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Blog/January 2021/Jan 15th

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Jan 15th Comments or questions? Click here!


Hey, it’s my birthday again (on the Hebrew calendar)! The “birthday-moʿed” is closing for the year, your last opportunity to send me a timely gift expires today…

So I thought last week was bad, but this week was worse! The Tech Oligarchs of Silicon Valley, in a show of monopolistic force, have destroyed Parler, and they unpersoned the President of the United States. WhatsApp is changing its privacy policy “terms of service” so that it no longer respects privacy, and Twitter engaged in a massive “purge” of accounts, affecting (curiously enough!) only “conservative” accounts. Even I lost a significant number of followers, and I’m mostly there to keep abreast of the unfolding insanity.

Welcome to the digital Reign of Terror. “1984” was, in fact, an instruction-manual.

The irony of the current situation vis-à-vis the Tech Oligarchy is that the Dem. controlled House of Representatives issued a report in October 2020 saying that the Valley has monopoly power and the Big Four should be split. Of course nothing of the sort happened, and here we are. All hail your new Tech Overlords! Resistance will be met by reeducation.

Do you think that it’s OK to forcibly mute the POTUS while he’s still in office because you disagree with him? Do you not find it utterly chilling that Parler can be put out of business at the whim of some blue-haired punks in The Valley? Do you believe it’s right that despite the entire reason for WhatsApp’s existence being private conversations, it now rescinds its former contractual obligations to preserve your privacy?

I, for one, will not stand for it. I’ve been warning of this creeping totalitarianism for a very long time, but for convenience I’ve let it slide. No more.

So: I am abandoning WhatsApp in favor of Signal because I am unwilling to forfeit my privacy to further enrich Facebook (which owns them). If you want to ‘WhatsApp’ me, use Signal instead. It’s the same technology underneath (WA is based on Signal’s tech, but Signal doesn’t store or share your information as WA will do from Feb 8th on). You can do voice and/or video calls with it just like WhatsApp, so there’s no reason not to use it. Just let your WA contacts know to switch over.

Use DuckDuckGo instead of Google search. If you don’t believe Google censors search results, look up anything controversial in both of them, and compare the results: you’ll be shocked (I hope). Google has long since abandoned their original motto of “Don’t Be Evil”.

Abandon Facebook. I guess most people don’t use FB much any more; I usually only post the link to my weekly blog there and rarely post anything else, because I’ve a lot of “older” friends and relations who stick with it. So I’ll keep that, but I don’t really use it.

Avoid supporting Amazon to the extent possible. They do control about half the websites on the Internet, so that’s a bit of a challenge.

Get on Gab. They’ve gained almost two million users just this week, due to the Digital ROT by Twitter et. al. Once you silence the idiots (primarily Nazis and Flat Earthers), you’ll find a lot of normal people (of all political persuasions) who are sick of the Leftist Echo Chambers on Twitter etc.

Dumb and dumber:

  • President-elect Biden: ‘Priority’ for economic business relief to be based on race and gender. The D party going back to its roots, I suppose, though in reverse this time. Progress!
  • President Trump was impeached again. Because there’s nothing that says “we’re working for you” like wasting tax dollars on a pointless bit of posturing rather than dealing with the many actual problems.
  • According to the Media, Israel must be denigrated for its incredibly successful vaccination program.
  • Facebook censoring all posts containing the phrase “stop the steal”. Because it’s “harmful”. Really.
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose father was actually a Nazi, is confused about Kristallnacht. Perhaps he should STFU.


With the new month of Shevat, the weather changed drastically colder. Temperatures dropped 12-13 degrees, and rain started up. While the first half of January was much warmer than average, it looks like the second half will be colder. So, perhaps we’ll have “average” January weather, on average…

This shabbat’s menu includes:
homemade ḥalla, mushroom soup, za’atar roasted chicken, baked yams, beet salad, eggplant salad, cauliflower salad, various other salatim, and cookies.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!


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