Mitch's Blog

@possibledog@beige.party/:

#BlueSky is a centralized corporate app, running a theoretically-decentralized network protocol that currently has only one (1) active node on the network: BlueSky. The other minor members of the ATP network are just piggybacking on BlueSky’s 13 million captive users for auth and reach.

Also:

Go ahead and enjoy BlueSky. It’s better than Facebook. It’s easier than Mastodon. It’s sassier than TikTok. It’s not motherfucking Xitter. But it’s not decentralized.

This is my attitude toward most corporate social media. I enjoy Threads, Tumblr and I even recently went back to Facebook. All their corporate overlords are tainted.

I stopped using Twitter around when Musk bought it but I can’t say that was over moral indignation. I had just gotten tired of it; Twitter had stopped being fun or useful for me.

Taco Bell is bringing back the Caramel Apple Empanada and other favorites from the 60s through the 2000s. What about the enchirito tho?

Here’s something I saw while walking the dog.

I recall having dinner with a friend in late 2016 — after the election but before the inauguration. He predicted the US was a year away from the Military Coup to Bring Back Democracy, followed in four years by the Military Coup to End Democracy after democracy turns out not to have worked.

I think my friend may have simply been off by a matter of time.

I remain hopeful that the Democrats win decisively, perhaps in a landslide, and whatever resistance follows is quickly put down. But hopeful is not the same thing as optimism.

I canceled my subscription to the Washington Post after this chickenshit decision.

Speaking out against fascism is a low bar, but the Post failed to clear it.

I don’t feel like I’ll miss out on much. The editorial quality has been declining for a while.

Eight questions to help you think about death.

Springsteen: I rarely see my bandmates - we’ve seen each other enough

Mark Savage on BBC.com:

“The louder you can talk, the better, because I’ve played rock and roll for 50 years.”

Bruce Springsteen has just E Street Shuffled into the room. Uncannily charismatic, he carries the practised ease of someone who knows the destabilising effect their presence can have on regular people.

He takes time to greet every member of the BBC’s film crew individually, then breaks the ice with a joke about a journalist who mistakenly called him “Springstein”. That reminds me of a local radio DJ in Belfast who always used to introduce him as “Bruce Springsprong”.

“Really?” he laughs. “Well, I’ve been called worse.”

I took Uber X instead of Uber Comfort today.

Simon Garfield at The Atlantic:

Comic Sans has long been the “Macarena” of fonts. Type aficionados don’t like it, the way coffee connoisseurs don’t like Starbucks. It is the font everyone loves to hate. But I love to love it. More than the typeface itself, I love the idea of Comic Sans: a set of letters that can make people suddenly intrigued, and sometimes cross. No other font gets people so worked up. When was the last time you had an argument over Garamond or Calibri?

Atlas Data Privacy Corp, which helps its users remove personal information from consumer data brokers and people-search services online, is suing Babel Street, which allows customers to track individual mobile users using tracking data built into everyday Android and Apple phones.

Brian Krebs, KrebsOnSecurity:

Collectively, these stories expose how the broad availability of mobile advertising data has created a market in which virtually anyone can build a sophisticated spying apparatus capable of tracking the daily movements of hundreds of millions of people globally.

In the hands of domestic terrorists and US states that have enacted fanatical anti-abortion laws, the technology can be used to track suspected illegal immigrants, women seeking abortions, public servant targeted by baseless conspiracy theories, and more.

Atlas says the Babel Street trial period allowed its investigator to find information about visitors to high-risk targets such as mosques, synagogues, courtrooms and abortion clinics. In one video, an Atlas investigator showed how they isolated mobile devices seen in a New Jersey courtroom parking lot that was reserved for jurors, and then tracked one likely juror’s phone to their home address over several days.

The article goes into detail about how this service is already allegedly being used for harassment, as well as the possibility of far more. Journalist Brian Krebs recommends turning off tracking on Android phones and iPhones, and includes instructions on how to do so. Do it now, and do it for everybody who lives with you, because if attackers can find people you live with they can find you too.