Archive for February 20, 2021

Zilla could Use Some Help ($1600 worth to be precise) Update $500 down $1100 to go

Posted: February 20, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

My old friend and former magnificent seven blogger Zilla of the Resistance could use a hand.

She needs $1600 to get her car back and after repeated hospital stays and some family issue is not in a position to do anything about it.

So I’m asking you dear reader if you’re in a position to give her a hand it would be appreciated if you can swing over to her old blog where her tip jar still stands and kick in a few bucks.

I would greatly appreciate it and if you aren’t in a position to give her a few bucks prayers are always very welcome.

Update: Heard from Zilla, $500 down $1100 to go

Don’t worry, Facebook will cancel you next

Posted: February 20, 2021 by ng36b in business, News/opinion, Uncomfortable Truths
Tags: , , , ,

Facebook is everywhere. Our kids dance studio uses it to communicate with us. The Submarine Base in Groton uses it to let you know when the base is closed due to snow. The military’s Airlift Command uses it to notify people of upcoming flights. Facebook’s ease of use caused many places to use Facebook in place of email, website and texting notifications and updates.

All that dependency comes with a price, because Facebook is too big to care. Instead of being a neutral platform, Facebook took sides on issues. At first, it was non-controversial, like when Facebook would remove suicide videos or obviously pornographic images. But it became too much of a temptation, and it wasn’t long before Facebook was manipulating news feeds and canceling whomever it willed.

President Trump was an obvious canceling choice. But Law Enforcement Today? That’s a bit weird. Or plenty of other folks like Ron Paul. The latest one is Australia, which tried to cash in on Facebook sharing its content. Instead of sharing, Facebook banned all Australian news sources from being shared on its platform. If your news revenue relied on social media sharing, a move like this is devastating to your business.

BTW, the EU assures us it “can’t happen to them.” Don’t hold your breath.

If your small business or club relies on Facebook for communication, you’re vulnerable. Whenever the military invades an area, the first thing they destroy is enemy communication platforms. If you can’t communicate, you can’t organize, and you certainly can’t get anything useful done.

To illustrate this point, I once spoke with firefighters that rescued people in the aftermath of the Twin Towers attack on 9/11. One of the things not discussed is that there are a lot of cell and radio towers on the Twin Towers. When they came down, it crippled cellular communications in the area. Firefighters and police resorted to runners to pass messages while pulling people out of rubble.

You are much better off, and much safer, with a good email system, blog and website, plus a social media platform that respects you, like MeWe. Because if Facebook can cancel Australia, what stops them from canceling you?

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

A personal Story that has nothing to do with Big Tech, Big Media & Election 2020

Posted: February 20, 2021 by datechguy in personal

I have a hatred of thieves that comes from personal experience.

It had been my dram as a kid to own a comic book store and in 1985 long before the days when Chuck Lorie & Jim Parsons would make it cool, I opened that store at age 22 having saved enough between setting up at flea markets as soon as I was old enough to drive and working full time at Raytheon in the Scientific Computer C/enter to do so without debt.

Alas even in those pre-gang and pre-drug days of Fitchburg my store was broken into regularly and stock (mainly baseball cards) whose bubble was just beginning) stolen.

The police were rather indifferent on the subject as it was “only” baseball cards. Neither the fact that I had paid cash for them nor my lack of insurance didn’t seem to provide any motivation on the cases.

After the seventh time I was hit my big brother arranged for a friend to weld an iron gate over the front door that I would secure nightly with a large iron chain put on my front door (we used to call it the home of the caged collectables after that) until a car taking the corner of the street too fast crashed into it and took out my gate and door.

It was a discouraging thing and it put me in a big hole for a long time which caused a lot of tension early in my marriage. When a large established comic book store bought out my competition (which had suddenly opened a month ahead of me just after I bought a large collection which delayed my open opening but that’s another story…) my days were numbered.

This is the origin of my visceral hatred of thieves. To this day the easiest way to activate my temper and one of the things I find hardest as a Christian to forgive is stealing from me, even if it’s just food from the fridge at work.

But I’ll say one thing for the thieves and gate crashers that helped put me in the hole that I was never able to climb out of and the police that never found any of my stock or the people who stole it and even for the people that broke into the indoor flea market where I set up with a stock of Magic Cards years after I closed my business to rob my booth and my booth alone or even the folks who for a while at work found it amusing to steal the lunch of the only white guy in my building not in management before the camera were installed in the new building

None of them after having robbed me or aiding and abetting or covering up for those who did or being completely indifferent to my being robbed when it was their duty to right that wrong insisted that I publicly declare that I was never robbed nor put a disclaimer on my statements that I was.

If you wonder why my tolerance of the left has evaporated over the last few months, wonder no more.

Essentially worthless

Posted: February 20, 2021 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Cases of Wuhan virus infections continue to drop, and, as reported by Dr. Marty Makary in the Wall Street Journal, over the last six weeks, are down a whopping 77%.  Approximately 15% of Americans have been vaccinated, which is certainly helping, as is herd immunity – so many people have had the virus, and developed natural immunity, without even knowing it. Dr. Makary, professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health, notes that testing for the virus catches only 10-25% of the total number of infections, so millions have been infected and never knew it, or never reported it. He predicts the Wuhan virus will be essentially gone by April.

Great news! Schools can re-open! Restaurants, bars, bowling alleys, movie theaters! Life can return, right?

Fortunately for Dr. Markary, he does not live in the Teacher’s Republic of California. Here, middle school principals tell families it is highly unlikely schools will fully reopen by fall. Here, cities actually have to sue their own school districts to try to get them to reopen. Here, school board members, confronted at a board meeting via Zoom by families fed up with the closures, complain that the parents only “want[ed] their babysitters back,” just wanted their kids in school so they could smoke pot, and privately threaten to “f— up” those who dare “call [them] out.”

Can we all stop pretending the education establishment has anything but their own best interests in mind?

My eternal thanks and admiration for all those doctors, nurses, police officers, grocery store clerks, auto mechanics, postal workers, gas station attendants, restaurant cooks and servers, and all those other workers who went out into the world during this once-in-a-century (right? right?) pandemic to do what had to be done to keep our society going as much as possible.

Incredibly, public school teachers are not among those who can be so thanked, for whom we can be so grateful. Instead, they holed up, forced our kids to try to learn through an electronic screen maybe a foot wide, without sports, without assemblies, without lunch on any quad. The school establishment claims to care about their students’ mental health, even as they force them into isolation and loneliness.

And still today, as the virus wanes and the nation’s health returns, the public school teachers cower, and President Biden, who so conspicuously vowed to “follow the science,” instead cowers in pale imitation of the teachers’ example.

But hey, education is essential.  They promise.