Signs of the Times

Every step we take …

Every step we take …

Dear NSA, GCHQ, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other government agencies and multinational corporations that are data-gathering and spying on us: Gosh, you must be tired!  All those texts and email messages and tweets to read, phone calls to monitor, webcam...

read more
Jeeves & the 2016 Republican candidate

Jeeves & the 2016 Republican candidate

“Trump’s butler, reputedly one of the people closest to the business mogul (yes, a modern presidential candidate actually has a butler), posted Facebook rants urging the lynching of President Obama.” – from “Make America hate again” by Sasha Abramsky, New Statesman,...

Every call you take, every call you make

Every call you take, every call you make

“The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled late Monday that the National Security Agency may temporarily resume its once-secret program that systematically collects records of Americans’ domestic phone calls in bulk.” – New York Times, June 30, 2015 [Dials the...

A steady diet of spam

A steady diet of spam

“Just delete it immediately,” says my friend the haiku poet. “Don’t be tempted to read it. Because if you read it, you might think, ‘well, this one’s okay,’ but trust me, it’s not. If it’s marked as spam, it’s spam, and you should just delete it without reading it,...

Totally onboarded out

Totally onboarded out

Remember when people used to “get jobs” and then “start work” as a "new employee"? These days, you’re not a new employee, you’re an organizational newcomer who has to be "sourced" and then “socialized” into your company by means of a process called “onboarding.” And...

O beautiful for drone-filled skies

O beautiful for drone-filled skies

“The Federal Aviation Administration has been flooded with applications from police departments, universities, private corporations and even the celebrity gossip site TMZ, all seeking to use drones that range from devices the size of a hummingbird to full-size...