10 responses to “That’s terrorism, if that loaded word means anything.”

1. 

   granville

   08/31/2024

   I have Signal on my phone, and have a few people on it (it looks for mutuals in your address book) but other than "Hey so you're on Signal too huh" there wasn't much to say and we went back to text messaging.

   I just looked at it now and there's a message saying I'm no longer registered, "likely" because I registered on a different device, which isn't true. So if any of them or other contacts texted me over Signal, I will have never gotten it. Like most apps it probably just stopped updating when I didn't open it for like a year.

   Also, at some point Moxie Moxinwater or whatever the name of Signal's founder is tried injecting crypto into it as a form of "mobile payments" that would be handled in-app. People were annoyed. I don't know what the current status of this is.

   https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In-app-Payments

   Reply
   1. 

      Doug Holland

      08/31/2024

      The page is still active on signal.org, so I gotta think it's still active.

      It's possible, I suppose, that some corner of the crypto fad isn't a scam, but it's all smelled fishy to me from the start. Of the world's myriad problems to be solved, 'money' isn't very high on my list.

      My impression is that Signal is kinda cool for people who need/want it, but I'm not sure that's me.

      And downloading it cost me my phone's virginity. First app I've downloaded. First time my phone's been connected to the internet, just for the download. For me, it's only a phone, and I'm adamant about that. I like having the internet at home on my laptop, but I don't want it in my pocket everywhere I go.

      But during the ten minutes it was connected to the internet, it 'updated' the phone, the texting, and my contacts list, uglifying all of them, and reset all my settings so the phone rings again, and beeps when a text comes in. Took another ten minutes to re-silence everything, and re-deny access to the 38 'standard' apps I never wanted in the first place.

      To be clear, it wasn't Signal that did this, it was Google/Android. And it's only a slight complaint, but it certainly reinforces my desire to never have an internet-enabled phone.

      And yes, I know this is all weird, and I'm weird.

      Reply
   2. 

      granville

      08/31/2024

      I'm not much different, I think the only apps I have that weren't factory installed are a couple todo-list type things (essential for the modern procrastinator) and Night Sky, so when I wonder "What is that star/planet?" I can hold up my phone and answer it. This occurs about once a year, probably a waste of time? It plays pretty ambient music as it sucks down my battery like grape soda, though.

      Reply
   3. 

      Doug Holland

      08/31/2024

      Night Sky sounds cool. My flatmate has an app sorta like that — he points it at a tree's leaves, and it tells him what kind of tree it is. Me, I'm content knowing it's the kind of tree that has leaves.

      You're about the closest anyone's come to "getting it" on phones, man, so thanks for that.

      I don't want to be another guy in the restaurant, or on the sidewalk or on the bus, scrolling through the internet. Freaks me out when I see it. I'm *totally* that guy at home, which is why I haven't really written anything for the website in a week, but when I'm out in the world *I want to see the world.*

      Reply
   4. 

      johnthebasket

      08/31/2024

      There's probably a decent point of compromise. My phone is just a phone, but Martha does use Night Sky (she hasn't noticed excessive battery drainage) so when we sit on the front steps on a warm night, she can identify stars and planets and the occasional nebula. Martha's a birder, and she also has a birdcall app that will identify what species of bird is singing.

      Seems to me that those apps interact with the world around us rather than detract from it. I've never seen her walk and click simultaneously.

      John

      Reply
   5. 

      Doug Holland

      08/31/2024

      Sounds lovely, like your wife. And I really hold no grudge against anyone scrolling their phone, any time, any place, except a movie theater after the lights have dimmed.

      If smart phones and the miniature internet had come first, and the full-size internet had come later, maybe I'd have the opposite opinions.

      Reply
2. 

   Anonymous

   09/01/2024

   “To give the appearance of something holding up, like, say, the US economy, when there is actually nothing underneath. Nothing real, that is.”

   Not to be contrarian to this statement but I can only report on what I see. I work in the development field and in my community there are numerous residential subdivisions that are quickly being built out with new $650K homes. People still seem to have plenty of money to buy over priced homes at 6% interest resulting in a monthly mortgage payment of $3,000.

   Our industrial sector is cruising. New businesses are moving to town and building new structures on currently vacant sites.

   The highways are crowded with new cars, semi trucks loaded with building supplies, and other work type trucks.

   If you want to go to Hawaii or Cancun you have to book a year in advance. Even the hotels that charge $4K per night are booked solid.

   Disneyland and Disneyworld are still ever popular.

   WWE Smack Down and NFL games are still selling out.

   People are still buying $100K Ford F 350s to pull their $120K fifth wheel and $75K toy haulers with two $50K UTVs and still have enough money to gas them up, pay insurance on them and cover the costs of registrations.

   Taxes are still going up and people are still paying them.

   Movie trash like Wolverine & Deadpool are raking in hundreds of millions of dollars.

   I keep hearing that the economy is doomed, built on nothing, but when I look around all I see is EVERYONE living the good life.

   It causes me significant cognitive dissonance. I know in my gut that things are amiss in the good ole democratic USA but I’m not seeing it in my fellow man. Inflation hasn’t stopped anyone.

   I read once that it takes a lot to bankrupt a Republic. Took Rome 400 years. I don’t think we are there yet. We are getting there but we have a fair distance to go still.

   Reply
   1. 

      granville

      09/01/2024

      There are so many contrary signals right now that it's just a mess. Certain reports indicate that invoices are being paid slower and late. Purchase of cheap proteins like sausage and eggs are up and beef and chicken are down. One way that I've read about is that we're not taking into account a vast underclass which began to swell in the early '00s and exploded post-2008 — that these things are existing in parallel. The underclass was able to keep pace, at least in terms of identity, for some time owing to cheaper items that used to be considered luxury goods (huge TVs, computing devices, even luxury fashion brands have developed cheaper lines of products for what they — no kidding — call "aspirational consumers"). On the surface there is little to tell one from the other. The major difference is one has an enormous net worth and the other has nothing. There seems to be something to this at least in my place and time (rust belt, today).

      Reply
   2. 

      johnthebasket

      09/01/2024

      That paragraph describes exactly what's going on, although I'm not fond of the passive mood. Examples help. An example of an aspirational consumer is a 25-year-old with a state-of-the-art phone, a snazzy car, designer clothes (all highly leveraged) and a $50,000 a year gofer job that won't exist in a year. This person shares a two bedroom apartment with three other people and is one bad cold away from losing their leveraged assets (yeah, I don't like "their" either, but the professors won't let me use my preferred "his/her"). Nice job capturing the economic dynamic.

      We stop, look at one another, short of breath
      Walking proudly in our winter coats
      Wearing smells from laboratories
      Facing a dying nation: a moving paper fantasy
      Listening for the new-told lies
      With supreme visions of lonely tunes

      jtb

      Reply
   3. 

      Doug Holland

      09/01/2024

      Whoa, this is all some heady stuff. Gotta actually stop and think for a moment, not just bang out a wisecrack.

      I pay no attention to the economic 'stats'. The numbers must reflect something for someone, but they're calculated for people who aren't me, using data from people who aren't me, aren't anyone I know. We are the vast underclass Granville is talking about, and the lucky few like John talks about are the economically doomed who don't know it and think they're doing swell.

      "Economy on the upswing," says a headline, while everyone I know is struggling to make the rent, one stubborn infection from bankruptcy, and always has been.

      Anonymous, you see people taking cruises and buying appliances and visiting Disneyland and "living the good life" because lots of people still do, and lots more scrimp for 50 weeks for a better two every summer. My take on it is, most people teeter on the brink, everything's been hollowed out, and the balsa-wood-firm economic indicators are mostly bullshit. And you know that. You're one of us, I think.

      Always love a good "Hair" reference, btw. The profundity of that song, we should all sing along.

      Reply

Comments with attachments or multiple links are held for manual approval.