Administrivia: Fires, Status going forward, etc.
First, I want to thank everyone who has emailed me notes asking if the
L.A. fires have affected me. There are lots of people in L.A. who need
your concern on this, but I'm not one of them. I'm on the other side
of the mountains -- L.A. is a VERY big place -- and to this point
there hasn't even been smoke, just very high winds. That's the current
situation for me, right now.
To put this event in perspective, these low humidity, Santa Ana high
wind patterns this time of year -- outside humidity for me right now
is only 20% -- are cyclic and probably have been going on since the
mountain ranges formed in North America, that created the geologic
conditions for high pressure to funnel into this area from the high
deserts to the east, and be heated by compression as they descend
pushing out to the coast. Though the winds this time of year are not
the hot Santa Ana winds that can occur at other times of the year,
since the deserts are not warm right now, they still obviously can be
very damaging. This is especially the case (like now) when we have had
no significant rain this "rainy" season, that reaches from around
November to April or so. If we don't get rain now, we don't get it at
all. So conditions are very dry.
The upshot is that while these winds were predicted and every possible
warning and preparation were made, there is only so much you can do in
advance, and getting such fires under control is usually impossible
until the winds die down -- which seems to be happening currently
after very high winds last night. It's likely that Trump will attempt
to blackmail California for federal aid, despite California revenue
helping to keep red states going around the country, but that's the
sort of sick monster he is. But like he loves to say with his moronic
"accordion hands" waving in and out, we'll see what happens.
Finally, I'm going to have to slow down activity on these lists and other
venues, perhaps drastically. These don't effectively help to keep the lights
on and food in the pet bowls, and I am obviously not as young as I used to
be, something that is true for all of us of course.
These lists have been running for a very long time. The PRIVACY Forum
is on Volume 34, which means it has been running continuously for that
many years. Forget about Internet time, even in "real world" time
that's a pretty big chunk for this stuff. Innumerable Internet firms
have risen and then fallen over that time. The Net, and the world,
were different places when I began these efforts.
I endeavor to be realistic, not inappropriately pessimistic, but it's
difficult not to be extremely pessimistic about the Internet's future,
at least for the vast billions of users increasingly at the mercy of
billionaire CEOs who seem to be using James Bond villains as their
models for global dominance.
Internet firms from Google to Meta to what was once called Twitter (to
name only three among many) have increasingly sunk into what can only
be called depraved mindsets at the hands of their corporate
managements, who appear to have abandoned all pretexts of social
responsibility, and have aligned their profit centers to curry favor
from fascists and to push decrepit and dangerous "artificial
intelligence" systems onto users who never asked for them, don't
understand them, and for many, will be harmed by them, with the firms
taking no responsibility for the damage that they are doing.
These factors and others, including misguided attempts at age
verification that will likely do far more harm than good in the long
run, and the sense that governments around the world are finally
achieving their goals of turning the Internet into a tool of
suppression rather than enlightenment, into a mechanism for spreading
hate and lies rather than truth and goodwill, all suggest that the
term "hellscape" to describe the Internet going forward isn't even
strong enough to fully depict the kinds of horrors coming into view.
Enough said. Take care, all.
Best,
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lau...@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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