I’m currently waylaid in unplanned emergency project land so my time has, yet again, been short and my reading seemingly only happening in 45 second chunks. I had a moment of terrible deja vu during dinner last night when I learned that my entire company was unable to access any Office 365 applications. It turns out that our accounting department had failed to pay $7K in invoices due to the reseller. I guess that’s the new new normal. I’m feeling more than my usual amount of fried.
Some things I’ve found interesting enough to take note of over the past few days:
1. To the surprise of absolutely no one, folks are getting hit with malware/adtech (is there any real distinction between the two anymore?) when using Internet Explorer to access porn sites. Ugh. This bothers me for a couple of different reasons. The first is that IE has never, ever been the best browser for anything even when it dominated market share. Why would you ruin your viewing experience by using the very worst viewing platform available. You might as well just slink back to your childhood hideout and try to decipher scrambled porn on good old fashioned cable. Why, stupids, why?
2. You should also give this post by a deeply religious but politically liberal person that examines the conservative obsession with child trafficking a read because it’s very well composed and gives you a bit of insight into how an intelligent believer would interpret the current and persistent insistence that a shadowy legion of pedophiles is abducting children and mining adrenochrome for Satan (?). It’s a much more balanced examination that I’m capable of making because I’ve already blazed through a lifetime’s supply of patience with trying my best to respect religious beliefs that I entirely disagree with and would just drop the that-person-is-fucking-insane mic at top speed and move quickly away and onward with my life. I gained an immediate respect for the author. I may not have the faith that he does (or really any belief in the non-concrete) but I respect the amount of thought that went into this piece of writing. It comes from a place that is relatable above and beyond religious beliefs.
3. This is kind of old news at this point but the seizure of ‘counterfeit’ ear buds by Customs and Border Protection is weirdly emblematic of the world we’re living in right now. Did Microsoft
Apple file a legal complaint against OnePlus? Nope. Is CBP actively pursuing sellers of actual knock off Air Pods? Nope. Does this feel like petty and political bullshit? Yep.
4. This is a sensible explanation of the various forces at work behind Oracle’s sudden emergence as the buyer for TikTok. It’s a lot more complex situation than the typical Trumpian defiant corruption scenario that we’ve become so accustomed to wincing at. No surprises at the ickiness of Oracle’s leadership at all. We’ve all known that Larry was human garbage for ages. I wonder how much time in the courtroom these maneuvers are going to consume after this toxic administration is banished back to hell. I look forward to reading about those minus the white knuckled terror of being governed by that toxic cesspool of the most shameless Americans.
