Hey guys, I hate to break it to you, but it’s business as usual in these United States of America — whenever I venture off into the interwebs, I can’t help but notice folks seemingly going on and on about how things in this nation are the worst that they’ve ever been.
School shootings, police being ambushed, rioters under the guise of protest literally burning communities to the ground, are just a few of the things these folks are seeing in today’s society.
People seemingly act like all of this is some new and strange phenomenon, that we are circling the drain as a nation.
What’s going on in this nation now is just another somewhat sordid chapter among the many other preceding sordid chapters of American history.
Those who know our history and have lived through a bit of history of their own, up close and personal, might have the tendency to put all of this into it’s proper perspective.
Though I can’t speak for the 1880’s or the 1920’s, I can speak somewhat for the 60’s and 70’s. You couldn’t miss it. Walter Cronkite would come on the news every night and tell us all about it. There was always something going on.
Though the list of constant violence in this nation far exceeds anything I could ever hope to put to print, here a just a few highlights of just how messed up we’ve been throughout the years.
Terrorism
Between 1968 and 1973 there were over 2,500 bombs set off in this country by a various assortment of radical groups (Weather Underground and FALN to name just a few)
Anarchists
Anarchists are nothing new to this country either — In 1886, 8 anarchists were responsible for a bomb blast during a labor rally at Chicago’s Haymarket Square killing 11 people, including seven police officers, and further injuring more than 100 people.
Crazy people
Crazy people have been roaming the streets of America for generations. In 1927, 45 people (38 of them children) were killed when a school district treasurer, Andrew Kehoe, lined the Bath Consolidated School near Lansing, Mich., with hundreds of pounds of dynamite, and blew it up.
Each generation in this country has had to pay the price for political/corporate greed, racial strife, and bad government/economic policies.
If I seem calm and collected during some of our conversations, it’s not because I take lightly the events of the day, it’s because many of today’s outrageous events aren’t really that much different from all of the other preceding outrageous events.
Once you get a good unbiased look at this nations history, you may come to realize that what’s going on today in the United States of America is just business as usual.
Don’t be fooled by Google’s faux privacy statements
Here’s an idea — how about we refuse to be fooled by Google’s faux privacy statements — or better yet — we all just turn the *location off on our phones. Better yet, how about tech having location shut off by default. If the end-user decides that he or she wants to be followed around, then they would have to be the ones to actually physically turn it on.
I’ve found it somewhat odd that we Americans would be so concerned about privacy, while at the same time eagerly wanting big tech to follow us around anyway.
There’s no reason to have to delete anything if it wasn’t there to begin with
Google has announced plans to help protect user privacy in relation to health data. While the company does not make explicit reference to the recent overturning of Roe v Wade, there has been concern in the wake of the historic ruling, including fears that data collected by apps and websites could be used against individuals.
With this in mind, Google says that it will start to automatically delete location data about visits to “particularly personal” facilities such as abortion clinics and domestic violence centers.
The company has also announced updates to both Google Fit and Fitbit that will give users greater control over their data.
Google has insisted that it’s location tracker is already off by default, but with the new Android phone, it was turned on by default and the process for turning it off is somewhat convoluted and confusing. Turning off the location tracking was met with notices like, “If you disable tracking, other features on your phone may quit working”.
I got the same kind of notice when I removed the Google Chrome browser app from my phone.
Anybody that knows Google at all, and has had any experiences at all with them over the years, already knows most of this stuff. Remember, back in the day, when we could turn the Google tool bar off, but it wasn’t really turned off?
Yeah — good times.
Google got caught.
The only way you could turn the Google tool bar off was to actually uninstall it, and then, if you were on a Microsoft Windows machine, you had to literally go into the registry and remove all of the Google entries related to the tool bar itself.
You have to actually go in and turn *location OFF on a new Android phone, regardless of what Google might say. (you disable the app and disallow it’s connection to any other areas of your phone)
Google says that Google Play has strict protocols to protect user privacy, when really it doesn’t. Your data is collected by Google and is either shared or sold to Google partners every single day. When you shut your phone off, Google knows about it. When you plug in for a charge, Google knows about it.
The location node on your phone however, if turned off, won’t give you any real exact specifics with regard to weather or other sorts of GPS information. All Google can do is give a best estimate of where you might be in town. Google only records the exact location if the node is turned on.
Don’t be fooled by all of Google’s faux privacy statements.