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The Middle Way

~ A journey between extremes

The Middle Way

Category Archives: Tech

Imagine doing all of this on a landline

07 Thursday May 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Change, Coronavirus, Dandelion Break, Human, Tech

≈ Leave a comment

After a few weeks of being hunkered down and working all kinds of weird hours doing mobile tech support for a couple of thousand users, I’m starting to get a chance to sit up and look around at where things are in the world.

But in doing so, I do so remotely. As do you, if you’re reading this. We have all been suddenly thrust into this strange new world that is partially shut down, and partially virtual.

For the first time in human history, we can continue to carry on large portions of the global economy through virtual methods. Virtual meetings, Internet-based commerce, digital banking, in-home entertainment, and the internet of things. Of course you can’t eat a Tweet. And the sooner we are able to get back to a more normal semblance of life, the better off we will all be.

But the reason I am writing this is to say thanks to a group of people that have been invisibly making large portions of what we do everyday possible at all. And that‘s because they’re the people who make all of our technology possible. From the network engineers, to the call center worker, including the electricians who makes all run, and the hardware repair folks who put it all back together when you break it at the worst possible time, even that annoying office tech guy who grunts every time he has to listen to you swear again and again that it’s not your fault that email hates you, all the ay our to the entire population of earth that is now available to me at the touch of a button on this powerful computer we still call a cell phone.

We live in a world that continues to move at an unprecedented speed, all doing so from our couches now. The whole thing takes a constellation of jobs and technologies to make it all work.

And for that, take a minute to just thank a tech person you rely on. And if you can, resist the urge to ask them a ‘quick question’, just this once.

In other words, everything the United States isn’t doing

10 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Coronavirus, Dingleberries, Healthcare, Open mind, Tech, Trump-Hole

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Space Station 3-D Printer Builds Ratchet Wrench

14 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Brain Droppings, Dingleberries, Environment, Middle Way, Open mind, Quantum, Revolution, Tax the Church, Tech

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THIS!!!

This is why we have science and technology, and math, and shit that makes your cell phone work. The earth isn’t 5,000 years old, you navel-gazing, closed-minded, backward-assed, lost in the wilderness of Bible knowledge, fundamentalist motherfuckers.

The International Space Station’s 3-D printer completed the first phase of a NASA technology demonstration by printing a ratchet wrench.
— Read on www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/3Dratchet_wrench

You wait… This is going to be significant

19 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Brain Droppings, Conspiracies, Dingleberries, First Amendment, Indivisible, Middle Way, Patriotism, Politics, Putin, Revolution, Tech, Terrorism, Trump-Hole

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The moment as I saw this headline I felt a thud in my chest, as something very significant just fell into place… this is going to be important.

“These memos and presentations indicate Facebook took the methods it learned from the Trump campaign to further refine a marketing model called “Test, Learn, Adapt” (TLA), which it currently uses to assess its own advertising. These internal documents are a candid recognition by Facebook of the GOP candidate’s advertising success and reveal the degree to which the company views Trump not just as a potential regulator or a source of misinformation, but also, above all, a valued customer.”

— www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/congratulations-zuckerberg-call-trump-election-2016

VPNFilter Malware Warning – Reboot Your Router

26 Saturday May 2018

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Middle Way, Tech, Terrorism

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There’s a sneaky bit of malware going around.
— Read on www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a20918611/vpnfilter-malware-reboot-router/

You can’t have it both ways

22 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Brain Droppings, Dingleberries, Middle Way, Open mind, Tech

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Anyone who doubts the scientific position on things like climate change, that the earth is not flat, or that it is actually more than 6,000 years old, should no longer be allowed to continue to use things like their smartphone any longer.

If you’re too ignorant, or overly superstitious, to learn about the physical world you live in, because of supernatural beliefs, then you really shouldn’t be allowed to use electronic communications of any sort anymore.

See, when you pickup your smartphone and send a text to someone, or log into your FaceBook account, what you are in essence saying is : “Even though I say I believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old, I’m willing to trust all of my scheduling, my family pictures, and even my family’s safety, to technologies that are literally based on the speed of light. And furthermore, I don’t even understand why that is a contradiction.”

Stand beside her, divide her…

15 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Change, Conspiracies, Emotional Intelligence, Hate, Middle Way, Open mind, Politics, Sameness, Spirituality, Tech

≈ Leave a comment

Yes, we know you people like iPhones!

Yes, we know you other people like Androids!

Yes, we know Apple stole some ideas from Android!

Yes, we know Android stole some ideas from Apple!

In the constant attempts that are made to divide us into groups, is there nothing we won’t end up at odds about if we aren’t paying attention?

Savior/Oppressor/Dictator/President

19 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Change, Conspiracies, Dingleberries, Emotional Intelligence, Human, Middle Way, Open mind, Patriotism, Politics, Sameness, Tech, Terrorism

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1320840

Years ago I was hired as a systems administrator at a small educational publishing company. When I first came on they had tons of problems with the predictability of things like fonts and color reproduction. I was taken aside by the production manager and told that everyone was dying for someone to just fix these things and get everything under control and to finally be predictable. If I could do that, he stated, everyone would be forever grateful.

Well, I did just that. And because many of the problems were caused by the artists themselves not understanding the technical process, much of what needed to be done was solved by locking certain things down because people just wanted stuff to work, they didn’t want to be bothered with how.

So, predictably, I became the bad guy. I was the oppressive sys admin. I had been hired as a savior and became hated as an oppressor, all because I did my job and fixed what they asked me to in the only way I could.

My point is this, when things are really messed up people just want them fixed. They are so focused on their own daily misery that they don’t bother to look at the bigger picture, no matter how much it is explained and shown to them.

Donald Trump has been using the language of a banana republic dictator for months now. His rhetoric has become increasingly paranoid, and he is not above inciting civil unrest. But he appeals to increasingly desperate people. People who are far more willing to believe there are mounting conspiracies as opposed to much simpler answers, such as the fact that time simply marches on, and sometimes things change quicker than people are happy with.

Desperate people make desperate decisions, dictators know this and leverage the fear to their benefit. Post World War One Germany is a perfect example of how a struggling people grasped a message that promised relief and also leveraged the blame onto outsiders. The regret from the German people’s decision to embrace a monster is still evident in the laws that make it illegal to display any Nazi symbols. And while that example is staring us in the face, to the Trump supporter it’s a ridiculous parallel and a different scenario. If only that were true.

Civil liberties can be a pain in the ass when you want things done your way.

Scylla and Charybdis

20 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Change, Conspiracies, Dingleberries, Islam, Middle Way, Open mind, Patriotism, Quantum, Tech, Terrorism

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I’ve come to the conclusion that the stakes are so high in this election season, and the choices so polarizing, that the outcome will not be good no matter who is elected president.

The possibility that some form of internal strife breaking out in this country is all too real regardless of the election’s outcome. The rhetoric is ramping up on all sides, and the discourse is so jaded and threatening that the citizenry no longer sees it as a difference in policy and more as an assault on their very security. 

Friend’s have begun to turn their backs on one another. Brothers and sisters are becoming estranged. Political banter is being taken as fact, and violence is now punctuating conviction.

The fact that in my life I would live to see American citizens physically assaulted because of their political beliefs tells me that, as a country, we are regressing. We have not learned the lessons of our own Civil War, or the struggles for Civil Rights. We have learned nothing from the Great Depression or the Great Recession. The era of the Robber Baron has returned with a vengeance and the redistribution of wealth through corporate welfare has created a pressure cooker between the classes as the buffer that used to be the middle class disintegrates. Nationalistic and fascist sentiments are beginning to take hold in a way that makes McCarthyism seem tame. Big government has always been partisan free under the surface, as the illusion of choices hides the solid core of corruption. Freedom of the press is undercut by their own partisanship and is being given the last rights by a candidate who threatens lawsuits if people report negatively on him. The threat of totalitarianism is so intense, yet the average voter is less likely to vote now than they were during the primaries because the major candidates have roughly the same approval ratings as W. did when leaving office during the Great Recession. One candidate likes to tell everyone that his opponent wants to abolish the Second Amendment so that don’t notice that he is systematically demonizing and ostracizing the press, and getting the citizens to buy into his narrative. Pressure cooker bombs are slowly knocking the election off of its axis in a slow play toward annihilation by fear and self-protection. And weekly communication hacks are making everyone more guarded, except those who never had a filter to begin with. 

If I sound nihilistic, it’s only because I checked my hope at the door of a primary voting station, I sat back and watched the swill rise to the top through buffoonery, corruption and cronyism. We’re perched headlong over a bed of nails, each of which we drove in ourselves with every nitpick and special circumstances we felt we needed at the expense of those we disagreed with  

This one’s for you. 

My old StarTAC

09 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Change, Conspiracies, Middle Way, Tech

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It didn’t have a headphone jack

…and it didn’t catch on fire

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