Censored and Silenced on Facebook

Posted on December 23, 2019 by bluedepth

Today on Facebook I posted a share to my Friends of Friends about how I had suspected that a thick stripe of politically motivated sponsored stories on my Facebook feed had appeared, and that I suspected them all of being Russian trolls. Ever since 2016, when Facebook was the fertile ground for the first Russian meddling in our presidential election, and then there was Cambridge Analytica, that now when I spot a political sponsored post, I immediately suspect Russian meddling.

Russia attacked my country. A silent war, not a shot fired, but it was Russia none the less. And so, in the spirit of that attack, on Facebook, I referred to them as “Filthy Russians”, because they meddled where they should not have. I don’t need to prove the meddling, Robert Mueller did that in his report, after all. Everyone can see it for themselves. So, this phrase, “Filthy Russians” was flagged by Facebook as hate speech.

Here it is, the service I hate to use slapping me with a gag for 24 hours. I regard this as a badge of pride. Facebook was the platform that refuses to take responsibility for Russian meddling, they are the ones at the center of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and here they are silencing me as I call out Russian trolls who are just starting to ramp up their attacks on my country again, now that we are on the edge of 2020.

I have let my blog go fallow for far too long. As I was considering this image from Facebook, it struck me that it would be a great conversation piece to start talking about defending ourselves against Russian aggression. But how would we start to defend ourselves? A great place to start is having everyone who is going to have a sponsored page on Facebook register their citizenship with the service so that we can see if the source of the sponsored messaging come from our fellow Americans, or say, as we suspect, from Russian trolls. I think that would be a great place to start.

So I can browse through Facebook, but I cannot comment or post for the next 24 hours. Fine. I can of course post on my blog whenever I feel the whim and nobody can slap a gag on this blog. I have been kicking around the notion of sharing from the blog and posting links to Facebook anyways. I pay for this after all, why not make more use of it?

Honest Amish Premium Beard Oil, 2 oz.

Posted on June 16, 2019 by bluedepth

The Honest Amish Premium Beard Oil is next. This is one of the beard oils I use routinely. The scent screams woodshop. The notes in the scent are sawdust, the warm smell of metal saw blades and a very weak burned resin. I humorously regard this one as “An exploding lumber yard.” The oil is quite darker than anything else I’ve used and might slightly alter the white in my beard and bring out a very slight yellow tint, but I’ve never thought that a negative.

Honest Amish again delivers more product for similar cost than any of their competitors. They ship double the product for almost the same price. I seem to vacillate between applying the beard oil by hand, versus dropping the oil on my brush and using the brush to apply it. I don’t know if there is a difference in application styles, but I do think that applying it by hand seems to be a more thorough method. There doesn’t appear to be any consensus online either, as I have searched in vain numerous times.

Once the bottle at work is exhausted, I intend to rotate the Honest Amish in and carry it around with me as my go-to beard oil choice.

Honest Amish Beard Balm 2 oz.

Posted on June 12, 2019 by bluedepth

The Honest Amish Beard Balm is next up in my beard product review series. This product is shipped in a two-ounce tin, aluminum again, with just a product identification sticker on the front and nothing on the rear. It’s not nearly as wide as the standard tin shape, but it is deeper. The remarkable thing about Honest Amish is its low viscosity. The balm is loose, more of a kind of paste than a wax. This at first, was something I had to learn to adapt to, as the usual method of extracting product led to way too much product being used. The technique is the same, except the force used is much less. For Honest Amish, you have to be gentle because it’s so loose.

Honest Amish took a while for me to get used to, and a little bit longer to like. The scent is powerful, almost overpowering scents of clove and pumpkin and other likewise warmer scents. It is not bracing, cutting, or belting but rather smooth and crafty. As it isn’t a wax but a paste it doesn’t take much manual working to get it warmed up or slick to apply, but it does do its job very well. Over time I started to like the strong difference in the scent and began to humorously regard it as an “exploding pumpkin pie factory.”

While it is one of the stronger scented balms, it is not one of my favorites. It is satisfactory, and they certainly give you quite a lot for your money, and Honest Amish is apparently very well perceived by many online. Their ingredient lists match a lot of the other balms, so if you like pumpkin pie or clove scents, this will rock your world.

Existence as The Junk Lady

Posted on March 14, 2019 by bluedepth

While talking with a friend about meditation and the buddhist idea that the world is occupied with a force called maya, that wants you to stop seeking awareness, and perhaps making an effort towards enlightenment by plying you with distractions. Maya could be summed up as all the things that disturb your meditative awareness. Everything from a ringing phone, a neighbor kid ringing the doorbell, or an itch on your nose that is driving you to distraction. It’s all maya.

Then as part of the conversation, an image from a beloved movie appeared in my head, of the Junk Lady from the movie “The Labyrinth”. She is all hunched over, surrounded by Junk in the Junk Fields where she makes a home, and spends all her time trying to dissuade the purpose of the main character with objects that she once loved. Handing them to the main character one after another, in a rapid succession to confuse and derail the greater effort of the plot in the movie.

The more I think about the Junk Lady, and that whole scene, the more it resonates. That maya is like that. An itch here, a ringing phone there, a screaming cat downstairs, a plane making the house rattle because its too low, or whatever else happens that tries to interrupt your focus on whatever it is you have selected. A word, an emotion, or your breathing. This force is also within as well, the little mind some call it, when you are trying to focus and all of a sudden, because you aren’t doing anything and that is strange and wrong for the little mind, it starts to run around like an agitated monkey, rummaging around and throwing out memories, stray thoughts, whatever it can get its clever little fingers around and bring to the big mind to get it to stop being quiet. Trying to count breaths and before you know it, you’re thinking about pulled pork and BBQ sauce as your stomach gurgles. That is maya, in a nutshell.

Costco Packed

Aside

Our local Costco is absolutely jammed with people! It’s as dismaying as Meijers on Saturday. So, Costco on Sunday is now a thing.

Chat Talkers

Posted on March 1, 2019 by bluedepth

While I’ll still have Facebook Messenger on my phone, the preferred systems for chat are still Signal and now Hangouts. Obviously iMessage is still a fine medium to use of you like. Everybody should have my email accounts and phone numbers, if not, let me know!

Telephone Scam

Posted on December 7, 2018 by bluedepth

I just received this transcript on my Google Voice line, totally a scam. If you happen to run into it, you can disregard it.

“Name under your SSN. So before we could go ahead and start the legal actions on your name. We want your retained attorney of record to give us a call back as soon as possible at 929-430-6590. I repeat the number. Again, 929-430-6590 and your case identification number is 26 CFR. Do not disregard this message. If we do not receive a call from you or your attorney, either your warrant will get activated. Thank you.”

Not A Chew Toy!

Posted on March 31, 2018 by bluedepth

I’ve been struggling on and off for a while now with my old MacBook Pro MagSafe 2 85W adapter. A while ago, Bailey, my male feline decided that the power cable from the block to the magnetic adapter would be a great thing to nibble on. I know it was a cat, because the insulator had sharp little teeth marks all along it, and I know it was Bailey because he has killed Apple EarBud cables in the past.

The cable for my MacBook has been a source of irritation for a while. My electrical tape patch apparently wasn’t enough to restore the accessory to full working state. There are times when I plug it in and no charging, or if I can get it to charge, sometimes when I move the Macbook the power subsystem detects something awful and immediately terminates the power in the laptop. Power failures like this are annoying because everything pops off, no shutdown, just instant-off. So earlier today I went out, ponied up some more money to deal with the Bailey damage, about $60 bucks after some Best Buy Bucks were on my account that I used to defray the cost a little bit.

So now I keep a constant vigil against cat related IT damage. While I was away in Dallas for work, the adapter started giving me fits there, but I was able to coax it back to life, and it didn’t cause any hard resets for which I am very thankful. So now I have to throw the old one away and make sure there aren’t any more chewing misadventures for this cable.

I got to thinking about how I charge the laptop at night, and what I might do is plug the bigger cord into the business end of the wall wart and put everything in my backpack to charge up. That way it’s all out of sight, out of mind.

Very Naughty Kitties!

Meijers is a Dump

Posted on March 24, 2018 by bluedepth

We are at our local Meijers Market and this establishment doesn’t have any functioning bathrooms for male patrons. So, with no choice and urinating outside of a bathroom a misdemeanor, I just walked right into the out of order bathroom. Because, public health huh? They have a restaurant here, so I’m pretty sure they have to have a functioning bathroom.

Heh, technically I could have just used the sink.

This place is a dump. Now it’s unfit for serving and selling food. One question: where do employees go? How do they wash their hands? Heh, where oh where is the health department?

Phrasing!

Posted on March 24, 2018 by bluedepth

Having lunch at a local establishment and there is a chalkboard with the menu drawn on it. It’s really quite well done and we both enjoy this place.

Then we saw this, and it stuck me in a funny way:

And the only thing I could think of was “Oh my God! They feed the pigs vegetarians!”

It’s fitting, hilarious, and I don’t think I could ever unsee this.

And then it struck me that if I shared this on Facebook I’d get blowback for suggesting that we feed vegetarians to pigs. Thankfully this is not Facebook, and the comment section is not a free for all. It isn’t even a democracy, not fair, even.

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