"It’s true and it’s not true, and it also doesn’t even matter"

The perennial debate about whether your phone is secretly listening to you, explained
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/28/18158968/facebook-microphone-tapping-recording-instagram-ads

While we don’t know everything, we do know that Facebook has patented a method to use your previous location data, in conjunction with the previous location data of people you know, to predict your future location. We also know that it keeps “shadow profiles” made up of information that users (or non-users) have not actively supplied but can be easily tied to them (your work email address, your loyalty discount cards, your likely acquaintances that you haven’t yet “friend requested”). It can also figure out if two people know each other by looking at the metadata of photos uploaded in a small time frame in a small geographic area and then comparing the scratches and dust on the lens of the camera that took them.
 

I find this article interesting mainly as a window into what it must be like to have friends. The above paragraph continues:

The most valuable information Facebook has about you isn’t what you like or where you go or what you click on, but who you know. It always has been.
 

WELL THEN THE JOKE IS ON FACEBOOK, BECAUSE ALL MY FRIENDS ARE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS.

Seriously though, I'm not too terribly concerned about one network or another having my data, because we all still live in a vast meaningless universe where no one cares. It does bother me that I'm probably paying slightly higher interest rates because I am not male have a significant percentage of friends on Facebook who are immigrants (and thus have limited credit history in the United States) or former students (and are thus carrying a ton of debt), if only because I can imagine how these sorts of metrics might apply to different demographics. I mean, actually, I have a pretty good idea of how they apply. One of my best friends from college is a young but considerably wealthy civil rights lawyer, and she was recently presented with a set of ridiculous interest rates for a home loan, presumably because she's not white connected to a lot of people who were formerly incarcerated.

I have a lot of thoughts about the implications of this particular dystopian cyberpunk future we're living in, but I'm also not convinced that "leaving Facebook" is a practical or meaningful political act. I guess at this point I'm just along for the ride.

Infrastructural Gothic

Some of my favourite urban sights
https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/144838649727/prokopetz-prokopetz-whitemarbleblock

Anyway, I was snooping around in the maintenance tunnels below one of the larger local hotels - legitimately, mind you; I was working for the local telecom at the time, trying to track down an errant network cable - when I rounded a bend and noticed that the corridor a few dozen feet ahead of me was brightly illuminated by something. On top of being filthy and difficult to access, the tunnel was also unlit (I’d been navigating by flashlight), so this really stood out.

I couldn’t see any obvious light fixture to account for it - the light seemed to be emerging from an alcove off to the side of the tunnel - so I went to investigate, and discovered… a Coke machine.

Spotlessly clean, fully stocked, and apparently in full working order; the illumination was coming from its interior display lighting.

In a grimy, unlit maintenance corridor twenty feet below ground level.

In retrospect, I’m kind of glad I didn’t have any change on me at the time, because I’d have been sorely tempted to buy something, and who knows how that would have worked out.
 

This is a good thread that goes to some interesting places and gave me some fun ideas for stories.

As an aside, I recently discovered this person's blog, and I love it. I've had the same two tabs open on the Safari browser of my iPad for about a month now, and one of them is this blog, which I've been reading through post by post. The other tab is... a story for another day, I think.