(morning writing)

[elainegrey]

Work and the Quaker organization have been preoccupying me this week. The time has blurred by. I interviewed a manager for the team i work most closely with. It's been ages since i've done anything related to hiring and i was worried about doing a good job for the new director, who would be watching. I haven't been able to cover everything i feel i need to at work. This morning i'm working with one team member on getting some work the team needs to do in our ten month plan clearly written up, and then work on a problem two customers are having with their browsers behaving ... very oddly ... while trying to log in. The connection between the device you have in front of you, reading this and the server where the file waits for you is not a simple wire. I don't know enough about how content distribution networks -- systems that help files sit closer to you -- work.  And there are all sorts of technologies out there that intercept traffic and determine if you are a real person at a browser and not some automated system acting for all sorts of reasons.

Most sad theft i heard of recently: a music duo who recorded some songs so they could give CDs to their friends had the music files stolen, listed as music tracks under different titles with different band names, and uploaded to the major music catalogs, and then, automated systems "listened" to the songs to reap the royalties from the hundreds of plays.  One assumes that the thieves probably also stole computing cycles  and bandwidth from computers with viruses on them.  Similar theft comes from sites serving advertisements registering views that aren't real to collect payment for advertising time.

I'm getting off this train of thought: too many branches in the track ahead and none of them going anywhere i will find delight.

I have had tabs and tabs of your posts open to leave comments  on and just closed them all. I wish i thought and wrote faster and could complete the connection between us.

Comments

[amaebi]

Oh, what a sad story about the music. :(

And isn't it weird how determinedly many casual political thinkers hold that We're All Separate in a world with so much electronic linkage? I would say "and COVID," but not only are such persons minimizing, forgetting or denying COVID's existence, but "infection isn't a thing any more" seemed to be a conservative tenet in the 1990s, and I doubt it's gone way....

[elainegrey]

How was it phrased... the marketing surveillance state? No, something a little more resonant and broad -- it benefits someone, and not just me when i get shoe ads after i buy shoes.

I did not realize there was a deeper denial of infection in the 90s. I was aware of the religious exception to medical treatments, but did not realize an outright denial was happening. Lately my father has been reflecting back on health care when he was growing up and the large number of people who had parasites. Our culture has made such great strides in elevating health, but it's been by empowering organized responses. Sigh.