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| Google Doodle from 01 Dec 21 |
Okay, so I use Google a lot, don't judge. Folks who tell me "you should use Duck Duck Go, it doesn't track you ..." just assume that I don't want to be tracked. I always ask what browser they use it on, does it have it's own browser, does it have it's own blogging tool, can I search for where an image came from so I can cite a source?
Okay, Duck Duck Go may not track you, how about the underlying browser? AFAIK, it doesn't have it's own blogging tool and you can't do an image search like you can with Google. Google may be intrusive, a pain in the ass, far too woke for my tastes, etc., etc. But you know what?
I could give a flying act of sexual congress.
Yea, though I walk through the Valley of Death ...
No, really. If the government wants me, they know where I live. They can figure out my political leanings by the way I vote. Hell, they mail me a paycheck once a month. (Okay, they deposit it in my checking account but you get the idea.) Who am I supposed to be hiding from? I hide from no one, you want me? Well then ...
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Anyhoo, I've been cranky as f**k lately.
Maybe it's being back to work in the lab after four weeks of relative freedom. Two weeks on the ship being a "Subject Matter Expert" (think Yoda without the power of the Force and having to expend very little effort at all) and then two weeks (almost) of not having to go in at all. It's an adjustment.
It's also almost Christmas, er, I mean "Seasonal Holidays 2021."
Sigh, their zeal to be inclusive/diverse/work/non-confrontational/what-the-f**k-ever is pathetic. I'm sure they mean well. (See road to Hell and how it is paved.)
Which reminded me of this gem on the Tube o' You ...
Which gave me the title for today's post which works well with that Google Doodle which I just had to grab. So in the future I can look back and say, "Yes, they really did that."
On another front, you should go read this, I found it very interesting. Though I have (allegedly) a bit of First Peoples/Native American/American Indian blood in me (see here), I understand that the people who were here before the whites arrived were not peace-loving, tree-hugging, nature lovers.
No, they were human, through and through, with all the blood, violence, and foul behavior which our species practices on a sickeningly continuous basis. I mean it's in the DNA as far as I know. It's a survival thing which we have yet to outgrow. Perhaps we never will. After all, the Universe is a very big place, someday we might venture beyond this wee planet we call home, no doubt there are a number of other, equally violent and aggressive species out there which we might encounter.
I mean it's one thing to be peace loving, it's quite another to be stupid.
Anyhoo, enjoy your day. I'm hoping my Thursday isn't as grumpy as my Wednesday. But I will still be in the midst of the WTF portion of the week, but Friday looms, in a good way.
Ran across that article yesterday and it highlighted some of what I already knew, try to displace that canard of "peaceful Native Americans" and people look at you like you have two heads. One of the local TV stations hype Thursday as the "gateway to the weekend".......trying hard to get to Friday I guess.....:)
ReplyDeleteFor me, every other week, Thursday is the last day of the work week. So it does feel a little better than the first three days of the work week.
DeleteThis week is a short one!
The problem with google search engine isn't so much tracking as it is the way they weight the results so that the bad thoughts are kept way down the list.
ReplyDeleteYes, there is that.
DeleteDiscovered that in 2008 when Palin and Idiot were running against Obamski and Biden. Trying to find a nice article on Gaggle about Palin, while trying to avoid all the fawning pandering over... Biden and some unknown congresscritter.
DeleteCome on, think about it. How many nice articles were written about them? Not many. Back then search still sorta worked, there was nothing to find in regards to nice articles unless you went really, really deep.
DeleteOh, yeah, the fix was in back then.
DeleteThe Lamestream Media has sucked since Vietnam. Probably before.
DeleteHave you considered Chromium instead of Chrome? Or Brave?
ReplyDeleteDo they meet ALL of the criteria I state above?
DeleteAha, the essence of a good comedy.
ReplyDeleteEven, browsers, and oses all claim to not track. Only one says it right, and that is the one that tracks. They don't lie about, that tracking produces their money. And they allow you to opt out as much as you want. But you cannot opt out entirely, you, see, the net tracks those questions, so as to let you get a reply. They have to know where the heck we are, to do their service. I know it sounds so kindergarten, the logic, but...
Yes, the logic is weird but if they do that to make a buck and it doesn't bother me, who am I to stand in the way?
DeleteSarge, I do not use Google or Chrome but do use Blogger, so my hypocrisy is manifest (for what it is worth I use Brave).
ReplyDeleteI had never noticed the calendar thing - but there it is!
I wonder - and it is only a theory - is if part of your dis-satisfaction is not only the return to the office but a sense of "Doing more of the same and getting nowhere". I suffer from this a great deal - as I tell new industry people, all but one of the companies I have worked for have been bought or gone out of business, the products I worked on are mostly no longer on the market, and all of those "emergency" projects and critical items are sitting in banker's boxes at a Secure Storage Facility, waiting to be shredded as the legally required retention dates approach.
Or perhaps more succinctly stated, 90% of what I do at work is essentially useless.
As to the article - read it and yes, there is a conscious suspension of disbelief about the nature of things. During our vacation, I looked up Mesoamerican culture a bit and was reminded of the fact that Cortes did not conquer the Aztecs alone; it was with a coalition of tribes throughout the region that were revolting against the Triple Alliance and their imperialism, a word which is almost never used in connection with them. To be fair, the Spanish behaved very badly after that, but the latter does not excuse the former either.
It isn't the job, other than the spate of recent corporate stupidity (which I can mostly ignore) the job is still satisfying on both personal and professional levels.
DeleteA "suspension of disbelief" seems to be the modus operandi of most progressives, socialists, and Communists (but I repeat myself).
Google... so useful in so many ways. The image search, having the maps linked to everything, it all makes life easier.
ReplyDeleteYou can mention a location or tourist site or historical place in this blog, I can highlight that and google will not only tell me what they think I should know about the place & it's history but give me directions to get there by car, bike or walking and/or make plane reservations... all at the click of a button.
Clicking that button is taking the bait... they sell their customers to anyone with the money.
Duck duck go is great if you want an honest search, if you want a search that doesn't put the paid ads first, if you want a search that isn't biased on the Google political leanings. If you want a better chance at honest answers from a search then don't use google.
I would question worrying over what the govt knows (they already have the IRS, they send me money every month and the NSA records everything I write on the internet or say over the phone) and start worrying about what Google plans to do with all it knows about everybody.
Google doesn't have any rules, the govt does.
As to your personal blood lines, for a fee you can find out your genetic make up... mind you once you've done that the govt (and anyone else) can find your personal genetic make up for a fee also...But that test might tell you if your 9th great-grandmother was a Seneca.
Government has rules, which it can choose to obey or not. Lately, it's "not."
DeleteProblem with all the DNA ancestry sites is that the Nations (indians to us old folk) are violently against anyone using them to try to find out if they're one of the various tribes of the Nations. So they actively go against DNA tracking.
DeleteAnd... because of this, so little actual Native American actual DNA is in the databases that any result that shows positive (like Congresscritter Warren) for potential 'Native American DNA' is inaccurate.
So how do the Native Americans track who's tribal and who's not? Well, see, you have to have documentation of your ancestors that matches the tribes' documentation of their various members, and then one has to petition the tribe of which one may or may not belong to, and then the tribal council will review and say 'yeah' or 'nay.' Further compounding the issue is whomever is in control of the tribal council at the time gets to kick longstanding tribal members out of the tribe, and accept new ones in, just by saying 'nay' or 'yay.' And it's all due to who gets a cut of the tribal dough, dinero, mulah, cash...
Yeah, it's not a racket because they're Noble Savages (with a far higher rate of incest, murder, rape, substance abuse, theft, robbery, violence than what is found in most inner cities) or something.
Careful there paleface ...
DeleteGoogle, grrr. Email this morning telling me Dec 9 my password will change. Do I remember my old password? No, my computer remembers it for me. Once again my lazy Latter Day Luddite ways will bite me in my posterior, metaphorically speaking.
ReplyDeleteHeh. Been there, done that.
DeleteWTF indeed. Bleh. Sunday night is always filled with unpeaceful sleep due to Monday, and Friday is always a relief. Wonder why?
ReplyDeleteAs to the peaceful ecologically-sound Native Americans, I always laugh when someone says that. And point out to them exactly why the Eskimo/Inuit/Frozen Peoples are, well, living in such a frozen hell of a world. Someone finally asked a village elder sometime in the late 1980's as to why the Frozen Peoples chose to live in, well, such a frozen hell of a world and the answer was basically because their ancestors sucked so bad that they couldn't win against the people in the warmer areas so, well, sucks to be 'us' and we're stuck here.
Then there's the heartrending tale of... well, so many tribes who enjoyed ripping out everyone elses' hearts, like literally ripping, cutting, extracting via violent means while the extractee was still alive, for fun, profit, worship or boredom.
Nice folks, yes?
And then there's the whole Injuns taught White People how to farm. Yeah, right. Maybe if the Native Americans were good farmers, the land that the Pilgrims farmed wouldn't have been so depleted that nothing would grow. Like, well, in Europe the land is so darned rich because people have been farming and tending it for literally thousands of years. But America? Where the ground is so bad because of soil depletion when Europeans arrived? Studies have shown that the average soil now in those areas is much better than it was 300-400 years ago, probably because White Settlers are so bad for the environment or something.
As to slavery, well, all tribes practiced it. All tribes practiced some form of human sacrifice. Most tribes practiced the nasty practice of just up and moving and leaving the old folk to die (not the quaint story of 'It's my time to die so I'll wander into the woods', nope, more like 'See ya on the other side Granny, you're too slow. Hahahaha.')
Yeah.
Good rant today.
Yup, the Originals sucked at farming, as did most Stone Age peoples (which the Originals certainly were). The Haudenosaunee would move their villages periodically so that they could find richer soil (after depleting the soil where they were). The big civilizations down south (Aztecs, Incas) actually must have been fairly good farmers, they could grow their civilizations because they weren't depleting the land.
DeleteAs to the Originals teaching the immigrants to farm, maybe. Some of the folks who came over on the Mayflower were woefully ill-equipped (by training and by nature) to be productive farmers. Proto-Communists for the most part, and we know how badly Commies suck at everything.
Proto-communists who mostly came from cities and towns. So, because they knew better, they didn't listen to their own farmers... Dumbasses.
DeleteAs to the big civilizations down south, the rule of the Tropics pertained to them. That is, because it's generally wetter than northern places, things grow without much work, and they grow at a tremendous rate. Kind of hard to screw up agriculture in that environment.
Not sure if the rule of the tropics would apply to the Inca.
DeleteThe area they lived in was pretty lush until around 1300 or so when the climate changed drastically.
DeleteA lot of things changed around th same time as the Little Ice Age.
DeleteBeans - Ah, that explains it!
DeleteRob - The Little Ice Age is a phenomenon that many historians ignore, it had huge impacts on the world over many years.
DeleteI was looking at the different cliff dwellings in the 4 corners area and they kept saying that between 1250 & 1300 everyone just left and they had no idea why... I can't see "them" not noticing what was going on in the world then, I figured they just didn't like the idea of the Little Ice Age.
DeleteCan't say I blame them.
DeleteThrough my birthmother we're related to the Gordon Clan. Apparently a HUGE clan. We wore the tartan plaid kilts at Son #2's wedding. On the adoptive family it's the Kincade Clan through Dad's mom. Also a huge chunk of French Voyager. As a matter of fact my adopative father looked like a French Voyager. Stocky, strong as heck and couldn't swim. Lol The adoptive family has been in KY since 1632. I've discovered several villages in the USA named after my relatives. Love the bagpipes too.
ReplyDeleteCock of the North! My mother's people are Gordons. It is a very large clan.
DeletePaternal Great-Grandfather was from Quebec.
Bagpipes, can't get enough!
Unfortunately my father and I weren't close when he was alive. I believe my youngest brother has all the genealogy research that dad did. I'll have to contact him and see what he has.
DeleteGreat post.
It happens in many families.
DeleteThanks!
I mean it's one thing to be peace loving, it's quite another to be stupid.
ReplyDeleteYou win the Internet quote this week!
😁
DeleteI shared that post you linked to, but you would have thought I had massacred the Indians myself. Some people just don't like being told the truth.
ReplyDeleteThey certainly don't.
Delete