Genocide, Mosquitoes, Georgia Peanuts, and DefCon

I took the picture of the cat and the background. I tubed the cat. I added the text. Anyone can use this picture except for those who are in favor of DRM and the NSA. And if you fancy yourself some kind of "copyright" police, you are not welcome here at this blog ever.

     I have not written about the Israeli-Gaza conflict/ war/ genocide because quite frankly, the whole thing has been a ball of confusion in my brain. While I'm perfectly willing to have Israel dissolve into Palestine, I'm not in favor of Hamas leading the way. I don't know who tossed the first bomb or bullet [housemate says it was Gaza] but I do know that I want the whole thing to stop. Yes, I do think it is genocide. That is all I will say about it for the present.

     The West Nile Virus seems to be having a hurrah in Louisiana and has now made an appearance in Washington state. That sucks badly. I know that massive spraying cannot possibly been "good" for the environment. I also know that we are dealing with human lives. I'd rather there be spraying than a rising death toll from the bite of a mosquito. I suppose there is or ought to be research to make sprays [that emit from trucks to counter the mosquitoes] more "eco-friendly" or whatever. That can happen as we take steps to prevent people from being infected with West Nile. We can't wait. We ought to be conducting massive spray campaigns now.

     Those guys from the Peanut Corporation of America plant in Georgia who knowingly sent out salmonella-infested peanuts which did in fact cause nine people to die and bunches more to get sick ought to experience legal consequences [other than or in addition to paying fines] for their actions. That the safety of any food depends upon corporations owing up to bad lots is piteous. Let the food inspectors inspect!

     One of these years I hope to go to DefCon. I was heartened to hear that John McAfee showed up to defend privacy. He also set up a new complaint list over at brownlist.com. It is easy to use and I think he is on to something.

radical sapphoq says: I hate what is happening in Palestine. I have no particular love for mosquitoes, especially those that spread diseases. That bunches of peanuts with salmonella were sent out to people is hideous. I hate the N.S.A. and all of the corporations and politicians who do not understand things like privacy. Thumbs up to John McAfee.

References:

http://www.brownlist.com/


http://union-bulletin.com/news/2014/aug/09/west-nile-case-suspected-ww-county/

http://www.ldnews.com/local/ci_26307599/west-nile-mosquito-spraying-coming-soon

http://www.nola.com/health/index.ssf/2014/08/second_louisiana_resident_dies.html


http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/u-s-peanut-plant-manager-admits-faking-tests-before-deadly-outbreak-1.1952775

http://www.inquisitr.com/1402304/peanut-plant-manager-admits-faking-tests-before-deadly-salmonella-outbreak-flaws-in-honor-system/

http://www.news-record.com/news/north_carolina_ap/article_05ad8c4f-2f17-5ab5-93c7-55fb832de88b.html



http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28721480

http://vpncreative.net/2014/08/09/mcafee-advocates-privacy-defcon-launches-new-site/

http://www.tgdaily.com/social/123801-john-mcafee-is-not-crazy-he-is-a-revolutionary

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/09/us-cybersecurity-hackers-johnmcafee-idUSKBN0G901J20140809

http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/09/john-mcafee-in-crazytown/

http://www.futuretensecentral.com/

Cyber-Bullying Versus Being Fauxfended

"1. Bullying is not okay. Period.

 2. Freedom of religion does not give you the right to 

     physically or verbally assault people.

 3. If your sincerely-held religious beliefs require you to 

      bully children, then your beliefs are fucked up.”


                                                                                                                                                        ~ Jim C. Hines


Jim C. Hines is on twitter as @jimchines.

His most excellent blog can be found 

at http://www.jimchines.com/blog/

An excellent article on cyber-harassment written by him:

http://www.jimchines.com/2014/01/online-harassment/


Other articles of note:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/01/10/lets-just-call-it-talking/

         
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/let-s-be-real-online-

harassment-isn-t-virtual-for-women


http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-
arent-welcome-internet-72170/



Experiencing abusive behavior from others online?
Received threats due to stuff posted online?
Or, want to be part of the solution instead of the problem?

http://www.haltabuse.org/



Being fauxfended on the other hand is not the same thing at all. If you tell me that I am a big meanie poopy head because I happen to not agree with you, I can shrug that off easily enough.
If you accuse me of being stupid or racist or an anti-feminist or full of false ego or something, I can blow those comments off also.

A good solid definition can be found in The Urban Dictionary:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fauxfended

Here are some articles and things that talk about people who were fauxfended:

http://thegraph.com/2012/09/personalities-vs-facts/

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/01/04/HuffPo-No-Apology-For-Pearl-Harbor-Insult-Is-Perfect-Response

http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2013/01/08/class-act-katherine-webb-says-musburger-not-creepy-for-gushing-about-her-on-natl-tv/

http://kmgarcia2000.blogspot.com/2012/09/blaming-victims.html



What no one should blow off are threats such as "I'm going to rape you, kill you, or otherwise ef you up." That sort of thing ought to require the attention of the nearest law enforcement agency. [And hopefully, the nearest law enforcement agency will be better informed than the one here is and more equipped to skillfully handle a complaint of cyber-bullying than the one 'round here is].

radical sapphoq says: Some people use cyber-bullying as a convenient argument for using one's wallet name on the internet. I've seen people on Fakeboo, FedBoo, SpaceCase [using one of my fake socks because I will not help the government to collect info or meta-data on me], I mean that website-- you know the one I mean-- using their "real names" and making vicious comments about other people. 
People are people whether using their legal names on the internet or not.

Those who are in the public eye tend to use their names online. The rest of us don't. Some of the rest of us have had problems with people stalking us [either online or in 'real' life F2F] or threatening us. Some of us may be hiding from a past domestic violence situation or other troublesome history and thus we cannot safely enjoy the internet using our wallet info. Some of us prefer that our bosses and our elderly relatives not be able to find us on the internet. Some of us value our privacy and refuse to give out our real names and locations. Some of us have more than one of the above listed reasons for a decision to use socks or pseudonyms online. Some of us may have solid reasons that I have not listed here.

I am against laws that require us to use our wallet information online and against laws that would assign each of us some sort of internet 'number' that a government can use to trace back to us. Period. The dark net has its uses. Hopefully, an alter-net will become a reality for those of us who refuse to succumb to the line of thinking that starts with the dreaded words "It's for your own good that we are...".

               ~ LESS GOVERNMENT MORE FUN ~

Facebook Me, Not

Digital art that I shot with my cheap digital camera and then altered my own self.  So copyright police, please go away now.  ~radical sapphoq


There are a whole lot of people around me who appear to me to have gone nutty over Facebook.  "Facebook me," has become a common expression within the crowd.  The question I am asked most frequently by acquaintances these days is, "Are you on Facebook?"

No, I am not on Facebook, and no, I will not "Facebook you."  I hate Facebook.  I deplore Facebook.  And in fact, I want nothing to do with Facebook.  I am not a Luddite.  I am not anti-technology.  In fact, I am into technology in a very real way.  I also like my privacy.  This movement among giant companies that we must use our "wallet names"-- i.e. legal names-- in order to sign up for the latest social network craze I think is a very bad idea.  One of the excuses given for the necessity of using our real names is that somehow this will make us all kinder people on the Internet.  Here's a news flash: No, it won't.

The thing is, even a voluntary "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights"  fantasy essay is exactly that-- fantasy.  There is no true privacy on the Internet.  Some of us know this and we use nicknames or pen names, much as I have chosen to do.  To be sure, we can still be found.  But, at least the less sophisticated  will have to think about how to do it for a few minutes first.  Furthermore, in order to identify who we are in "real life," an advertising agency [my own bias is revealed here, I believe the demand for our wallet names have more to do with the desire to foist ads on me and target me for snail mailing lists than the idea that we will transform into non-assholes] or individual up to no good need three pieces of information.  Those three pieces of information are birthdate, gender-- male or female, and zip code.  And that's it.  How many of us have signed up to blog at sites which don't demand our wallet names but do want our birthdates, gender, and zip code?

There are several approaches to this invasion of privacy.  The first one is to unplug the computer and to avoid leaving a paper trail in real life.  The second is to be very conscious of our digital footprints by using temporary wifi cards in cafes, libraries, or other public places to connect.  If we must use the social networking scene, we can develop several sock puppets to use on various sites (one per site, not all socks in all sites like some trolls might).  If we go that way or if we use a home computer, it is a great idea to use one browser per social networking site as well and invest in anonymous e-mail such as CounterMail.  The other thing of course goes without saying: invest in a good vpn, proxies, onion routers [not Tor by the way] and use several layers of the same to cover our Mac addys and our ISP numbers.  Privacy precautions are only as good as the person using them.  Having the best in non-tracking electronic ware does nothing if we blog or tweet about our birthdays, the weather in our area, or things that can cause others to accurately guess our gender.  And using social networking sites or cruising the Internet or shopping on-line during worktime-- even at those rare companies that claim they "don't mind"-- forget about it.  Bad idea.

One of the things that I have seen social networking sites used for that I think is a most excellent use is to for activist-related events and for news-sharing.  Folks who are prone to that sort of thing know what the risks are and tend not to give out their true wallet names, birthdates, or zip codes.  Any other use of social networking sites to me is just mental masturbation.


radical sapphoq says: I don't do Facebook.  I don't upload pictures of myself or family or friends to the Internet.  Any information I give out on-line to companies like Google-is-Evil-Now is on a need-to-know basis. 


http://internetrightsandprinciples.org/

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/02/23/fact-sheet-plan-protect-privacy-internet-age-adopting-consumer-privacy-b

http://internetjustice.blogspot.com/2010/06/right-to-privacy-on-internet.html

http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/23/technology/privacy_bill_of_rights/

http://legallyeasy.rocketlawyer.com/will-americans-soon-have-an-online-bill-of-rights-94566

http://legallyeasy.rocketlawyer.com/as-yelp-rises-free-speech-and-business-reputations-can-conflict-94582

http://legallyeasy.rocketlawyer.com/episode-57-internet-privacy-and-the-right-to-be-forgotten-94520

http://heresthethingblog.com/2012/02/23/10-tacky-avoid-posting-facebook/


http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/24/privacy-bill-of-rights/?section=money_technology

http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-privacy-push-seeks-cooperation-001448521.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2012/02/24/facebook-users-becoming-more-privacy-savvy/

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/social-network-users-regret-posts-study-294815

http://www.datamation.com/news/as-privacy-concerns-grow-more-social-media-users-are-unfriending.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/24/internet-privacy-pew-idUSL2E8DO87R20120224

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505363_162-57384459/beware-digital-tattoos-while-browsing/

http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper/tabid/100/view/frontpage/articleid/503256/newspaperid/411/The_Internet_Never_Forgets.aspx

Sylvia Plath and sleep apnea

Awesome woman she was, melancholy in the good old-fashioned way.
Well okay, crazy then if you must be picky about it.
Yes, she was a wonder. Wonderful stuff she wrote.
When Sylvia Plath decided to end her life with the gas pipe,
she left out milk and bread. For whom?
A question left unanswered still.

Oh Sylvia, when you were coming into your death
did you smell the stink of vinegar and did the bees'
roaring cut off your hearing?
If you still lived today, what meds would be prescribed for you?
How many weeks in between shrink visits for you?
Would they send you off to a day treatment sort of program?
A partial hospitalization thing? Or a "clubhouse?"
Would the professionals mutter against your writings during their staffings?
Would they claim that your writing was part of your sickness?

Benedryl makes me hyper.
Some folks use Seroquel for insomnia.
"Might you have sleep apnea?" I ask people when they talk about insomnia,
"That can mess up sleeping too."

Might I be obsessed with asking random people if they have sleep apnea?
I want the world to get a c-pap machine and to have some real sleep like I get now.
But the world does not have sleep apnea.
And the news mediacs continue to dole out poisoned sugar drinks to the masses.
I swear politicians do not get enough sleep.
Again, the world does not have sleep apnea.
Too bad I think.
Yeah. At least that woulda been a relatively painless fix.

I might be content to leave the practice of medicine to the practitioners if I was convinced that they don't want us to be in their mass guinea pig parade.
Instead, I compulsively read Medscape articles
hoping for more clue-by-fours.

Pills and c-pap for a manageable life.
For me, better than the alternative.

Sylvia Plath thought that she was living in a fishbowl and folks were looking in.
Some say that is a mark of craziness. I rather think there is an element of truth in the most bizarre delusion.
And hers was rather tame.

I've rambled enough.
Here's to better days and a kinder gentler reality.

radical sapphoq

CYBER-SAFETY 101 1/14/07

Friends don't let friends use Micro$oft though sometimes there is good info to be found there. One such example is found here at: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/children/kidpred.mspx

Many of us who blog, post on boards, join e-groups forget that there are basic safety rules and we violate them without thinking. How many of us post our birthdates on our blogs? Town we live in? School we attend? Name of company we work at?
Other folks are doing that too.
Sooner or later, we may be instant messaging with others we have met during our internet pursuits.
We are too casual. We think nothing of these things. And it may be that some of the threats have been exaggerated.
Some stats may be inaccurate, yet the bottom line is when someone we know becomes a victim, the stats lose their meaning.

We may have teens who have been sucked up into blogging and websites and e-groups and boards and on-line gaming and instant messaging as well.
That sympathetic teen blogging "friend" or "buddy" in an e-group for teens looking for support and direction may not have their best interests at heart.

Do we know who they are communicating with? Do we know who we are communicating with?
Witness Yahoo 360 blogs where the ease of getting a yahoo ID can translate into many phoney identities. Nowadays we can be any name, age, or location that we choose to be.

Here and here are some basic safety rules that parents can implement for their children and teens. Actually, those rules would be pretty good for us adults to follow too.

People, are we following the basics of internet safety?
And parents, have you taught your children the basics of internet safety?

Parents, you should be actively monitoring what your children are doing on-line. On e-groups all over the net, there are teens and supposed teens who have posted their names, age, gender, and locations. Would your teen reveal similar information in an introductory post to an e-group?

Parents, you should be actively monitoring what your children are doing on-line.
Bullying is no longer restricted to the schoolyard. Adults can and do bully other adults on the internet on posting boards, e-groups, and in the on-line gamerooms. They can bully other adults via e-mails and blog comments. Adults can bully children and teens. Children and teens can bully each other. Although sometimes people can have conflict which is not bullying, conflict can escalate into bullying or other anti-social behavior. There are also individuals who delight in generating conflict on-line in newsgroups, e-groups, and anywhere that people electronically gather. Educate your teen on internet trolls and how to deal with them. Teach your teen that feeding trolls only encourages them further. Trolls may evolve into full-blown cyber-stalkers.

Parents, you should be actively monitoring what your children are doing on-line. Anyone can be a victim of a cyber-stalker. The Instant Messenger buddy who insists upon knowing why your teen wasn't on-line at the usual time, the blogging acquaintance who investigates your teen [and family] and then publishes personal info on-line [like your phone number] or shows up unannounced at school or job are exhibiting some of the characteristics of cyberstalkers. The religious guru who is running your teen's e-group may be a cult in the making and the malcontent who bombards your teen's e-mail account with threats of legal action may be a bully. The cyber-stalker will invade your teen's life by showing up at your front door or consistently at the electronic gameroom or teen chat.

There is a heap of information on-line about remaining safe in cyber-space.
Here are some ideas gathered from those places:

Be the parent.
Set guidelines and rules for internet usage.
Put the computer in a family room.
Remain in that room when your children are on-line.
Monitor their e-mail.
Monitor their blogs.
Talk about keeping private information private, fighting, bullying, cyber-stalking, and trolling.
Teach them conflict resolution skills.
Show them how to disengage from any internet contact that feels uncomfortable to them.
Tell them: no phone calls, no presents, no photos.
Forbid them to meet any of their on-line acquaintances in person ever-- unless you are present and the meeting takes place in public.
Pay attention to any personality changes or behavior changes in your child. They may indicate a problem that needs looking into.

Those suggestions apply to all of us of all ages.
Be safe, and play safer,
radical sapphoq

NATIONAL SECURITY VS. PRIVACY 12/11/06

Ralph Mroz wrote an interesting column on distinguishing between criminal threats vs. terrorism threats; and the obligation of any government to keep its' citizens physically safe. His article included several interesting ideas in relationship to the fourth amendment. The lectures which Mroz attended at the police academy where he trained made some important distinctions and outlined the operating premises based upon those distinctions:

"I realized that these lectures were about what constitutes a free society...and what constitutes a totalitarian one. I realized that the limits on what the state-that is, a police officer-is allowed to do on the street every day determines whether we live in a free society or an oppressive one.

If the state can stop you from freely going about your business whimsically, it is a short line from there to dictatorship. If the state can search your person or belongings at will, we are well down the road to an totalitarian government."

The lectures discussed the differences between probable cause, reasonable suspicions, and getting a "hunch" or feeling that something is hinky. The role and oversight of courts in how a police officer can reasonably respond was also presented.

Mroz went on to contribute his own gems of wisdom to the present debate over how much power the government has in terms of detaining suspected terrorists vs. the expectations of privacy that the common citizen has. Our government has to consider how to uphold the standards of safety that we have become used to as a society. The real question should not be: Is the government empowered to act in certain intrusive fashions considering the serious level of harm that several individuals can now cause to an average group of citizens? The average citizen can take some measures to keep safe from the average criminal via burglar alarms, guns, pepper spray, neighborhood watch programs etc. The average citizen or even a large group of average citizens can not do much to protect themselves from suicide bombings. Thus the government, mandated by its duty to protect average citizens, has to take extraordinary measures in these extraordinary times. Because the terrorists have weapons at their disposal that we cannot defend against with our guns nor with even the average standard-issue police officer's gun, we then become responsible to ensure that our government continues to use its' power to keep us safe and alive.

radical sapphoq