handbasket Archives - Page 3 of 10

The Internet Is Broken

The Internet is broken,
The Freedom Train has stalled.
The Netizens are woken,
The gardens all are walled.
If anyone’s outspoken,
They soon will be recalled.
The Internet is broken
and I’m sitting here, appalled.

The Internet is busted;
its people are at war.
The principles I trusted
I don’t trust any more.
Our minds are maladjusted,
but we cannot restore
the Internet we busted
to the one we had before.

This song actually has a cheerful melody, but since I can’t write musical notation you’ll just have to trust me on that, until I attempt to record it.

Social Media Discussion Questions

As I’m still (mostly) on hiatus from Twitter and Fecebook, I fantasize about having a real-life discussion group to talk about social media. Since I don’t have one, I’ll do what I always do: ask online, which is why I developed a social media dependence to begin with. Please answer as many or as few questions as you like.

Have you ever changed someone else’s mind on social media? How?
Have you ever gotten angry at someone on social media? Why?
Do you have online friendships or relationships with people you’ve never met in real life?
Has a conflict on social media affected you offline, in “real life”? How?
Have you lost friendships over things said and done on social media?
Have you ever been publicly shamed on social media? If so, please describe. If not, why not?
Have you ever joined in a public shaming of someone else?
Have you ever witnessed a social media public shaming? Did you say anything? Why or why not?
Have you ever reported a tweet or post? Why? What happened?
Have you ever been reported?
Do you say things on social media you’re afraid to say in real life?
Do you say things in real life you’re afraid to say on social media?
Have you ever lied on social media? Why?
Do you “like” things you don’t actually like, and refrain from “liking” things you do like? Why?
Do you use social media for political activism? How?
How would you stay in touch with your friends without social media?
If your friends all jumped off a cliff on social media, would you do it too? (Answer: yes.)

Update: my answers are in the fifth comment below.

Another way the Internet is like the Printing Press

10 years ago, the Free Web was revolutionary, democratizing, and empowering. Many of us correctly compared it to the advent of the printing press, another revolutionary technology that was inextricably linked to the Reformation that soon followed.

What I didn’t consider was that also inextricably linked to the Reformation were the European Witch Hunts. (Perhaps not inextricably linked, but simultaneous, were the European Enclosures.) Now we’re seeing online Witch Hunts (and Enclosures too, hello Social Media). So my enthusiasm for the Internet is a lot more qualified now, as is whatever I had for the Reformation.

Recommended reading (albeit in leaden academic prose – someone should rewrite it for a popular audience!): Caliban and the Witch

Fecebook/Venmo reading private messages to divert financial transactions

UPDATE: 1. Paypal owns Venmo. 2. E was on his phone, I was at my desktop. I removed fecebook and messenger (ant twitter!) from my phone over a year ago, for increasingly obvious reasons.

It’s difficult to copy-and-paste a fecebook messenger conversation into a blog post, but I tried, because I want people to know about fecebook reading a private conversation about sending money through PayPal, and instantly creating an unauthorized transaction request without either party’s knowledge or permission. Below, text from a conversation between me and E in Fecebook messenger, December 16 2018:

E: Hey where is the pay pal link? I’m not finding it. Or do you have Venmo, that’s even easier

N: Just go to PayPal and send it to ____@_________.com.

Then I see this:

N: Wait, what? This isn’t PayPal, this is some weird fecebook thing. I really don’t want to give fecebook my bank info. Can you please just PayPal it to ____@_________.com?

E: Oh fuck I got a request from you via FB and so I sent it. I thought that’s what you were asking. I don’t know if I can retrieve it. If you didn’t request that is fucked up.

There was a little green button so I clicked it.

N: I sure as fuck didn’t send you a fecebook money request.

Can you take a screen cap of the green button/apparent fecebook request? I can publicize and shame them for doing this, it is way unethical.

E: The green button is gone. It is replaced by this:

E’s screencap:

N: At least it says it expires.

E: Yes. If you refuse payment I will get it back in a week or so.

At the very least it seems like msft should be pissed. You were about to send money via PayPal and FB swooped in.

Here are my screenshots of Fecebook trying to get my card info so I can receive money I didn’t request on a payment platform I don’t use:

N: OK, it was demanding I enter a card first, but after I went through a few pages of “add your card” bullshit there was a little “decline” link. So I just declined it and didn’t give them my card. The whole thing is definitely set up to get the recipient to give them their card info though.

E: Let’s try to replicate that though to see if we can make the green button show up.

N: Hey E, you still owe me $20! Just send it to me via PayPal, to ____@_________.com .

E: Was there and now it is gone!

E’s screenshot:

N: WHOA
EVIL

E: Here try this.

Hey Nina. Can you please send me $100 by PayPal to ____@_____.com?

N: Hmm, I’m not getting anything

E: I saw one.

N: Maybe because fecebook doesn’t have my card info!

E: I’ll send it to you.

N: Wow. That’s not as bad as the “send” thing, but it’s still bad!

……

E: Yeah the two parts that fuck me up are: 1. you ask specifically to send via PayPal and they give me a green button seemingly to execute your request, and that directs this business to a competitor. 2. Much much more problematic is that AI agents scan all our communications and then act on it in ways that are not in our interests but are in corporate interests. In they old days you needed a wire tap to listen into a phone conversation and it was a federal offense to open someone’s mail. Now you can assume that all your communications are scanned for info. There is enough computing power now or soon to scan and analyze every bit of human communication plus location shopping reading and website visits, like your entire life is owned.

…..

N: Oh dude – I just went to venmo.com. Look:

N: “Sign up with fecebook.”
Venmo is fecebook.

Below are screenshots of the conversation in fecebook messenger. The text above is supposed to make all this easier to read, but maybe the images below are a better record:

Intolerance

I was “no-platformed” in my hometown this week, because months ago and in a completely unrelated context I said “if a person has a penis he’s a man.” I stand by that statement; my views on the subject are formally articulated here. I am ashamed of venues that cave to bullies. They deleted the event page but not before these screenshots were taken.

“Tolerance” is no longer a liberal value. Now the word is “inclusion”, which actually means “silence everyone I disagree with.” I was able to have a productive and valuable conversation with Jordan Peterson, in spite of – or perhaps because of – our differences. It’s not hard; respect, civility, and tolerance are values we share. Meanwhile so-called “left” ideologues can’t tolerate any questioning or dissent; their tactic is to bully and silence women like me.

These same screenshots were posted on Imgur yesterday; in the middle of the night they all vanished. New link here, but it too can be disappeared at any time. That is the world these intolerant political tactics create.

Regardless of political positions, people need to step up for free speech and tolerance. I have always supported the right to speak for everyone, especially people I disagree with. That’s what free speech is about. The alternative is fascism, which the “left” seems to be hell-bent on creating, even more than the “right” they claim to “resist.” They actually share the worst values of those they claim to oppose.

Read it and weep:

Continue reading “Intolerance”

Is There A Doctor In The House?

Note: updated below
I NEED HELP. I have an orange-sized fibroid in my cervix, among other problems. The local hospital system is dysfunctional and corrupt – doctors don’t communicate with each other, or with patients (it is, however, one of the most PROFITABLE systems in the country! Isn’t that nice). My so-called “primary care physician” hasn’t seen me in 3 years, though not for lack of trying on my part. I visited the emergency room in great pain last year and since then have gotten bumped from specialist to specialist, and then dropped – it took 4 months to get a referral from the useless rheumatologist for the gynecologist, because someone somewhere dropped the ball and didn’t feel like it was important. Surgery that was supposed to happen this month or next, now won’t even start to be scheduled until July. Maybe. Every time Carle says they’ll do something by a certain time, they don’t – like I said, they took 4 months for a simple referral (and I had to get on their case to do anything about it at all). So even if I absolutely knew surgery was what I needed, there is an enormous trust problem at this point. Do I want these corrupt clowns cutting me?

A doctor in my family recommended someone at Loyola Medical Center who looked promising. So I called, and while they accept Medicaid, they don’t accept Medicaid managed by Meridian, which is what I have. So I called Illinois Medicaid and asked if I could switch to Molina, and they said no, I’m locked in until April of next year. So I called Meridian, who put me on hold for half an hour and then gave me numbers of nearby medical establishments which aren’t Carle. One of them was a disconnected number, the other, Kirby Med Center in Monticello, has no gynecologists at all. I called an affiliated gynecologist in Peoria, but his office is booked until at least July – and that would just be for an initial appointment.

What I REALLY want is a doctor that actually pays attention and can help me figure out what I should do. I won’t get that through my local med system. I probably won’t get that anywhere. But here’s my last-ditch effort before I resign myself to a life of pain and permanent celibacy (I can’t have sex without getting violently ill; celibacy is how I’ve been managing at all):

Are there any gynecologists among my fans? Any? I will travel to your state. I just want someone who will actually pay attention to my case. I am desperate.

Update 5-18: Due to help found through my cry of despair here & on fecebook, I have an appointment Monday with a gynecologist at SIU Med Center in Springfield IL. I was advised that teaching hospitals are eager for patients like me, and so far that seems to be the case. I called this morning, they were very helpful, and called back within 4 hours with said expedited consult appointment.

Then all I had to do was get my records released from Carle. Carle doesn’t accept emails for this (“they take too long,” they said on the phone). You have to visit their new vortex-of-evil administrative hell-plex on Staley road at Curtis, on the outside of town. Fortunately, SpecialManFriend(tm) was kind enough to take me there. I filled out the form, talked to the clerk, and came back after lunch. “Here are your records!” they said, handing me a big envelope. I almost walked off with it, but then decided to read through them first. Good thing, too – they’d neglected the most important, recent, and pertinent records of my MRI and ultrasound. They also neglected to include images, which I specifically requested. I politely asked for these things and they said, “oh, sorry, we’ll print those out now,” and “oh, ok, we’ll burn you a disc.” I’d be disgusted but I’m feeling too hopeful about getting a new doctor in a completely new, totally non-Carle system.