Facebook Kept ALL the Information I FED IT. What's Up With That?

Over the weekend, I did what all the cool kids are doing and downloaded the data Facebook has stored about me. Or for me. Whatever.

And, frankly, I was a little disappointed.

Probably some data miner could find some interesting tidbits in the information I downloaded. And had I been a better data miner myself in the hour I spent with my data, I might have found something more interesting than a defunct cell phone number.

I’ll admit the irony that to download this information, I had to enter my Facebook password twice and was admonished not to share the information around, as some of it might be private. Apparently, Facebook will pass it out like candy to every developer who asks for it. And they don’t even really have to ask.

Some of the stories I’ve read about Facebook’s memory make it sound spooky that this Silicon Valley behemoth has all this information about us. About me.

The thought swimming foremost in my mind is that, as I looked through the data, there was nothing there that I hadn’t voluntarily shared with Facebook. And since I don’t do many of those quizzes or link other apps or services via Facebook, there weren’t a lot of third-party folks poking through my information – the only advertiser that had my information is Target.

And none of it was really all that exciting.

A good data miner would infer I love TV and movies. But generally old TV and movies, like MASH, 1984’s Ghostbusters, quite a variety of stuff from The Simpsons and the likes of The Pink Panther and The Private Eyes, starring Don Knotts and Tim Conway.

A good data miner would quickly figure out I have kids. And dogs. And a wife who occasionally checks in on Facebook but generally keeps away from it (not because she’s scared of it, but because she’s got better ways to occupy her time than I do). Maybe they’d get to know the names of the kids and definitely the names of the dogs – which could lead to finding the answers to the security questions ubiquitous to the Internet. So I ought to be more careful with what questions I choose to answer there.

An even better data miner could probably reveal some things about me that maybe I’d find a little spooky. But a mere mortal like myself looking at this information is going to say “meh,” and move on.

I have experienced bad juju thanks to my online presence. I have had credit card information stolen online twice. Both times I can trace the theft to Apple and its insistence that I keep a credit card on file with them via iTunes, even though I have NEVER purchased anything via iTunes. After the latest breach, I just left that credit card info blank, and too bad for Apple.

And I’m not blind to what the likes of Cambridge Analytica might be doing with our data (though what it does with it is more a reflection of the times we live in, and the political dirty tricks we’re already used to, and I can say this as an amateur scholar in the skullduggery of the campaigns of both Richard Nixon and John Kennedy).

(That such stuff happened before is no excuse for it to happen today, of course.)

What can we mere mortals do about it?

We can get our news from a variety of sources. There is no source out there – none – that is without bias, but some are more trustworthy than others. The more diverse sources we get our information from, the better.

We can learn to sort truth from truthiness. That’s the harder bit. But we should read from sources that make our feelings tingle because they agree with us, and read from sources that make us mad because they don’t. Often the truth lies with us. Often it lies with others. Most often, it lies somewhere between the two extremes.

Truth is sometimes found atop ivory towers. It’s also quite at home in the swamp.

Most importantly, we can walk away. Just because the news and skullduggery operate 24 hours a day doesn’t mean we need to soak up every bit of it.

Stunning Realization

It started out with a door-to-door salesman.

We get a lot of them in this neighborhood. But this guy was selling solar power. Both my wife and I had talked enough about solar power in the past that we thought, eh, we’ll listen to him. I wasn’t home when he stopped by, so she asked him to come by again in a week.

Now on Friday we’ve got another crew coming to take photos of the roof and take measurements to see about getting us fitted with enough solar panels to take care of about 99% of our electricity needs, on average.

This kind of system will take a load of bread to capitalize, so we’ll be taking out a loan. There are some advantages to this program – the company will pay our bill for the first 18 months, and we can get 30% of the cost back in a federal tax credit program (as long as we remember to roll that money onto the loan, we’re golden).

It’s a 20-year loan, however. That’s not the stunner. The stunner, Michelle says, is that we’ll be in our sixties when we pay it off. IN OUR SIXTIES.

But really, we can have the loan paid off in 12 years, which means ALMOST IN OUR SIXTIES.
We’ll both be little old corporals then. We’ll go in in our puberty and come out in our adultery.
But we won’t have electricity bills to pay. As long as the solar panels last.

Doing the math:

The company, Blue Raven solar, says they can get us a system that’ll meet our current power needs for about $90 a month (plus fees of about $7). Currently, we’re averaging just over $80 a month including fees, so up front it’s not a money-saver. But as we can get the loan paid down, the bill would drop to just the fees, so it’s tempting. And we can do some measures in the house to reduce our consumption and sell electricity to Rocky Mountain Power. Until they decide otherwise. But who knows what’ll happen – they  grandfathered in existing solar customers in Utah, while made it a lot less financially feasible for new solar customers to connect to their grid.

We’ll see what they say on Friday.

Permission to be Trolled, Sir!

STANDARD PREFACE: I’m no longer in the journalism business, and happy to be out. That does not mean I’m forbidden from writing occasionally on the subject.

A while back, I wrote about the growing practice of journalists using social media posts in their stories without first seeking permission from the poster to use them.

I can’t say it’s something I wouldn’t have done as a journalist – after all, this information and opinion is out there on a public forum, just the same as if I’d heard it shouted on the street or gotten it in a quote during an interview.

Or is it?

When I hear someone shout in the street, common sense – and probably a lot of editors – would tell me to go talk to that person, get their name, ask why they’re shouting and such. It seems the standard for social media reporting is just to take what’s said and use it.

By doing so, the reporter saves time, no doubt.

And can also end up using something put out there by one of these Russian election trolls we’ve heard so much about, such as was reported at Slate.com this week.

There’s a blend of fast-paced and lazy in this world – both are on opposite side of the coin. I most often fall into the lazy camp, as some of my former journalism colleagues would attest.

Better to be fast-paced.

I’m still haunted by my laziness and stupidity.

And so it goes.

The old saw goes “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Same ought to go for social media scraping. Lest ye be trolled.

Secondhand Reports: A Walkout Bust

Before the walkout happened, we talked about it at home.

I wanted to know, genuinely, if our three kids had heard any talk about the walkout – planned nationwide as either a call for gun control or in honor of the 17 students and staff killed by a young gunman in Parkland, Florida, earlier this year – at their own schools here in Idaho.

Oldest, a high schooler, had seen posters about it at school, but didn’t plan to participate himself. He’s not much up to the social scene, so this was not surprising.

Middle child, also a high schooler, had heard nothing about it, despite the presence of the posters. “There are too many posters on the walls. I don’t read them,” she said.

Youngest, at middle school, had heard there was a protest planned at his school, and he wanted to go. Because unlike his brother, he is wildly social.

Both the Idaho State Board of Education and the local school district said they believed the safest place for students at the time was in school with their teachers, but they recognized students’ rights protected under the First Amendment, so they would allow the protests without punishment.

As expected, the oldest did not participate.

The middle child was in the thick of things, watching spittle-emitting from protesters and counterprotesters. Clearly, they have learned much from the older generations.

Third child attended the protest and saw nothing but friends hanging out with friends, with no discussion of the issue that had prompted the walkout in the first place.

That’s the First Amendment in action, we told our middle childhood. Freedom of expression is messy, often nasty.

What will come of it, aside from headlines for a day?

If it’s only for a day, then nothing. Nothing will come of it. Past protests, with their spittle-emitting, indifference, social showoffiness and all, took sustained action, not one 17-minute protest, no matter how well-received, to accomplish any action.

“Wait A Minute, is it Right or Wrong?”

WARNING: Richard Milhous Nixon ponderings to follow.

The most significant thing ever said about politics in the last century comes from Ted White’s book “Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon”:

In a campaign there is no conflict between ends and means. The end is to win victory, and, as in war, the means do not matter -- deception, lying, intelligence operations are common in all campaigns; a campaign is no place for squeamish men. But what happens, said one of Richard Nixon's advance men of 1960 long afterward in 1974, what happens when the advance men become government? "What happens when they all sit in the same room in Washington and the President trusts them and nobody is squeamish, nobody is there to say, Wait a minute, is it right or wrong?"

I talk about that a bit here.

This quote has come to the fore again as I read John W. Dean’s “The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It,” wherein Dean (I’m just in the opening chapters) is laying the groundwork that to show Nixon’s loyalty to his men was chief among his flaws that led to his doomed presidency.
Whom do we have right now in government saying “Wait a minute, is it right or wrong?”

While individual members of either dominant political party in the United States might be saying it, the parties themselves are not. The parties are interested in promulgating the party, and look at any sense of right or wrong through the lens of party loyalty. Some of the individual platform planks of each party might be in the right, but on the whole, the parties are not saying “Wait a minute, is it right or wrong?”

Nixon’s loyalty to his men met up with his paranoia to lead him to believe his men above the cost of everything else. That loyalty combined with paranoia, I believe, led him to consider other paths to protect his men when he saw their guilt, at the cost of his presidency.

And his men did him few favors. Something from Dean’s book:

“I told him about the Liddy thing,” Haldeman explained,” because he’s going to find it out right away anyway, and it was better to let him know there was a guy.” But Haldeman also had new information to tell Nixon dealing with Liddy’s involvement in Watergate. “What we’re talking about is, we’re going to write a scenario – in fact, we’re going to have Liddy write it – which bring all of the loose ends that might lead anywhere at all to him. He’s going to say that, yeah, he was doing this, he wasn’t authorized.” Haldeman, of course, and not only been told by Gordon Strachan, his aide and liaison to the reelection committee, that Liddys’ intelligence operation budget had been approved, by the had also given Strachan instructions in ear4ly April 1972 to have Liddy change his focus from Muskie to McGovern. It was still not clear form these conversations whether Haldeman knew if Mitchell had authorized an illegal break-in and bugging at the DNC, but he clearly suspected it. Haldeman was certainly aware, however, that Jeb Magruder would not have authorized such an action without Mitchell’s blessing, and that Magruder was directly involved in the Watergate operation.

“Well, what else?” Nixon pressed for more of the scenario.

Haldeman obliged by spinning out the story he had discussed with Mitchell. “He thought it was an honorable thing to do. He thought it was important. Obviously, it was wrong. He didn’t think he should ask for authorization, because he knew it was something he didn’t want to put anybody else in a position of authorizing. How did he get the money? See, we’ve got that one problem, the check from Dahlberg. What happened is, and that works out nicely, because the check came in after the spending limit thing [on April 7]. So it was given to him with the instruction to return it to the Dahlberg. Instead he subverted it to this other purpose, deposited it in the bank. That explains where the money came from. That explains everything. And they’re [Mitchell and his aides] working on writing out a scenario.” I think that’s the answer to this, and admit that, by God, there was campaign involvement.”

But without Michell’s knowledge,’ the president qualified, and Haldeman repeated “But without Mitchell’s knowledge.”

“Or authorization,” Nixon further confirmed. Haldeman echoed, “Or authorization.”

“He’s fired.”

“And he’s fired,” Haldeman assured the president.

“What does he get out of it? What’s his penalty?” the president asked.

“Oh, not too much. They don’t think it will be any big problem,” Haldeman said. Then he added, “Whatever it is, we’ll take care of him.”

Nixon could not imagine this having taking place without Mitchell’s authority, but then, he told Haldeman, he was still not sure. Haldeman speculated, “I can’t imagine that he knew specifically that this is what they were doing. I think he said, for God’s sake, get out and get this [expletive deleted] information, don’t pussyfoot around.”

The president wanted to know about the money. “How’d he [Liddy] get the check?”

“He was processing the checks. It was an illegal check,” Haldeman concluded, incorrectly placing a worst-case potential on it by blending fact with the fiction of the scenario; when all the facts were gathered, it turned out to be a legal contribution. Haldeman guessed, “You know, he was going to run it down to Mexico and put it into cash or something.”

“The what did we do, return the money to the guy? What, what happened?” the president asked, confused about what was the true story and the bogus scenario.

The thing is about telling lies, and mixing lies with truth, is pretty soon you don’t remember what the truth is, and what the lies are, and how you mixed them together.

And those depending on you, well, they often don’t know you’re lying to them. Until it’s too late.
What do we have in Washington now, but politicians on both sides of the fence who value loyalty to individual or party above everything else – where compromise is a dirtier word than partisanship?

Far be it from a naif like me to suggest something: Maybe the people our politicians employ in their campaigns should have the kind of integrity that would make their candidate call on their better self, not their baser self. We’ve seen both parties succumb to wanting to win so badly they throw integrity out the window. And then keep the windows locked.

Hey! There's Something You Don't See in A Toilet Every Day!

Here's the kind of day I had:

Took my glasses off during a potty break, because I WANTED TO TAKE THEM OFF NEVERMIND WHY. And I promptly lost them. Looked for them for more than an hour, eventually enlisting other office-mates in the search. I looked through the trash. I looked INSIDE the paper towel dispenser, because it was open at the time of the Great Losing. I PAWED THROUGH BATHROOM TRASH. Figured, eventually, that I'd pulled a Henry Kissinger with them and gave up.

Sat down at my desk and decided, in all my blurry glory, that I'd at least fix my loose boot. And found my glasses TUCKED INTO MY BOOT.

Your tax dollars at work, folks.

(What does it mean, to "pull a Henry Kissinger"? Behold:)

The Importance of Peer Review, or George is Gettin' Upset!

I probably should wait 24 hours to write this, but part of me knows it’s important to write it now.

George is gettin’ upset.

Why is George gettin’ upset?

Someone had the audacity to tell him he’s not a perfect writer.

Can you believe that? Me! Two someones, in fact, said I’d written some stuff that wasn’t up to snuff. Stuff that wasn’t meeting standards. Stuff that needed to be fixed. They dared tell me I WAS NOT USING ENOUGH COMMAS.

You can see why I’m mad, right? I mean, I’ve been writing professionally – PROFESSIONALLY – for more than 22 years. Ten years as a journalist. Twelve years as a technical writer. I have a DEGREE in technical writing, for heaven’s sake. I know what I’m doing.

So . . .

I’m listening.

I’m listening to them.

Because as much as I dislike being told I’m wrong – BECAUSE I’M NEVER WRONG – one thing I’ve learned after writing professionally for more than 22 years,  it’s this:

I’m often wrong.

I get rushed. I get lazy. I get complacent.

I’m also a bit prideful. I’ve been working solo for more than five years, and suddenly I’m part of a group and am being asked to have my work checked again by others.

You know what else I need to get?

Teachable. And humble. Because like every other writer on the planet, I’ve got some stuff to learn.

So I’m learning it.

I hope this is how you see peer review. I know firsthand how much it irritates to be told you’ve done something wrong. That’s why I like to point out the things you’ve done right, too. Because you can learn from the good stuff as well.

But being humble and teachable enough to learn from our mistakes, well, that’s how we learn, right? I mean, this all sounds so familiar:

As the Lord is patient with us, let us be patient with those we serve. Understand that they, like us, are imperfect. They, like us, make mistakes. They, like us, want others to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Never give up on anyone. And that includes not giving up on yourself.

I believe that every one of us, at one time or another, can identify with the servant in Christ’s parable who owed money to the king and who pled with the king, saying, “Lord, have patience with me.”

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, April 2010 General Conference

Peer review can teach us patience. And patience is a glorious thing to possess.

George is calming down a bit now. He’s ready to learn again.

They Will Be Shot by Ice Pick Harry!!

When Dad sent letters or left notes, you paid attention. You never knew what you were getting into . . .

“Zsa Zsa? EEEEEEE HEEE HEEE HEEE HEEEE!”

Ours is an Alexa house.

Two in the basement.

One on the main floor.

Three upstairs.

I’m often upset at her because of her small repertoire of novelty songs – she does have the Allan Sherman “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” song, which is a blessing – and her nit-pickiness over how to select classical music. (If you don’t know the specific album or the list of movements and such, just forget it. Alexa allows for NO classical music shorthand.)

But we haven’t heard any Alexa random larffs.

The only disembodied voice we hear is when I wake at 4:30 to go to work and have to wander into our youngest son’s room to tell Alexa to stop playing ESPN radio. He swears up and down he sets a timer. Sometimes, clearly, he either forgets or the timer doesn’t take.

If our Alexa where to laugh randomly, I’d like it to be like Witch Hazel, from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, viz:

Hearing Witch Hazel laugh randomly at me from the darkness of my own home would be something to wet my pants about.

And here’s the funny thing – there’s a lot of paranoia out there about Alexa and other such services “listening in” on what we’re doing, recording it all, and then sending it all to some nefarious organization that’ll USE WHAT WE SAY against us.

I don’t feel the paranoia. At all. Which is weird, since in our family, paranoia is kind of a hobby.

My brain already acts in the nefarious ways we’re attributing to Alexa. Wednesday night, I drove past a building and my brain dredged up something very stupid I did there, more than twelve years ago. I’m not sure Alexa could do anything to add to that pain.

Three Bags Full

Many times at my place of work, I’m reminded of this scene from MASH:

FRANK BURNS: No, no, no, Sergeant. From now on, you will not simply slop food onto these trays. Look at this random arrangement, Major.

MARGARET HOULIHAN: I'm looking.

FRANK: The kidney beans have slopped from the bean compartment into the applesauce compartment. The dehydrated potatoes are in the every compartment. It's no wonder I never have an appetite. Sergeant, I want standardization of compartment usage. When I look down a table at trays I want to see beans, beans, beans, beans! Potatoes, potatoes, potatoes.! - Applesauce, applesauce, applesauce! Got that?

IGOR: Yes.

FRANK: Yes, what?

IGOR: Yes, sir.

FRANK: Yes, sir, what?

IGOR: Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full?

(Script courtesy of Springfield! Springfield!)

Frank clearly wants precision. Predictability. Order. Igor just wants to serve the food, knowing full well the order in which it’s placed won’t matter since people will either eat the food or dump it and then complain about its quality.

If the food works for his customers, Igor thinks, why fuss over compartment standardization?

Yet here I am in the compartment standardization business at work. I admit to not being as rigid and precise as others. And, generally speaking, I don’t hear many complaints about that from the people I work for.

But I’m working to improve my precision, because that’s what’s called for. I want the paychecks to keep coming, and if that’s what’s required, so be it. Because it’s impressive to show at dog and pony shows that everything is compartmentalized, just as Frank desires. And to a certain degree of precision, I agree with that.

Those fully in the Precision Camp chalk it up to laziness. And I’ve been called lazy – both rightly and incorrectly – before.  But sometimes those of us in the If it Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It Camp point to the name of the camp we’re in.

But it’s mine to deliver a Francophone “Bof” and do what’s required. Echoing what they say at Camp Precision: “It’s not THAT hard.”

What Was that $3.45 for Again?

Dear United States Postal Service,

On February 23rd, I paid $3.45 on top of the $1.21 in postage to be notified when my passport and payment for a new passport would arrive at the passport processing center in Philadelphia. You promised me it would be delivered by February 28, and when I saw that I had a hearty laugh.

Good thing. Because according to you, it hasn't arrived yet.

Though I have other means of verification.

The only way I know that – possibly – my package has arrived at its destination is that the bank tells me the $110 check for the new passport fee has been cashed. Hopefully by a duly appointed agent of the US Department of State.

Because as far as the USPS is concerned, by “certified” mail is still stuck in transit on its way to the final facility in Philadelphia.

Let me remind you, for this I paid $3.45.

My question: What the hell?

Yours sincerely,

Finding X

This past weekend, I felt like this about Doleful Creatures.

With good reason do I feel this way. The story, while partly formed, still resembles a pile of Tinkertoys dumped on the floor. There are parts, but there’s no real structure. I’m not yet to the point I need Dr. Ronald Chevalier-levels of inspiration, but there’s still some work to be done.

So I sat down late yesterday and took a few notes:

 Put legend/backstory to the fore, make the split with the Lady and the Sparrow-Minder be over the lack of magic for the animals.

She wants to give them magic because she knows when humans come, they will exercise dominion and kill and eat animals, destroy habitat, drive animals to extinction, etc. Animals could counteract this with magic that would make humans more docile, less prone to destruction.

The SM knows this would rob humans of agency and upset the order of things, as “animal” is only part of a soul’s progression toward becoming a god.

Nevertheless, some animals choose magic over the sacrifice for future progression and end up trapped in The Lady’s cave because they can no longer progress.

They are only promised a chance to progress if The Lady is destroyed by one who recognizes that X.

What is the X? What is the motivation?

Submission now means progress later?

Reminders: Animals already have souls. A soul can’t be a motivator.

What would be the difference between animal and human agency?

Rule of Claw and Fang versus Rule of Love?

Would magic prevent them from feeling joy? How?

Or is it simply training to show them how unrighteous dominion feels? They see humans exercise unrighteous dominion and think, hey, when I progress, I don’t want to be like that.

What do we know in the scriptures about dominion, unrighteous dominion?

This brings up obvious questions: Is this progression from animal to human, or animal to something else? I kind of think animal to human is too obvious. I want to see if I can hint at that something else. Something more transformative.

And is this going to be too allegorical? Or should I even worry about that, and just chalk it up to pseudotheology?

Book Review -- Overlord, by Max Hastings

Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy by Max Hastings
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ordinarily I love Max Hastings' books, but this one was kind of a disappointment.

It almost felt like Hastings said, "Well, I have to do a book on D-Day, and D-Day has been done to death, so let's get it over with."

And while he got beyond the official record, I don't feel like he got as much narrative power into this book as he has with his others.

View all my reviews