GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1091: HOW TO RID THE WORLD OF FLOCK (AND OTHERS*) CAMERAS AND DATA COLLECTION IN GENERAL

 You would think we'd get a new privacy law at least once every five years, just to keep up with technological advances, but no. Instead our corporate overlords, not content in forcing us to give up our data, now demand their God Cameras be placed all over the world so they can keep us under constant surveillance--cradle-to-grave omniscience--so they can flat-out raid our cars and phones for every detail of our lives via our data. So they can advertise to us. Not for nefarious purposes like, say, surveillance pricing, or worse.

How many officials have gotten busted using Flock (and others) cameras to spy on their exes? Or to stalk women? Just for example.

In 1988 we got the Video Privacy Protection Act. It forbade video stores from telling other people (in this specific case, journalists) what you rent from them. We got it because a newspaper got a rental list for a Supreme Court nominee and published it. Whoops!

Congress's collective butthole tightened when they realized, holy shit, our privacy is at risk! They passed that law faster than the Flash can cum.

Which brings me to all these surveillance cameras and the constant data collection. The corporate overlords sell everyone's data.

So . . . let's buy the porn searches of prominent politicians and publish them. It'll take some homework to do that legally, but it's pretty easy. Once you have one identifying piece of info, you can compare to the records you get from data brokers to confirm it's them. It's not even that expensive. It's just a few dollars for each record or a few thousand for datasets.

Key word: legally. It's easier to do it illegally, but it won't mean anything if we do. We have to LEGALLY get this information to make a point.

Politicians have proven that they only act in self-interest, so how fast do you think we'd get that new privacy law if we did this?

That should naturally lead to disillusionment with Flock (and others) cameras, but just in case, we should mandate that all politicians must be under 24/7 surveillance by these very same cameras. That means, we put a Flock (or others) camera in their office. In anyplace they might work. In front of their office building. In front of their house, to discourage any shady at-home corruption. In fact, if I want to read their emails live as they write them, or listen to their phone calls as they make them, I should have that access. (With the possible exception of a national security issue, of course. I even have a system for determining that, but who the fuck cares?)

They serve us, remember. We are their superiors. Also, please remember that the criminal we have in charge of the White House is our employee, too. He's not our master. He's a fucking civil servant who should be doing our bidding, not the other way around.

But I think it's only fair that, if they put cameras on us under the assumption that we're all potential criminals, then we should put cameras on them under the assumption that they're all potentially crooked.

"Show me the man, I'll show you the crime." That's an old KGB saying. American police--the regular kind, not the secret sort--have a similar saying. "I can follow anyone for five minutes and find some reason to pull them over." A watched pot may never boil, but a watched human does weird shit sometimes. Ever justify something after the fact? It's just a matter of creativity to change the weird shit into something that might be illegal.

The drawback to putting cameras on politicians is that they would have to vote for it, and their self-interest is too strong to allow something like that. However, they are not immune to how bad something looks, and if there are enough people demanding this at town halls across the country, they will have make some kind of public statement or risk mutiny.

I'll bet, just to save themselves, politicians will make the surveillance state go bye-bye. It'll take some elbow grease and sticktoitiveness, but when it comes to our rights, we should already have a barrelful of the former and a boatload of the latter.

We're Americans, dammit.

(Unless you're a loyal Fucker who lives overseas, that is. This is written from the perspective of an American, but I'm sure you can try some of this in your country, too. Check your local laws first, just in case.)

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*I keep saying (and others) because all too often local governments trade in Flock cameras for one of their competitors. Hey, the citizens said they wanted Flock cameras gone. My adoptive city of  DeKalb is in the process of getting rid of Flock cameras in favor of another company's. I forget which, and so what? Regardless of who fuckin' makes these things, we have to get rid of them. It's the concept, not the corporate overlord of choice.

Congress's Collective Butthole would be a great rock band name. Maybe a Les Claypool side project or something. Maybe he does an album with Jello Biafra?

NEW BOOK: DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF LOVE? by John Bruni

 

Would you look at that beautiful cover? In related news, I have a new book out! DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF LOVE? is now available!

From the back cover:

"Do you believe in the power of love?" This is the question that faces Nelson Jeffries, a man in desperate need of money. His answer leads him to Ania, a Polish immigrant studying to be a nurse. Her visa is about to expire, and she absolutely cannot go home. She offers him a deal: marry her in exchange for five thousand dollars. It's just a business agreement, he keeps telling himself, except he can't help but fall in love with Ania. At first it seems like the feeling is mutual. It's too bad she's not who she claims to be . . .

John Bruni, author of And Jesus Came Back and Dong of Frankenstein, returns to hardboiled fiction in what he likes to call a "screwball romance crime novel," as if Howard Hawks had directed a film based on a Richard Laymon book.

Get your copy today!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1090: AI SLOP 4 LIFE!

 So you've decided to suck up to AI companies. Life is hard for human beings. It's so much easier to surrender your agency to a machine.

Thinking is hard! You don't want to put yourself through that. Besides, the techbros have our best interests at heart. That's why they get up every morning, to make life easier for us NPCs. They would never let AI give you bad advice.

Of course, they're also CEOs and other lower forms of life, so they hate humanity and wish to be the only examples of it despite being cold-blooded dead-eyed lizard fucks (see Thiel, Peter). It's obvious that they want people to stop doing work and to rely on their Plagiarism God Machines (TM) to handle everything.

Yay! No more work? You mean, no more red tape and Sunday scaries and commutes and asshole customers? That sounds like a utopia to me!

Except . . . how will you survive without a job? Your home costs money. You have expenses. How will you afford groceries after the workforce is eliminated in favor of AI?

I'm sure the techbros have a plan. They don't have to share it with us. They're altruists. I know we live in a pretend capitalist society, and universal income goes against our make-believe system, but that's what government is for! To take care of citizens who can't take care of themselves. And they're about to take care of every single one of us! It's like we're one big happy family!

What's that? How will the government pay for all of our lives? Why do you ask? The government has unlimited coffers! They'll never run out of money! Of course, we won't get as much as we used to, so we'll have to tighten our collective belts. Nothing is perfect, but hey, I'm sure the corporate overlords will show mercy and lower their prices so even the poorest of us can afford to live.

OH! That's what you meant? I'm not sure how Uncle Sam can afford universal income if there's no incoming tax money. I suppose they could tax the billionaires, but that's unthinkable. Do I look like a miracle worker?

Look, just trust us. Everything will be fine. It will all work out in the end.

Would Elon Musk lie to you?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1089: STATE OF ANXIETY

 Not too long ago I overheard a conversation in the waiting room at the doctor's office. An older couple were talking about how everyone had anxiety today. Anxiety here, anxiety there. We're all living in a state of anxiety. It wasn't like that when we were kids. What is going on with this shit?

My first thought was, back when you were kids, admitting to anxiety was not just frowned upon, it was practically forbidden. While there is a lot of truth to that, I've since come up with another theory.

Constant surveillance. When I was a kid, there was a reasonable expectation that, when you left your house, you would not be recorded anywhere. I mean, there were cameras, sure. If you went to the bank or a gas station or a liquor store or any other place that was likely to get robbed, you would undoubtedly see a camera. But outside of those places? To say nothing of the fact that we didn't have cell phones yet, much less cell phones with cameras, so if someone was trying to record images of you, you'd see the giant Camcorder, so not even your fellow citizens could film you unnoticed.

But now cameras are everywhere. Everyone you see could potentially be recording you with cell phones or even with their eye glasses. There are cameras in cars, in door bells, even in your fucking household appliances.

Human beings are social creatures, our modern day behavior notwithstanding. It's important to be accepted by the tribe, and because there are cameras everywhere, a lot of people are trying to be on their best behavior because no one wants to get caught looking bad on camera. Like, that kind of video gets posted to social media, and then that person's life is over. Or, less drastically, someone doing something stupid, like picking your nose and eating the findings. They've been cast out of the tribe.

With stakes that high, why not stay the fuck home? Interact with people? Are you nuts?!

And now the cameras have gotten even worse. They're not just satisfied to steal our images. Now they're reading your license plate. Or they're scanning the data on your car's computer. Your digital footprint is more like a fingerprint. The police can ID you just from a Flock camera scanning your phone, so if a Flock camera busts you speeding, they don't need your face on camera. They know your phone was in the vehicle, so you were undoubtedly driving. Good luck getting out of that ticket.

I believe this is a violation of our Fourth Amendment rights. The Flock cameras aren't police cameras. It's the corporation, Flock, that is in charge of them. But instead of getting a warrant to go after you, the cops can just submit a request from Flock, and they have no reason not to give them that info. In fact, THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT.

But we live in a society where corporations and law enforcement are indistinguishable; therefore, it's a violation of the Bill of Rights.

"You can't fight City Hall," you say.

But you can. I have an excellent idea to get rid of the surveillance state we currently live in, and it wouldn't break a single law. Guaranteed to work! But that's for another day. Stay tuned.

Follow me for more tips on how to kill anxiety and rescue our personal freedom! I'll teach you my easy-peasy two-birds-one-stone solution!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1088: CHANNEL SURFING

 A loooooooooong time back I wrote a GF about how I'm among the last people who know who Laurel and Hardy were. Same for George Burns and Milton Berle and everyone else from back then who are about to pass into obscurity.

At the time I wrote it I thought this was a fucking crime, but now that I'm pushing fifty? I believe it's just the way she goes, to quote a great philosopher.

Young people today don't know a lot of the stuff I know, or even have the same frame of reference, and it's not just pop culture things. They have no idea what it was like to drive in a car that didn't have seatbelts and did have ashtrays.

But kids today will never know what it's like to watch broadcast TV. That's the craziest thing of all to me. They stream everything. They have no idea what channel surfing is. They will never understand the annoyance of discovering jack shit on the tube. That's not just a surface difference in time periods--that's a completely different way of life.

I generally think my readers here are around my age, so I don't think anyone from Gen Z is reading this. But if you are, I have something that might give you somewhat of an idea of what it was like. And for my fellow middle-agers . . . BEHOLD! A walk down memory lane.

I was a child in the 'Eighties, so that one scratched my nostalgic itch. But I'm a curious guy, so of course I looked at the other decades. It's fun.

It worried me a little that whoever put this website together might have used AI because I couldn't figure out how else they would do it, but I read more about the project, and it seems like they did it some other way. And if you think they're missing things, you can even make suggestions.

I'm glad this exists, but I don't know if I'd sit down and watch it for longer than a few minutes. Anytime you want to escape the modern world? Here's a way to do that.

Enjoy!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1087: THE FUTURE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND

 The laundry room where I live recently swapped out their old washers and dryers for new models. I later learned they did this because they were selling the complex and wanted to get a better price, but that's not today's gripe. The old machines used cards for payment. The new ones require an app.

Because the future is not your friend, I ran into a terrible problem yesterday. I filled up the washer with my clothes and put the liquid detergent (DO NOT USE POWDER!!! says the taped note at the top of each unit) into the tray, and then went on the app to get it started so I could get my reading in for the day.

The app gave me a spinning wheel. Oh no.

I logged out and back in with the same result. Uninstalled and reinstalled and ditto. Called the customer service number. Lo! and behold! The app was down across the country. Did they have an ETA for when service would be restored? Nope!

I ordinarily do laundry on Wednesday, but since I was in Dixon I had to do it yesterday. Luckily I'd taken today off for a three day weekend, or my laundry might not have gotten done, and my coworkers would have to deal with me wearing the same stuff for a few days in a row. I checked the app before I went to bed last night, and it was still down.

So if this were any other week, I'd have been fucked. This turned out to be a mild annoyance, but then I turned my thoughts to the more egregious things the future has in store for us.

Picture, if you will, losing your sight and then having it restored by a chip in your head. You get used to it, but then you experience your first outage. While you're driving. And you're approaching the school crosswalk at lunchtime.

Or, more likely, you didn't pay your bill, so Elon Musk remotely bricks your device. While you're driving.

So yeah. Keep "updating" everything so you have to do it on a goddam app. And another thing! Those dang kids with their dirt bikes messed up the courtyard grass and HEY! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?! Hmpf. Some people. OH GODDAMMIT, THOSE KIDS ARE BACK!

*sigh* Yeah, I know. All the same, I stand by it.

It meaning the whole app thing, not the thing about the dirt bikes. Although the dirt bikes are a real thing, and there really is a bunch of grooves in the grass outside my window. I found myself staring at it with disgust the other day and realized, oh shit. It's happening. I'm officially getting old.

I'll be 48 in a few hours. My physical therapist once pointed out that I'm pushing 50. I thought I was kind of borderline on that phrase, but now there's no denying it. I'm pushing 50.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1086: READING LINEAGE

 If you were to ask me for the best word to describe myself, I'd choose "reader." I do not remember a time when I was not constantly reading. My mom told me my first word was not mama (much to her chagrin) but book.

I've often wondered why reading is so important to me. I suspect it was because both Mom and Dad were voracious readers. Dad didn't read around me because he only had me for an occasional weekend, so he had other things he wanted to do with me. But I saw Mom read all the time, and she encouraged me to do the same.

But how did they become such readers?

Dad is easy. His mom was a teacher. There's no way she didn't get him reading. In case Mom and Dad failed me, Grandma Laurette sent me a steady stream of books, all on history, dinosaurs or Ireland. In fact, one day I told her I was having trouble finding a particular book. She said she'd been using this great online bookstore, and they always had hard-to-find stuff. I didn't want to go online. I hadn't embraced the internet yet.

She did not live long enough to see her grandson's books for sale on that very website, which was called Amazon.

Mom didn't live long enough to read my first book. Dad read a few of my books, and it made me proud to know he liked them.*

But Mom's parents were not readers. Though Grandma loved crosswords, I never, in all my life, saw her pick up a book. As for Gramps, he only ever read the newspaper until the last ten years of his life. He started reading the books in my bedroom while I was at work. Believe it or not, his favorites were both by Richard Laymon: Island and Body Rides. But that wouldn't have helped Mom become a reader when she was a kid.

I suspect it was her grandmother, Grandma's mom. As I went through Grandma's books near the end of my time in Elmhurst, I discovered that they were her mom's books, instead. She lived with my grandparents and Mom and died when Mom was pregnant with me. My great-grandma liked to read hefty novels, LIT-rit-chure.

Now I suspect there might have been someone else, too. Gramps's cousin wrote many letters to him, and one of them contained a photocopy of a family picture from Greece. I'll talk about that at some point, but the accompanying letter mentions Gramps's dad and uncles. Apparently they were all readers. She mentioned that my great-grandpa liked to hang out at the library all the time.

I mentioned this to my aunt yesterday, and she said that she was always apprehensive around Gramps's mom as a kid. My great-grandma couldn't speak English, so my aunt couldn't understand what she was saying. I learned from my research into the family stuff that she couldn't read or write in any language, so knowing that her husband, my great-grandpa, was a reader surprised and delighted me.

So. How did he become a reader, then? I don't think I'll ever find out. I know only one thing about his father and nothing about his mother. Sure, I could find out their dates of birth or maybe what they died of, but what are the odds that I'll ever find out something anecdotal about them? And if I did, say, find a letter from one relative to another talking about what a reader my great-great-grandpa was? How would I read it? It's all Greek to me . . .

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*Yeah, I heard that. You know what you can do with your comments about his bias?