6 thoughts on “No More Google Ads”

    1. I did last September. I also quit using Google for mail and search around the same time. Apple may not be the ideal solution, but after watching them remove their ability to decrypt phones and handle the 0-day phone lock bypass by just disabling all ability to send data over a cable, they gained some trust.

      1. That’s why I’ve been all in on Apple. They are making privacy a central tenant to all their devices and services. They still have a bit to go, and they are pretty liberal of course, but they will at least fight (for now) government intrusion.

  1. “Join, and vote the grifters out!”

    I see the problem there as being very similar to our public/government politics: As a rule of thumb you have to have spent years proving you’re a real scumbag (or in this case, grifter-friendly) before you’ll be given a shot at being a real candidate. I’ll be overly cynical and suggest the best approach would be, to become a grifter yourself.

    Yes, I know there are occasional exceptions to that, and that NRA Director candidates qualify by a somewhat easier procedure that makes it possible for a true “independent” to at least get on the ballot — but his/her effort will stall there. Because, analogous to public election, partisan politics, those candidates with a “faction” backing them are going to have a leg up on things, by having their candidacy “facilitated” in countless ways (e.g., be talked up in more outlets) not available to a true independent. In particular, social- and other contemporary media notwithstanding, what most voting NRA members will know about a candidate, they will learn from the NRA. The metaphor “shoveling shit against the tide” comes to mind, and no one should underestimate the (political) brutality that the NRA is capable of.

    I think a few weeks ago I recited one of my Old Stories about watching an attempt by sincere dissidents (including an incumbent NRA Director) to gain some ground roughly 20 years ago, and being shut out; and I also had the personal experience of being wooed by the Republican Party, a decade before that, when it was made plain that the first thing I had to do was give up any notions of “independence” — and that had nothing to do with “ideology.” I am still registered “No Party”.

    Forgive me for thinking-out-loud, but “vote the bums out” ceased to motivate me as a workable approach, a long time ago, and every now and then I remind myself why.

    1. I’m picturing our colonist forefathers solving their problems by sending a boatload of delegates back to England to run for Parliament, get elected, and provide “representation” of interests other than George III’s and the nobility’s. :-)

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