I sent this to my son who is on the path to being a high school socials
study teacher.
This article has me trying to project the impact today’s “social
distancing” would have had on a very messed up introverted teenager of
45 years ago. It’s not a pretty picture.
These are a few perspectives on privacy prompted by initial
thoughts on the Usenix PEPR ‘22 Call for Participation. I may or
may not flesh this out as a submission. If I do, it might take a
totally different form, this being a first reaction.
Figure 1: “Privacy Technology for the 21st Centry” by George Jones is licensed under CC BY 2.0
“…It’s also clear you have a achieved emacs enlightenment. The state
where you see the whole world through the mind-bogglingly useful
lens of emacs and org mode and fail to see (non judgmentally) why
anything should exist outside that world. ‘Om, Om, Om, M-x find-universe’ :-)”
At work I do a lot of research around finding and understanding
the capabilities of things connected to the Internet.
I find that often checking Wikipedia and/or searching for the
product excluding the vendor website gets to the real information
fastest,
e.g. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vmware+tanzu+-vmware.com+-www.vmware.com
Today is a newly decreed “inclusion and diversity” holiday at work.
I’ve got the inclusion and diversity cards ready to go. I’ve got
the inclusion and diversity lights out of the garage and strung
them all over the house (we’re going to out-do the neighbors this
year !). We’ve celebrated the annual ritual of baking ethnic
foods (cultural appropriation at it’s best, yum !!!). And when
the kids are home, we will all gather ‘round the fireplace with
hot chocolate and ask
Last Sunday I went to a Christmas concert a a local church. All
flutes (plus the occasional Harp). Who knew there was a
contra-bass flute ?
The concert was a benefit for “Furthest Corners” mission that has
a school and hospital in Myanmar (Burma). I talked to one of
the missionaries who had to leave the country recently due to the
civil war. The civil war in [Burma] has been going on on-and-off for 70 years.
Who knew?
It seems the military decided to bomb the school. It’s half
gone. They are holding school in the other half.
I asked about the war. Apparently its “everybody against the
military and the police now.” Imagine having to go the grocery
store (or grow and store your own rice) in an environment where
you might get mugged by the police. Where do you turn? How do
you live? How do you eat?
I also recently finished All Quiet on the Western Front, a book
about the experience of one German soldier in the trenches of
WWI. The German title of the book Im Westen nichts Neues,
literally translates “Nothing New in the West” referring to the
“news” from the front they day the main character was killed,
with the end of the war in sight and “not much going on”. “Not
much” in who’s view?
“The news” tends to be voyeuristic, detached, high level and mass
market. It tends to feed judgmental views and tribalism.
People are what matter. Kids having a school to go to (or half a
school). Having food to eat. Living free from fear of those who
are supposed to protect you. But that’s not news.
##################### I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day #############################
When I got married I made the decision not to have a TV because I knew
my personal tendency to let it suck up my attention and I did not want
that as an additional distraction from the hard work of building and
maintaining important relationships. My (now 23 year old) son and I
are currently working through the first 3 seasons of Star Trek The
Next Generation (TNG) on DVD.
The real tragedy of COVID is the collateral damage it’s causing to the
way we interact with other people. This is worse than even the deaths
it causes. The damage includes a lack of civility, division in
families, and people dying alone in hospitals because nobody’s allowed
in.
