The main thing is that so many people refuse to see or interpret the facts before them. So many people have abdicated their personal responsibility to learn in favor of a 20 second blurb about the world around them from a talking head on a screen. They don’t question what they hear, then these folks call themselves “well informed”.

At a family event recently, one of my relatives was haranguing me about vaccines and COVID. I’d ignored him on the matter for three solid days.

Finally, I asked the questions, “Would you take your umbrella if there was a 2% chance of rain? If there was a 98% probability that you’d win the lottery wouldn’t you bet the farm on it?”

After several other family members present busted up laughing, the matter was closed. This particular family member stomped off and said nothing more about COVID. The sad part is that he is, or was, a scientist. In point of fact a lot of my knowledge of scientific proofs and objective evaluation of fact, I learned from him. I found it very disconcerting that he of all the relatives was not asking logical questions and thinking for himself.

He’s not a bad person, I choose to believe that his haranguing was coming from a place of care and concern for members of the family. That’s admirable, but his method was all wrong because he wasn’t providing proofs or facts. He was simply repeating the same message CNN had been spouting for more than a year.

Perhaps my expectations were too high. I’d expected a scientist to be armed with facts and proofs. I would actually have welcomed that. I’d have asked questions and asked to look at, and evaluate the data as he’d taught me to when I was a young man.

I suppose I’m still dealing with the shattering of my illusion that this family member was about the reality of scientific process.

Science can teach you a lot. Often, science will teach you that your preconceived notions about the world are wrong. Pure science challenges your beliefs. It doesn’t take sides and cares nothing for your feelings.

E=mc2 Works. The equation is dispassionate. It contains no inherent moral judgement. It’s up to the individual to decide if they will use the resulting energy for destruction, or to generate power that lights a city.

Superstition on the other hand is nothing but beliefs. In a revival tent, those that the faith healer can’t heal, didn’t believe hard enough. It’s the unhealed, who are at fault. They’re told to go home and pray on it then come back next week. “The donation box is by the door, leave as much as you can and god will know. Perhaps he’ll heal you next week.“

That’s the way this past couple of years appear to me. It’s like we’re all living in a revival tent.

The problem for me is that the revival tent has been growing around us for a decade. Science, truth, facts, are being replaced by beliefs and superstition. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve reached apogee in this phenomena yet.

I don’t want to be on this planet when we do.

Here’s a thought experiment.

Imagine yourself with your car, manufactured goods, and all your digital devices suddenly appearing on a street in Barcelona during the inquisition.

Witch! Demon! Unclean Spirt!

You’d be dragged in chains to the grand inquisitor before you even had a moment to take stock of what had happened to you. You’d be summarily executed too.

Imagine the same scenario, but this time you appear in 1947 near an army base. You’d find yourself in a military prison. You’d be under “protective custody” and interrogated about the technology you were carrying. The military would recognize your car, as a car, with internal combustion engine but 99% of the circuitry they couldn’t conceive of, nor could you explain. You’d die in prison as a national security asset or risk. Imagine trying to explain your navigation system, or iPhone or computer. Even a Chromebook has more computing power than all the computers extant on the planet at that time.

Now imagine that scenario but you move forward 100 years.

We like to think that the future is all bright and shiny. We’d like to think that appearing in Los Angeles in 2221 we’d be accepted as a quaint relic. Our antiquated technology would be museum pieces and we’d have to learn everything that happened in the intervening 100 years.

But suppose instead we succumb to superstition and abandon true science, individual thought, and freedom.

What would be the outcome?

Would it look like Spain during The Inquisition, or would it look like Kandahar today?

I don’t want to know. I sure don’t want to live it.

Which leads me back to wanting to hitchhike off this planet. I’ve lost faith in humanity.

I seriously think that at our current rate of decline, we’ll be using candles for light and fire pits for cooking inside 200 years.

If I could hitch hike, I figure a quick jaunt to Betelgeuse and back, should be just about right to miss all the messiness on Earth.

There I go, trusting in Einstein’s math (Science) that states time slows for a ship traveling at or beyond the speed of light relative to Earth.

For me, 5-10 years might pass. For Earth, maybe a few hundred years pass.

If I come back and the planet is still a hot mess, I could head out to Alpha Centauri with side trips to other star systems that are interesting.

Either way, I get to keep on learning new things.

I don’t want to live in a world where knowledge is suppressed based on its potential to upend politics, religion, superstition, or beliefs.

If I was to find a way to leave, I’d do my best to grab digital copies of our Science, Art, Music, Literature, and History. I’d stick it all on some kind of storage media and take it with me. I figure I could trade copies of my archives for food or transport while I was away. If I returned the Earth, I’d have an archive that could help fill in the blanks.

We all know history, is being rewritten. It might be nice to have a collection of unedited data for comparison sake 1000 years into the future. I’m under no illusion that our history as recorded is pristine. But for comparison it might be useful.

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I rewatched Elysium the other night…

I’d seen the movie a while ago. It’s from 2013.

Matt Damon, Jodie Foster.

The first time I saw it, It was pure science fiction.

Now, well, it was unsettling to rewatch.

The premise is that the elites of the world live in a marvelous space station. They have the highest technology and medical devices that can instantly fix whatever ailment someone might have. The elites living on the space station live in opulent luxury and ease.

The folks left on Earth, not so much. That’s the set up.

It’s a typical underdog makes good despite the odds, scenario. Complete with an abusive supervisor and shitty worker safety. The movie depicts abusive police and parole officer robots and a criminal element that is generally criminal out of desperation, not any particular desire to commit crime.

The folks left on Earth are treated as if they’re unclean and generally left to squalor and hopelessness.

At the time the movie was made, It was probably a commentary on wealthy countries ignoring the poor.

Eight years later, with our current political situation, the movie has a somewhat different tone.

I’ve noticed that a lot of the older movies in my collection are changing. It’s not that the movie is being re-edited, it’s that my perspective is changing.

What was once escapist fantasy and easy to dismiss as unthinkable is becoming more thinkable, perhaps even possible.

GATTACA from 1997 springs to mind.

That movie was pure fantasy when it came out. Entry to workplaces and venues was restricted based on DNA “purity” testing. But watch it now with vaccine passports needed to enter certain venues or travel, and it’s suddenly not so fantastic.

There’ve been a number of references to Orwell’s 1984 but there are a lot of other science fiction stories & movies that are equally unsettling against the backdrop of events we’re living through.

The weird thing is that a lot of my personal collection deals with these themes. Okay, so perhaps I’m a sick puppy. Whatever!

I suppose it’s proof that whatever we as humans can imagine, we will be able to achieve.

Jules Verne in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea imagined a submarine that was powered by some mysterious power source.

We named the first nuclear submarine after Captain Nemo’s Nautilus. Verne had no knowledge nuclear power but he imagined a dangerous and unending power source.

Later, Forbidden Planet from 1956, explored the price of hubris.

The Krell, learned everything and then turned inward. They destroyed themselves in a single night accidentally, because they forgot about the darkness within their own souls.

Arthur C. Clark explored the human condition in many of his stories, I like his books, but I like his short stories more.

All these stories have at their core, kernels of much older stories. Human stories, from cultures across the planet.

Stories that at one time were teaching stories designed to instill values into whatever culture they existed in.

These stories explored right and wrong, good and evil, and I think we should listen to those ancient voices as much today.

We can and have modernized many of those stories but somehow the lessons contained in them don’t have the same impact in today’s society.

The notion that greed is a trap is explored in the story of King Midas and also in a Native American story of the eagle who became imprisoned by man because the eagle would not let go of a fish.

Two entirely different cultures separated by thousands of miles and years, and yet the message is the same. Greed leads to ruin.

We, Humanity, can no longer afford to allow hubris to blind us.

Our technology is marvelous and magical. A thousand years ago steel was the metal of the gods. Technology at any point in time is always the most advanced.

Human drives though, remain just as primitive as they were before we ventured out of the Olduvai Gorge in Africa.

I think it’s time for us to rediscover the stories our ancestors left us. There are lessons to be had, and enjoyment in learning those lessons.

Go grab a copy of Greek Tragedies. Look to Shakespeare, read Verne, or Clark, or Orwell, or rewatch any of the old movies in your library. Enjoy the entertainment and take a moment to consider the meaning behind the story.

Be warned, your pride might be bruised when you find that you’re different from your ancestors only due to your iPhone.

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Now this is a weird series of thoughts…

The following is the kind of shit I think about when I’m doing boring stuff like sanding the old paint off the trim of the house and prepping to caulk, prime & paint.

I was contemplating the latest news about the vaccine mandates. I was just randomly wondering what the difference between the vaccine hesitant and those folks who were all in with the mandates.

BTW, These mandate folks are coming awfully close to violating the terms of the Nuremberg code.

Growing up in the ‘60s & ‘70s there was always the threat of nuclear annihilation. This was courtesy of the cold war and the “bastard communists” in the old soviet union.

Every day we got up, we had our cereal, kissed our moms goodbye and we went to school. We started our day with the pledge of allegiance, had fire drills (actually hoped for those to get us out of pop quizzes), and nuclear bomb drills.

Little did we know that those nuclear bomb drills were almost completely pointless. We all knew what a civil defense logo looked like and where the nearest fallout shelter was. In the cases of the schools I attended, the bomb shelters were onsite. 

I can remember hearing the air raid sirens and wondering if this time we were going to feel the ground rumble like we’d seen in the civil defense films. It never occurred to me in elementary school,  that I might not ever see my parents again if the bombs actually fell, after all mommy and daddy both were wise and they would know where the bomb shelters were. After the dust settled they’d come to pick me up at school and we’d go home to watch TV.

Later in junior high school, my knowledge and wisdom increased, I realized that the bomb shelters weren’t going to be useful since by that time I’d read about the survivors of Hiroshima and seen the pictures. I was also learning about things like the half life of various nuclear material and how irradiated materials could retain dangerously high levels of radiation for decades.

Mutation, horrible death, and fear of a nuclear holocaust became elements of my daily life. The possibility was always lurking in the back of my mind. The thing is, it became commonplace, eventually it was just another stupid thing in my world. I ranked It up there with a curfew, or tardiness to school, or the school project that I didn’t want to do and was putting off till the last minute.

Nuclear destruction became ho hum, boring, just another part of living. It was like cancer or chickenpox, or the daily bully as I walked home from school.

As I became a young adult, I got busy with trying to make my way in the world. The threat of nuclear destruction took a back seat to the more immediate things like eating, living, loving, paying my bills, and being happy.

I lived through the HIV/AIDS years, and looking back I wasn’t particularly afraid of that any more than I was of nuclear bombs falling. In the case of HIV/AIDS I was pissed off about it because that hit just as I was figuring out, and getting experience with sex. All of which came to a screeching halt just when I was getting good at it. 

HIV/AIDS Poster

Don’t take that the wrong way. HIV/AIDS was a threat, it was scary, I lost a lot of good friends, including the one who said, “Dude, we medical folks don’t really know what this is, but looking at the spread pattern I think it’s somehow sexually transmitted. So just remember, no glove, no love.” He saved my life, unfortunately he didn’t take his own advice. 

Flash forward 50 or so years from my childhood, and we’re dealing with a virus that has a breathtaking mutation rate. We have misinformation and what I only think of as fear porn 24/7. Oddly, it’s reminiscent of the “Dirty Bastard Communist nukes,” news I remember pretty clearly.

Maybe it’s a fatalism that I’ve carried with me all my life that leaves me somewhat less concerned about this virus, than the younger crowd. 

I suppose I adopted a  “Live the day, you may be dead tomorrow,” kind of thing.

Then there was the first SARS which was again sort of a meh moment. No-one panicked about it, hell no-one much noticed. Although I do recall the media banging the be terrified angle pretty hard. Nobody paid much attention. We didn’t shut down anything.

SARS

In a nuclear exchange, it’s gotta be over 90% that you’re going to die. With the COVID-19 virus, there’s a better than 90% chance you’ll survive.

It’s not political, it’s not racist, it’s just another damn thing in my life.

With a better than 90% survival rate this whole virus thing doesn’t come close to freaking me out like the concept of being atomized in a millisecond.  This isn’t even in my top 10 worries.

I wonder if the “Unclean” vaccine hesitant folks in America are around my age?

Give or take 20 years. Those who are 40 something might still remember talk at the dinner table about the nuclear threat. They may have incorporated their parents lassie faire attitude. They’re quite possibly doing the math and thinking, “Eh whatever. It’s not like a fusion bomb.”

COVID-19

(While changing a sanding pad, I had this thought…)

Sonofabitch! I should thank the USSR for the cold war and the lessons of mutually assured destruction (MAD)

Were it not for my growing up under that sword I would be huddled in my darkened house with a hoard of food, ammo, and guns, muttering to my favorite knife, and twitching at every single noise I heard outside. But I’d be afraid of looking out the window to see what it was.

Instead, I’m standing here in the sun, on a beautiful autumn day, doing something that while it’s work I don’t really want to do, I’m enjoying anyway.

So thank you to all the comrades of the former USSR. Had it not been for your saber rattling I’d be quaking in my boots, in fear of everything.

The next thought that crossed through my mind was that people of my age don’t appreciate being badgered. President Biden at one point in his life had to know that. It speaks volumes about him personally and the youth of his staff that he is badgering Americans.

Most of the young probably haven’t see and certainly wouldn’t remember Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe like a hammer at the UN screaming, “We will bury you…”

Nikita Khrushchev Speaking at the UN

We all know how that ended for the old USSR.

I am still very amused that the folks who prior to COVID were against vaccinations of their children for childhood diseases, are often the same folks screaming today loudly for mandatory vaccinations for everyone.

My amusement at their hypocrisy is that they don’t see it as hypocrisy. Some them have gone so far as to use the line, “Its for the children…”

Original AntiVaxers

I get that everyone has the capacity to change their mind or opinion. That’s totally cool, it means folks are learning.

What I don’t get is some folks ability to hold diametrically opposed thoughts in their heads at the same time and claim that all are true.

Call me binary. (Yeah, that’s a no no today, isn’t it?)

Where ever you come down on the vaccination issue, please at least have thought it through.

Do your own research, make an informed choice.

But under no circumstances should you just bow to the whims of the mob. You are and should always be in inviolate control of your own body and that includes what you allow to be put into it.

Hmm. Another weird thought is this one. How can the European Union which has so very publicly, over the past decade been against GMO foods and grains be so draconian about vaccine enforcement now?

Yeah, I know that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines aren’t technically GMO organisms. But given that the spike protein in question is a direct result of genetic modification doesn’t the EU stance seem just a bit odd?

It was at this point that the second battery died on the power sander, and my knee started killing me.

I came inside and other things beside random thoughts occupied my attention.

Now you know where some of this blog comes from. Sometimes it’s just the product of me having something boring to do.

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Apple, Just Stop!

There’s no shame in acquiescing to your customers.

You’re on a slippery slope with your CSAM scanning. Lots of folks are justifiably concerned that this particular system could be misused.

This concern could easily translate into losses for your stockholders. While I recognize that a substantial part of your revenue is dependent on China, creating a system that so obviously could scan a persons phone for an oppressive regime isn’t going to help.

Our own government is and has demonstrated that no government is above spying on its citizens. Please don’t make it any easier for them.

I personally have already pulled my personal photos off of iCloud.

I’d imagine that you’re seeing a lot of other people doing the same thing. Take a look at your network activity. How much network traffic is outbound? How many photos are marked for deletion?

The real tell for you will be how many people don’t update to your latest operating systems.

We won’t know that until you release the new offerings in September – October but I suspect that a lot of people have switched off automatic updates. I know I have,

The problem isn’t that you’re trying to prevent Child pornography. That’s a good thing, the problem is that you’re opening the door to scanning anything stored in what is supposed to be private storage.

If we’re paying for cloud services, I believe that you should be treating those cloud accounts like safety deposit boxes. What’s in them is none of your business. Unless you’re presented with a warrant, nobody, including the hosting entity should be looking at what is stored in them.

The problem Apple, is that you’ve gone further. By your own description you’re programming our phones to scan at least some of the data they contain. How long before you’re scanning all the data?

How long will it be before you’re looking for images of confederate flags, or a proud gun owner’s collection of guns, or “hate speech”, Anti-Vaccine comments, “Transphobic” remarks, any nude photos, or rude comments about The President or Vice President?

For the first time in more than 2 decades. I’m looking at Windows computers. I’m searching around for dumb cell phones, and considering things like not having an iPad or an Apple Watch. I’m considering eliminating Apple cloud services from my life entirely as well.

I can turn off iMessage. I could force all text communication to go over SMS only. I’ve not decided on that quite yet because so many of my text communications are innocuous and mundane.

It’s not even that I have anything to hide. It’s the principal that my communications could become subject to anyone’s approval.

What is next? Will Apple employ banks of people who censor conversations, becoming like FaceBook, Twitter, and Google?

Where is the Apple that just a few years ago told the FBI, “No we will not unlock a terrorists phone?” Remember that Apple? The Apple that I was proud of, the Apple that would not yield to government pressure?

Just Stop, before it’s too late. You still have time, no-op the code.

There’s a quote some thing like; Scientists contemplate can we do a thing? Scientists often fail to ask themselves SHOULD we do a thing.

Apple, it’s time that you ask, “Should we do a thing?”

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This may force me to get a dumb phone…

Apple recently released information about enabling child protection features. 

I’m ALL IN for stopping Child Porn.

When I was running my small business sorting out people’s computer problems, part of the contract stated:

In the course of performing repairs, should child pornography, “snuff” pornography, evidence of non-consensual torture, or murder, (Video, Photos,) of any kind be discovered, all work will be terminated. In accordance with law enforcement directives your computer and your contact information will be immediately turned over to appropriate law enforcement. Initial that you have read and understand :_____

There were only a very few people who got to that paragraph and decided against my repairing their computer.

More often than not, folks would ask questions like, “I have some pictures of my child as a newborn or in their first bath, will those be a problem,” or “I may have some photos of me and my spouse ummm, having sex. Will those be a problem,” The answer to both questions was always, “No, that’s not a problem. I won’t go looking for photos while I’m working on your machine, but sometimes if I’m recovering files I’ll stumble on something.”

Generally people would laugh and I’d assure them it was best to think of me like their lawyer or doctor. Nothing innocent I ever came across would leave my possession and any drives I used to backup their data while I was re-installing their OS or whatever were cleansed with a military grade wipe program as soon as their data was back on their computer safely.

There was one guy who flat out told me that his computer was loaded with some seriously evil stuff. He saw the look on my face and produced his badge. “I’m a crime scene photographer,” he explained. He was kind enough to give me moment to call and verify the badge number. Thankfully in his case I was pulling back some documents that had been corrupted, and I didn’t have to worry about crime scene photos.

There was only one guy, a priest, who I enacted that paragraph with. He had his computer turned over to law enforcement. (In truth, had his computer not been full to the brim with horrific porn, I’d have missed it altogether.)

The common thread here is that I didn’t go looking for stuff. It’s really none of my business. In my business privacy was something that I respected and honoring privacy was what got me referrals.

For a moment think of what information you’re handing over to a 20 year old at The Geek Squad counter. Did that make your hair stand up? It probably should have. Which is not to imply that The Geek Squad is a bad group of folks… How much of your private business do you want shared? Even if it’s only in the back room of a Best Buy. 

“Hey Bill, take a look at this guy’s wife! She’s super HOT!”

Uh yeah, you get the picture.

So I’m super AGAINST Child Pornography, But at the same time I’m really about Privacy.

There’s the conflict.

Apple is planning on having your device scan for specific images that are currently identified in a database. It looks like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children may be providing some or all of the HASH (Think of these as numeric fingerprints of an image) which makes sense.

As we all know, if you look for naked pictures of anyone you’ll find the same 20-50 images repeated on site after site. The same is probably more true for Child Porn. 

That area is so… Wrong, that I’m betting it’s a fairly limited number of unique images. I can’t imagine there are more than a few thousand “Producers” of such material worldwide. Although there are apparently millions of “Consumers” of this kind a material. It’s the consumers that drive the trade, not the pervert who gets their jollies abusing children. 

I say that without doing any research, and I may be terribly naive about it. Honestly, I don’t want to research the actual numbers, the thought turns my stomach. And the last thing I want to do is cleanse my computer of God only knows what kind of viruses those sites would try to put on my system. I also don’t want to have to explain to the FBI why I’d suddenly taken an interest in those sites. 

Let me maintain what’s left of my shredded innocence, okay?

Anyhow, since Apple is going to be running this on our local machines what is that going to do to our battery life? That’s the first thing that popped through my head. The next thing that popped through my head is the myriad ways technology like this could be misused. They’ve said that they’ll be looking at photos sent via messages too. To me this begs the question of how long will it be until Apple is scanning our message text for so called “Questionable Material”. 

Instead of looking for Child Porn, what would happen if say the DOJ demanded Apple look for specific people? How about a specific location? Maybe a specific phrase? How about specific websites in your browser history? What about looking for a specific item, that you might have taken a picture of?

Apple’s explanation of the HASH algorithm indicates the proposed system wouldn’t be applicable at this time for that kind of specificity. But AI augmented recognition could eventually be used to do something like that. On that point, we’re not looking at the next decade, we’re looking at a handful of years at best.

The current algorithm could be used on your browser history right now. It could just as easily look for politically questionable sites and target you.

China and any other totalitarian state must be orgasmic over the possibilities.

What then?

In a society of picture happy people, how might such a system be turned into a weapon against you?

You realize that if you have your photos syncing to iCloud that the conduit works both ways. If I take a picture with my phone, it goes to iCloud and is available on all my devices. Likewise, if I put photos into iCloud’s web interface those photos can appear on all my devices.

What kind of chaos could one create by uploading child porn to someone’s iCloud account?

Imagine this scenario. A nasty divorce, the aggrieved spouse has the password to their partner’s iCloud account and in a fit of pique uploads child porn. Oooops! Now the divorce is on the fast track because one of the partners is in jail.

Imagine the possibilities with politicians. This brings an all new meaning to the term “Mud Slinging”. Although Hunter Biden’s laptop apparently didn’t raise any eyebrows at the DOJ. 

This smells like a proverbial “Slippery Slope” and it worries the hell out of me.

The President has asked? Demanded? That big technology be brought to bear on White Extremist groups. But he hasn’t actually defined what that means. My definition of White Supremacy is very different from the few groups the president has called out.

Is this another case of White Supremacists are, “What I say they are at any particular moment,” if so, then Apple is going toward support of a totalitarian state and that is something I can’t support.

I can turn off iCloud. I can make my phone as dumb as a stone. I can isolate my devices in such a way that they can compute HASHes all day long but they’ll not be able to send their data anywhere. Or I can go completely dark. The internet is super nice to have, but if it becomes a tool that I’m handing to an authoritarian government that demands my submission…

Then I can do without it.

I realize this sounds very conspiracy theory, but when Jews who lived through the Holocaust, and Russians who escaped communism, or folks from Cuba, or escapees from Venezuela,  start saying, “This is how it began in my country.” I listen up!

I defer to their experience.

Our government has grown large enough that it is self sustaining without the consent of the people. That makes it, and the people enmeshed in it, dangerous. Like a beast in the forest, the government will strike at a threat to defend itself. It’s possible for the people asking questions and demanding answers, to become a threat. How did The President put it? An Existential Threat.

There are many other ways to communicate. Surprisingly there are methods of encryption that are difficult enough to be unbreakable for a reasonable length of (ALL Encryption can and will be broken if enough effort is put into the task,) time which do not require computational power to create.

However, those methods might require actually seeing someone in person. Meeting in a bar or restaurant is probably going to be unavailable in the near future. With the implementation of COVID passports, even if you’re not carrying a phone that’s broadcasting your location, your COVID passport being scanned at the door to some venue will provide tracking. So I can imagine folks going back to the old Soviet Era spy tactic of a dead drop.

8/12/2021 – I actually started writing this a couple of days ago.

Since I began writing this, there have been a number of voices raising the alarm. Apple has tried to explain what they’re doing and reassure everyone that they will not ever -absolutely never – double pinky swear, use this technology to do anything but scan for child porn.

I’d like to believe them. But as much as we’ve all been misled, lied to, and told that what we’ve seen with our own eyes didn’t happen, over the past 5 years. I find that I can’t believe Apple any more than I believe anyone else.

Remember when Google’s motto was, “Don’t be evil,” yeah, we all know how that turned out. It looks like Apple is heading down the same path.

As of this morning I’ve turned off automatic updates on all of my devices. I’ve backed up all of my photos to a flat file system OUTSIDE of Apple’s applications. 

If the price of IOS 15, or the new MacOS, is that I have to submit to Apple being able (in theory) to spy on me, then the price is too high.

What I’ve got right now is working just fine.

We can only hope that millions of other people are doing the same thing and that at the next WWDC in Spring, Mr Cook won’t be able to tout those impressive IOS and MacOS adoption numbers. When he’s describing IOS and MacOS numbers that look like Android and Windows update metrics, maybe he’ll get the message.

Hell, I’d love to see every single owner of Apple products turn them all off for a day. You know, maybe Sept 1, 2021. Call it A DAY WITHOUT APPLE.

Call it a protest, let Apple see just how many people are annoyed by this incursion into our privacy. What do you suppose their reaction would be if a couple of million users just signed off for the day?

Who knows? It might get their attention and remind them that Apple’s stock prices are linked to their customer satisfaction.

Now I’m off to consider if terminating Apple One+ is in my best interest or if I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face.

Oh, and even if I’m not uploading my photos to iCloud, my phone has a lot of memory… I can still directly connect my phone to my computer and move those photos to my computer. Sure it’s not as slick or convenient but I can still use my phone as a camera even if I feel it necessary to make my phone dumb as a stone.

As an aside, unlocked 4G flip phones are $35 on Amazon. Just food for thought.