Iron Filings - 77
April 1, 2023
Iron Filings - 77
More Tech Travails – Since we just don't go to Costco often enough to warrant a membership, I decided to cancel our membership and the Costco Visa card that was part of it. Of course going to the Visa website revealed no simple "Close account," nor did a trek through various levels of FAQ's. Clicking on Help brought up a bot that really wasn't at all helpful. They always want to help you with things you don't need to do. Finally, somehow, "Johnson" came onto the chat and we did, indeed, close the account. Then it was on to Costco to cancel the membership and a similar story. After wandering through more levels of rabbit hole I discovered you can't cancel the account online. You can do it at an actual Costco or by telephone. So I called. Got a menu. Nothing about closing the account. So I tried several of the options and got nowhere. The next day, feeling bold, I called again and after being given the same press this number/press that number options, I simply hit "0" and, wow, Ashley came on the line and took care of everything. I sometimes wonder how it is that we're actually able to launch people into space.
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Trending Irony – Within the past week the Federal Trade Commission has proposed rules that would require companies to make it as easy to cancel an account as it was to sign up for one.
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Trivia Time: For those of you born around fifty years ago – 1973 – here's a sampling of the most popular baby names back then. Girls: Jennifer, Amy, Michelle, Kimberly, Lisa, Melissa, Angela, Heather, Stephanie, Rebecca. Boys: Michael, Christopher, Jason, James, David, John, Robert, Brian, William, Matthew.
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A couple of weeks ago we had our twice-annual time change and I always get a kick out of the plethora of self-help blurbs on the TV and in other media about just how to get through it. You would think we were talking about the latest pandemic. Really – has no one ever gotten home late from a function and gone to bed an hour late and woke up the next day and somehow did just fine?
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I try not to do too much politics in Cold Iron if only because we are immersed, embroiled, and drowning in politics these days. But I do find the likely presidential candidacy of Ron DeSantis interesting. I think it's great that the Republiguns might be pulling away from He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, but DeSantis? Aside from his wacky views on education and women's health and LGBTQ issues, he just comes across as such a mean, unpleasant character, the kind of guy you might say hello to in a bar and, within three seconds, decide to have a conversation with the bartender.
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I think I first became aware of conspiracy theories sometime in the early seventies when, so it was said, our landing on the moon never happened, that it was all just staged in a warehouse in Nevada's Area 51. After that was the tale that John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA. A really popular one is the idea that the Holocaust never happened. From there, more currently, we move on to more "fakes" such as the fact that the Sandy Hook massacre of little children never happened, that it was all just a ploy by gun control advocates to bring about greater firearms regulations. That 9/11 was a controlled demolition to justify George W. Bush sending troops to Iraq is another fan favorite. While we can all advance snarky smirks at the QAnon/Reddit whackos who espouse these theories we have to be a little careful – particularly in the future. Evidence can be a squishy thing. While our hearts can break watching the heartbroken parents of the Sandy Hook kids, our hearts can also break watching a sad movie. So if somebody wants to say those were just "crisis" actors (which they do), exactly how do we prove them wrong? Not that they are at all willing to be proven wrong. But with our advancing technology we're going to have to be extremely careful about what we see and believe since it's now possible to put anyone – you? Me? – into a photo, a video or any kind of media in a manner that can be wildly compromising: your face, your body, even your voice! Also, since cameras of varying sorts are virtually ubiquitous these days, you have no control over how your image might be recorded and ultimately used. I think we have a hole about the size of the Grand Canyon in our privacy laws/regulations.
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G.K. Wuori ©2023
Photoillustration by the author (as developed from my files, but who knows where it might end up)