Is it manspreading if you are alone?

I’ll be the first to admit I know almost nothing about the EU’s GDPR.  But after adding some remotely hosted tracking analytics it seemed like I should look into it even though I’m not selling anything, not advertising, have no presence in the EU.

I did look into it and the law as written is impossible to comply with. Nobody is really sure they are in or out of compliance, at best they only have some lawyer’s opinion about compliance and lawyer’s are not webmasters or server admins.

I think the EU bureaucrats meant well but the GDPR is so daft I think everybody is going to spend way to much money and time on something that cannot work.

My plan: Step 1 Make it look like i’m complying.  Step 2 try to comply as best I can.  Step 3 if some dink really wants detailed information about opting out, send them to the World’s Longest Privacy Policy Page ™ and make their eyes glaze over in agonizing boredom. Step 4 If all else fails, flares, chaff, zig-zag.

So what is everybody doing to comply with GDPR on your blog or are you going to ignore it?

Not content with plastering the internet with annoying GDPR pop-ups, the European Parliament is pushing forward with further measures to disrupt the Internet. On June 20th a committee of MEPs voted to accept major changes to European copyright law that many critics claim will “End the internet as we know it”. The changes concern two […]

Source: EU votes for “disastrous” copyright bill. Article 11 and Article 13 get approval | OKO

President Donald Trump said he would be signing an executive order later Wednesday that would end the process of separating children from families after they are detained crossing the U.S. border illegally.

There is probably a longer blog post coming about this, Real Soon Now but here is the flash skinny.

• Jetpack stats is great to get you started but it is very basic. Need something more.
• I hate Google so I’m avoiding Google Analytics.
• I do not want to install scripts on my server. I want a remotely hosted solution with the data on somebody else’s server.
• I don’t have high traffic and I’m not selling anything or serving ads so I don’t need anything fancy.
• I hate companies that do not say straight up how much their service costs and if they have a free option.  Obfuscation has become way too prevalent in the marketplace. They want you to sign up first then tell you what is available.  Not worth my time.

Many of the old players have gone dark. There are many new players that I’ve never heard of.  We’ll see.

Any suggestions as to who is good any why?

I hope you all realize that the solution to most illegal immigration is fairly simple: pass a law that would send the owner or CEO of a company to prison, and I mean hard time, when their company is caught hiring illegals.  Any hope of work for illegal aliens would dry up overnight.

But those CEO’s are the high rollers that donate money to Republicans and Democrats in Washington, so even if such a law got passed, it would never be enforced against them.  Instead, the owner of the local gyros shop would end up in prison for hiring an illegal cook while the corporate big wigs are ignored.

So instead we go through the charade of ICE roadblocks and are expected to spend tens of billions of our taxpayer dollars on a border wall because the fix is in, in Washington.  And everybody is falling for it.

A few years ago, when the TSA detained, for hours, a preschooler because his name was similar to a name on the secret no-fly list and made the child sit in a chair across the room from his mother, forbidding and touching or contact between the two, I called it “child abuse”.  Criminal child abuse that went on for hours as the child screamed for his mother who was forced to sit across the room, while the TSA tried to figure out if a toddler could be a terrorist.

That was just one child.

Now we have ICE detaining hundreds of small children, babies being ripped from their mother’s arms and held in cages.  That ain’t right.  That is child abuse. Criminal child abuse.  I don’t care about “orders”, procedures, laws and the parents being law breakers, it still ain’t right and no amount of political spin, double talk and bureaucratic double-speak is going to make it right.

I don’t like illegal immigration. I don’t want to see floods of refugees invading America like they have and are invading Europe, but there has to be a morally proper way to handle children and their parents without tearing them apart and locking them up.  America has a right to control it’s own borders, but America also has an obligation to be humane.

I don’t ever want to be lectured about “family values” by any social conservative ever again.

This is so true.  via To stop endless war, raise taxes - Vox

A grassroots movement getting few headlines could yet herald a new American age of change.

During the summer of 1937, Britain was so full of spies that posters were put up in public areas warning people that “Silence is safety, Now more than ever - forget what you hear” and “Be like Dad – keep Mum.”  Although most people were alert, no one expected a group of clean-cut teenage boys to be guilty of spying.

Executive Veggie Order #1: Pork and Beans, Refried Beans, Baked Beans are a vegetable.  They might already be a vegetable but this is to clear up any lingering doubt or guilt.  The science behind this is irrefutable based on New Math and New English.  Beans have for too long been marginalized by Deep State types within the FDA.

Ergo, by Official Executive Order the above named beans are a suitable replacement for green vegetables, especially those I don’t like.

via Roger Stone suddenly admits to meeting with a Russian national to seek dirt on Hillary Clinton - Vox

Internships aren’t all they are cracked up to be.  One of my best life experiences was working retail, although it didn’t seem that way at the time.

Like Link: The “summer job” vs. the “fancy internship” (revisited) « Minding the Workplace

I’ve toyed with this idea for years, and maybe somebody is already doing it, I wanted to start a blog that was just totally made up, bat-shit crazy, conspiracies, but presented straight faced like The Onion.

Stuff like: Obama is buying up all the tomatoes in the world and shipping them to a secret base in Antarctica to feed a colony of UFO Aliens who like tomatoes or Ancient Romans invented fuel injection so efficient that the oil companies are actively suppressing all knowledge of it or Atlantis was located where Lake Michigan is now before the last Ice Age.

The problem is I don’t think I could pull it off.  I don’t have a good enough imagination to post that kind or stuff regularly nor am I a good enough writer to make it sound convincing.

But the other problem is, people would actually believe this stuff today.  I’m hearing about groups that actually believe in conspiracies way weirder than anything I could make up and nobody bats an eye!  Which kinda scares me if I really think about it.

At least 4 scoops on the ice cream index.

All this flower planting is too stressful. I’m going back to paving everything.  #perennials #flowers

If you’ve heard about Linux, then you know about the most popular version for desktop users: Ubuntu. But which flavor of Ubuntu is right for you?

If Democrats want any hope of voting Trump out, they must fix the broken primary system before the next election

Parties lose political legitimacy when they are seen to no longer represent their members.  The Democrats are deep into this and heading deeper.  It will take longer for their support to melt away, because they are the only other choice against Republicans in a rigged two party system, but that day will come.  It’s already happening.

Source: Dear Democratic party: it’s time to stop rigging the primaries | Heather Gautney | Opinion | The Guardian

Liberals want to require a full background check and a three day waiting period for anyone having fun.  Conservatives want to cut off all funding for fun.  Social conservatives want to ban fun because fun and sin both have 3 letters.

Santana - Smooth  | Youtube

One of them is an attack from a “sonic weapon.”

Source: Are US diplomats in Cuba and China being attacked? Here are 4 theories. - Vox

What I find appalling is that towns and cities are busting little kids for lemonade stands.  Don’t they have better things to do on taxpayer time?

Source: CountryTime pledges to pay fines of kids whose lemonade stands get shut down for operating without permit

In reply to: Intertextrevolution

Thanks for the kind response.

I’ll answer here your webmention reply didn’t show on my site. I’m sure I probably have a setting for that wrong somewhere. :)

You are right, Wordpress is a handful to get set up. If you add in the Indieweb stuff it becomes even more of a handful. In theory you only have to do this once which is good. You folks are on the right track with the Indieweb plugin - it makes things much easier.  All I knew, after doing a lot of reading on Indieweb stuff, then seeing the Webmentions on other blogs, I knew this was what I wanted.

After writing that post I got to thinking: one approach to documentation is to treat it like cooking recipes and cooking classes. (ie. I’m making a pie crust, the recipe calls for peanut oil which will do this, but can I substitute corn oil and what will that do to the pie crust? etc.)

Another way is to think like a blogger: “3 Best ways to Syndicate Your Indieweb Blog to Twitter,” type articles.

I understand the Indieweb eco-system is not yet complete, templates, feed readers are all still being developed.  Someday, this will all be close to plug and play, but in the meantime we need some big FAQ’s and comparison of real world (read Wordpress for now) services.  Unfortunately, my trial and error approach burns up too much time.

Thanks to Chris Aldrich who has been doing a good job of explaining a complex eco system.

In 2017 Linux computer maker System76 introduced their own flavor of Linux called Pop!_OS and started offering it as an option alongside Ubuntu as the pre-installed OS on their computers.  I have been using Pop!_OS (that is a pain in the ass to type) for a few weeks and finally got the opportunity to compare it to the newest Ubuntu version side by side.  Here is what I think.

Pop OS - System76 markets this for professional creators.  By that I think they mean people who use Linux professionally every day, know what software they will use and don’t want a lot of distractions.  And the Pop OS pretty much does this.  You don’t have to uninstall a bunch of programs you will never use.  The software store is a bit spartan, and does not offer as wide a range of choices in software as  Ubuntu.  The core Gnome desktop software is there along with some other programs.  Program descriptions are pretty sketchy in many instances but you can get by.

Take System76 at their word.  Pop OS is for the pros.  It is rock solid and workmanlike and a mainstream user can get by (especially if they Duckduck third party Linux how to articles).  In other words it does not suck.  People switching from Windows or macOS should use Ubuntu.

Ubuntu - One noticeable thing: right out of the box and unlike Pop OS, Ubuntu has proper Minimize, Maximize, Close buttons on the top right of each program window.  No horsing around, Ubuntu is ready to be a desktop OS and a replacement for Windows or macOS.  The Ubuntu software store (repository) has a lot more choices in software available, better icons and better more complete descriptions. Pros won’t care but mainstream users will appreciate the extra choices.  Even better Ubuntu has gone back to the Gnome 3 UI and dumped that awful Unity UI.  Win!

If you are a mainstream computer user or are moving to Linux from Windows or macOS, of the two, get Ubuntu. You will be happier.

All that said, I don’t regret my purchase of Pop OS.  It is perfectly competent and serves my needs.  It is rock solid like Linux is supposed to be.  While I don’t put myself in the creator class, once I find a program I like and does the job I pretty much stick with it. Which is what Pop OS was aiming for.  Either way, I am happy with my System76 hardware it is good quality and they have good support.

Added 4 September 2018

I’m downgrading my opinion of Pop_OS.  I am now encountering my 3rd problem with it that is going to require contacting Support.  System 76 support is excellent BTW.  But one problem locked down the whole computer and took nearly a week of back and forth command line stuff to fix.  4 days later a new problem cropped up with stuck system updates.

When this computer’s warranty runs out I will overwrite and install Ubuntu.

I really like System 76 hardware and support. I highly recommend it.  For now I only recommend you get Ubuntu installed as the OS.

One identified victim says the attacks were not isolated events—and the US knew.