He Said, She Said, They Said, It Said

Life in the Dizzinformation Age.

Image by hakelbudel from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"Advances in automation, artificial intelligence and robotics, while increasing productivity, will also cause major upheavals to the workforce."                                                                                                     -John Hickenlooper

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

Sometimes I wonder if certain Luddites of my acquaintance are on to something.

"You could look it up!" -Casey Stengel... or James Thurber... or maybe Yogi Berra.

{You should look it up.}

I tried that, Dana. I was looking for the origin of the phrase you can look it up. No joy. What I found was that there's an out-of-print book called You Could Look It Up: The Life of Casey Stengel (my emphasis).  

Mr. Stengel was apparently well-known for frequently saying you could look it up to sports writers, hence the title of the book, but if I were the King Solomon of quote attributions I'd go with James Thurber. I'll spare you and my gentlereaders the details. I find them interesting but... 

{Yeah, fascinating, although I don't know or care who Casey Stengel is. I've heard of Yogi Berra but I wouldn't know who this James Thurber dude is if I ran over him with my car.}

Not to worry, Thurber, Stengel, and Yogi Berra for that matter are no longer with us but that's not the point. My point is that even though most of us can easily and instantly "look it up" nowadays, most of us don't. 

And if we do, we often discover that the answer we seek is elusive and we give up for the same reasons we don't "look it up" in the first place: who's got the time, motivation, or attention span to follow a given rabbit hole to the end?

DING!

{Sorry, dude, I've gotta check this notification.} 

While we carry around a virtual Library of Alexandria in our pockets neither Siri or Googella are very good librarians, often offering up multiple, conflicting answers when we ask a question.

{What a coinkydink, somebody's selling a collection of Yogi Berra baseball cards on eBay. Who's Googella?}

That's the name of the woman that responds when one says, "Hey, Google."

On the trail of an idea I had for a column I next googled the question, "Do people still say you can look it up?" 

{Why didn't you just ask Googella? You've got an Android phone, right?}  

Because I'm one of those Geezers who prefers using my computer to using my phone for such things and disembodied creatures such Googella, Siri, Alexa, or whoever are not welcome at Casa de Chaos. Remember, a vampire can't enter one's home without an invitation.  

I mostly use my phone as a phone. When I leave my cave, although I do bring my phone with me in case I need directions or have a massive heart attack or the like, it's often not even turned on. And even if it is, it's only permitted to notify me of incoming texts, and that's only because I set it to make this really cool BOING sound that I never tire of hearing.  

I prefer interacting in the real world without an electronic buffer betwixt me and it, and often as not, I don't even feel compelled to take pictures or record a video. 

{Huh. Well, do people still say you can look it up?}

I don't know. 

The first hit returned was the title of an article from GrammarBook.com titled You Can Look It Up. Summary: When reading you should look up every unknown word because your best guess might be completely wrong. 

{Words to live by... or read by anyways.}

Followed by: People also search for... (dead end).

Followed by: People also ask... (dead end). 

Followed by a hilarious and accurate definition of, "look it up" as supplied by the Urban Dictionary. 

Followed by: "8 Words That Totally Reveal You Are Not a Millennial," a 7-year-old article from Inc. magazine. I gave up. 

However, I did follow a fork in the road rabbit hole and discovered that the original Luddites weren't Luddites, there was no such person as "Ned Ludd," and that we're all using the word incorrectly.  

I found an excellent article published by Smithsonian Magazine in 2011 written by Richard Conniff titled What the Luddites Really Fought Against. Long story short, "...the original Luddites were neither opposed to technology nor inept at using it. Many were highly skilled machine operators in the textile industry."

England's "seemingly endless war against Napoleon’s France" caused food shortages and rising prices and "...on March 11, 1811, in Nottingham...British troops broke up a crowd of protesters demanding more work and better wages. That night, angry workers smashed textile machinery in a nearby village." This resulted in a violent, bloody labor dispute that lasted till 1816. 

You can look it up.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share my work or access oldies. Buy an old crank a coffee? Extra content is available to members of Cranky's Coffee Club.    

Comments? I post my columns on Facebook and Twitter where you can love me, hate me, or try to have me canceled. Don't demonize, seek a compromise.

 

I Was Cancelled (For 24 hrs.)

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

This is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"If you can live on rice and beans you're uncancellable because you're always rich relative to your needs.” -Eric Weinstein

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders), 

Recently, Google, which I affectionately refer to as the Goog, canceled one of my columns for 24 hours. In fact, for some of those hours, my website warned a given he/she/they that if they accessed my site they might be in cyber danger.  

{Is that like stranger danger? They probably think you're just another one of the squillion H. sapiens that use their blogging software and don't realize you're a world-famous columnist.} 

Having said unkind things once or a hundred times about the Goog, the other tech oligarchs, and their Wokie minions, I assumed it was something I said.

{Well, privately-owned companies do have the right to restrict speech based on the clearly stated rules of the obscure, slippery, and ever-shifting rules laid out in the fine print.}

Indeed... and I'll come back to that.

As it turns out my temporary canceling, I was told, was because: "Your content has violated our Malware and Viruses policy." This was because of the content of a specific post titled Show Me the (Covid Relief) Money! 

Criminy! What if I've run afoul of the Goog and The Fedrl Gummit? I ran around Casa de Chaos turning off lights and closing curtains. I was about to push the panic button and make a run for the armory when I realized we never got around to installing the panic button and we don't have an armory.

The post in question was temporarily disappeared. I found out later it was covertly spirited to a black site and not-tortured using the same methods the CIA (used to use?) to not-torture transnational Jihadies. 

The next day I received an email from the Goog stating that "Upon review, the post has been reinstated." Apparently, a drunk algorithm made a mistake. While the column now has PTSD, it has willingly returned to my site.

BIG BUT. 

I have to re-publish it (click on a button) to make it re-accessible to the public thereby confusing my millions of regular readers who have already read it. I think I shall hold on to it for now thus turning it into a priceless collector's item.  

In the meantime, I've managed to get it waitlisted for a program at Johns Hopkins that has had much success (no, seriously) at treating PTSD and other disorders with "magic mushrooms." Rumors that I'm also trying, as the author of the piece, to have myself admitted to the program are absolutely true.

Please send emails of support to help me pitch Johns Hopkins. In the meantime, I've copied all of my columns onto flash drives that are stored in safe deposit boxes here, there, and of course, in Switzerland. 

Now, as to the notion that the Goog, the other members of the tech oligopoly (and even the squillion wanna be/wish we were tech oligarchs) don't have to respect free speech because they're privately owned, I call bonkercockie.

Legally speaking, from what I was able to ascertain from a solid ten minutes of deep googlin', the legal consensus is that social media platforms are private companies and can censor what people post on their websites as they see fit.

However, there are myriad legal reasons and myriad laws at myriad levels of jurisdiction that prevent a given Woolworth's lunch counter from refusing to serve me just because I self-identify as an Afro-American lesbian named Coco, who in my mind's eye, could pass for Hale Berry's sister.

And Woolworth's is a privately owned company.

{I'm guessing myriad is the word of the week? It's a shame you can't find a way to get paid for that the way others get paid for inserting product links into what looks like innocent prose.  

And by the by, legally speaking, you're comparing Esopus Spitzenberg apples to Cara Cara oranges, but I don't know where to even start... and Woolworth's has gone out of business.}

Are you sure? Perhaps that's why I can't find 99¢ 45s anymore. 

I realize I've compared apples to oranges. 

I was merely cleverly setting the stage for a big finish in which I marshall all sorts of dazzling, highly technical legal arguments as to why big tech shouldn't be allowed to censor speech but my research left me so dazed and confused I had to go lie down.

So permit me to insert a suffice it to say and say that given the monopolistic power of the Goog, Facebook, Twitter, etceterer, if they don't/won't find a way to resolve the problem (unlikely), they should be regulated like a public utility.

Given that they are or are becoming the primary information conduit for most Citizens of the Republic (and make lotza dough by selling data about some of us to others of us) they should have to follow first amendment case law just like (in theory anyway) The Fedrl Gummit does, and serve everyone at the information lunch counter.

{But that would require Congress to pass appropriate legislation.}

Indeed... Never mind. 

I think I feel a migraine coming on. Sorry to waste your time, gentlereaders. God help us, every-one.

On the other hand...

She He/she/they wore a glove, as my late father-in-law would've said. 

As I've pointed out elsewhere this cacophonous kerfuffle could be easily reduced to a tempest in a teapot any time the oligarchs wanted. For example, require users prove who they are and register under their real names.

{What's next, having to have an ID to vote?} 

But they would lose money once advertisers only had to pay for access to actual eyeballs and not virtual ones, and lawyers could sue malevolent and irresponsible eejits.

Howsabout a tightly monitored and controlled Google, FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, etceterer paired up wide open, watch where you step, versions for grups only? 

{There you go again, people would have to prove they're 18...}

In exchange, I'd let 'em use as many pseudonyms as they pleased and post whatever insanity they like. Trolls in paradise. But I'm thinking they should have to prove that they're 28. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share this column or access previous ones. If you find my work pleasing you should buy me some cheap coffee with PayPal or plastic.    

Feel free to comment/like/follow/cancel/troll me on Cranky's Facebook page. I post my newest column there on Saturdays and interesting other stuff on other days.

Cranky don't tweet. 

    

  

Calling Out Google Privilege

-Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay-

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandchildren (who exist), and my great-grandchildren (who don't) — the Stickies — to haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

                  
Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and/or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering

                                                  Glossary  

                                                    About

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"We want Google to be the third half of your brain." -Sergey Brin


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

Recently, I wrote about white privilege. In the course of researching that letter, I learned a lot and now it's time to call out Google privilege. I'm a current events junkie and if what I've been able to surmise is correct...

WARNING! - Your semi-humble correspondent is wrong with disturbing regularity!

Googlers are, for the most part, proudly and overwhelmingly members of the Blue tribe.

Which is fine, it's still a relatively free country. Now...

You know... At this point, a more garrulous and less woke and loving man than myself might digress and point out that in spite of the fact some of our friends on the left predicted that the Orange One was going to dissolve the Republic and declare himself King Donald the first it never happened.

His political opponents haven't been incarcerated in secret FEMA camps and...

No, wait, secret FEMA camps is a conspiracy meme embraced by some of our friends on the right, right? Wait a sec', I...

[Cough, cough. Google privilege?] 

Thanks, Dana.


Google privilege is double privilege. First of all, it's white male privilege.

Despite literally years of wailing and gnashing of teeth by the Blue tribe, and even though the Googlers excommunicated James Damore for the sin of speculating that perhaps many women are too smart and too civilized to want to join Eric Schmidt and the boys on the creepy line...

“The Google policy on a lot of things is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.” -Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO

"Google crosses the creepy line every day." -Dr. Robert Epstein

Google is plagued by white (and to a lesser extent, yellow) male privilege.  

Your semi-humble correspondent dug up and read not one, but two Wired magazine articles chock full of charts and statistics so that my gentlereaders wouldn't have to. 

Both report that Google (and the other techmosters) are overwhelmingly staffed by white and Asian men in spite of literally billions of bucks and billions of words spent on the quest for diversity. 

It makes me wonder if most of the members of the 1,001 officially recognized gender/racial/ethnic/sexual/etceteral identity groups are actually more concerned with the selfish pursuit of happiness than they are with diversity. 

However, given all the folks who make a living, directly or indirectly, from the diversity business:

Writers of magazine articles, the Infotainment industry, HR departments, college administrators, politicians, bureaucrats employed by the gummits and The Fedrl Gummit, consultants, etceterants...

Too much diversity too fast might bring on a recession.        


The Goog also benefits from disruption privilege. The Silicon Valley techies worship at the altar of disruption. Why? because as famous bank robber Willie didn't actually say, "That's where the money is."

For the record, Mr. Sutton, in his autobiography, modestly admits that he never actually said it, that some reporter or other made it up to spice up an article and it caught on.

I dunno though... Hard to imagine that a member of the fourth estate would put their integrity, dignity, and credibility on the line for profit and job security. 

The sort of billionaires that apparently will never have enough money (serial accumulators?) and the wannabe billionaires who are living in the Goog's parking lot dream of "disrupting" (destroying) an established industry via software and/or cutting edge hardware to make a name and a pile.

Another for the record: All I want is six million (with an m, not a b) and you'll never hear from me again (I've got it all planned out). 

If any one of my tens of readers happens to be an absurdly rich tech lord (I'm talkin' to you Ev Williams) and would like me to shut up and/or suspend my campaign to be the first king of the United States, please email me at: 
theflyoverlandcrank@gmail.com.


Anyways, for a group of people, the majority of whom I'll wager consider themselves to be members of the Social Justice Warrior National Guard or Reserve, they don't seem overly concerned with the fate of the disruptees.

They don't discriminate though. This applies equally to their fellow Democrats as well as the Deplorables and Bitter Clingers of the Red tribe.

[What about that Universal Basic Income thingy? A lot of 'em support that.]

Yeah — paid for with additional taxes on everybody. As you're well aware, Dana I'd prefer that the Pete's Pals and Bernie-bros that make a living from slicing, dicing, and selling our data cut us in before The Fedrl Gummit steps in and makes everything worse.

Speaking of which, Bernie? Seriously dude? The professional socialist of little accomplishment, net worth $2,500,000, owner of three homes, even older than me who recently had a heart attack? 

And while I'm at it... Pete? Is a 38-year old whose political claim to fame is running a small city with mixed results what we're looking for? I think...

[You're ranting and digressing again and you're nearly out of words... And regardless, Sleepy Joe and Fauxcahauntos are hangin' in. And don't forget Bloomberg, he's got a ton of executive experience and he's so dedicated to public service that he bought a third term as mayor, despite term limits, knowing NYC still needed him.]

The Donald vs. One of the above. Hoo-boy.

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

Please scroll down to react, comment, or share. If my work pleases you I wouldn't be offended if you offered to buy me some cheap coffee.  

                                                   *     *     *

Your friendly neighborhood crank is not crazy about social media (I am a crank after all) but if you must, you can like me/follow me on Facebook. 

Cranky don't tweet. 

Hey, Google... Where's my money?

-Image by xresch from Pixabay-

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandchildren (who exist), and my great-grandchildren (who don't) — the Stickies — to haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

                  
Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and/or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering

                                                  Glossary  

                                                    About

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"You can't go into Youngstown, Ohio, and tell everybody they're going to be retrained and go work for Google or Apple."  -Michael Avenatti

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

"Hey, Google...

B'donk (the technical name of the default googlebeep). 

 Where's my money?"

B'donk: "I couldn't find anything related to money."

Indeed.

The Goog, the Zuck (AKA Facebook), and no shortage of smaller firms have built companies that generate more cash flow than the so-called robber barons could've even have dreamed of.

[What about the other two FANGs, Amazon and Netflix? They're right up there with Google and Facebook.]

True, Dana, but Amazon and Netflix—no slouches when it comes to collecting, slicing, dicing, and monetizing our data—provide products that we can secure elsewhere relatively easily or choose to not access at all.

[There are other search engines besides the Goog's, and there are other social media sites besides the Zuck's.]   

Absobalutely (I confess I had the very first Sticky briefly convinced this was a better word choice than absolutely just to amuse me and Nana. I have since convinced myself), but they're both de facto monopolies so they should be the first ones ordered to appear in front of Senator Blowhard’s Committee for the Regulation of This, That, and All Sorts of Things.

I don't have a problem with a given monopoly that's really good at serving the public as long as the public is getting a fair shake.

If the FANGs and the numerous other hi-tech firms that thrive from, and actively promote, disrupting huge swaths of the economy don't want The Gummit in their faces as they claim (I know I certainly wouldn't) they need to become more transparent and give us more control over our data.

Most importantly, they should start paying for it.

Instead, they propose to provide the poor—and the disrupted Deplorables and Bitter Clingers—with a grain dole (see Rome, ancient) in the form of a universal basic income paid for with new taxes and run by The Gummit.

What could possibly go wrong?


While I had envisioned writing a column, based as much as possible, on a dialog with... Just a sec'.

"Hey, Google, what's your name?."

B'donk: "Did I forget to introduce myself? I'm your Google assistant." Hi!

[For the record, the exclamation point was perfectly and appropriately muted. B'donk (which I much prefer to Google assistant) managed to sound perky without sounding like she was smoking meth.]

But attempting to have a conversation with some software was even creepier and less productive than I expected it to be. Of course, I've spent more years of my life living in meatspace than cyberspace.

I didn't expect that it would be like talking to HAL 9000, or even Max Headroom (you know you're old when even your tech cultural references are becoming outdated).

And, I've been known to scream at, or hang up on (in a snit) the Walgreens robolady (talk about perky!) while trying to get my prostate pill script refilled.

But, bottom line? repeated inquiries failed to elicit a direct answer to my question although I tried various permutations. For example:

"Hey, Google, why don't you pay me for my data?" B'donk: "Check out these results."

Plenty of links from around the web, no actual answer. 

I kept picturing a hooge, gloomy, frigid room filled with thousands of racked computer servers and not a human in sight. The thousands of blinking lights were cool though.

I could hear muted, classical music playing, Wagner I think, but I didn't see any speakers. Anyway, I don't imagine computers enjoy listening to music since...

[Cough, cough. Perhaps you'd like to expand on your notion that people should get paid for their data?]

Good point, Dana. Lemme see, where was I... yadda, yadda, yadda, OH! Okay, here we go.


I recently read an article somewhere that claimed that the data generated by any given meat puppet is only worth pennies and given the free services the Goog and the Zuck give us we should shut up and be grateful.

As a wise woman of the world I knew in the early 70s, who made her living by slicing lunch meat and wrapping meat meat before it went in the meat case for public perusal and purchase used to say...

[What's the matter with you? Stop it!]

Bull Dickey!

Give us a cut of the ad revenue that you're awash in and charge us for the software and/or the service—whatever the market will bear. It's our data that you've gotten rich from and it's our data that you've used/are using to gleefully disrupt our lives.

I, and I suspect no shortage of other little people, would rather be a micro-capitalist keeping a careful eye on the stock market to see how we are all doing than waiting for The Gummit to send me my UBI check.

 

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

Please scroll down to react, comment, or share. If my work pleases you I wouldn't be offended if you offered to buy me a coffee.  

                                                   *     *     *

Your friendly neighborhood crank is not crazy about social media (I am a crank after all) but if you must, you can like me/follow me on Facebook. 

Cranky don't tweet.