July 2026

I recently purchased an LG display and now I’m watching a video about how LG display drivers automatically install applications on the PC without consent, including a McAfee trial, just by plugging them in to a Windows 11 PC. (At least I have a cheaper LG display and I’m on a Mac.)

Every time I poke my nose onto Facebook, it hits me up with offensively stupid clickbait videos. Cuckoo chicks pushing other chicks out of nests. “90% get this wrong” math expressions (“50 + 10 x 0 + 7 + 2 = ?”) where all the comments are arguments about PEMDAS. Stick figures in utterly implausible situations. (“Hi, I see you’re not using your iPad, so you need to let me have it during this flight, my son needs something to play with or else he screams,” “I know today is your day off, but I sent you an email this morning saying we’re understaffed, so you had better be here in twenty minutes or you’re fired.” &c.)

I have recently started getting spam email where someone says “you had better pay your debt now or else this will happen to you!” (in Spanish, in all caps) with photo attachments of mutilated corpses lying in pools of blood. Somehow it evades my spam filters. It might be AI-generated. I don’t know and I don’t care. It’s absolutely disgusting, and I’m never ready to see it when it pops up in my inbox. (I report it via SpamCop.net every time.)

Used to be, ‘online’ was a place I’d go to hide away from the stress of the real world and the people in it. But it’s become something that I no longer recognize and that I no longer like.

My personal email address is a simple one. Many strangers on the Internet think it’s theirs, so they put it on their bank accounts, their cell phone service plans, their social media accounts, their electric service, &c. These companies – without checking that the address is good – blithely send me these people’s address, bank balance, SSN, names of their children on their cell plan, call history, and so on and so forth.

Often I’ll do a password reset via email and then change the email address on the account. Or if it’s a throwaway (like, dating) account then I’ll just close it. But sometimes I can’t take over the account, so I’ll contact a company’s support to ask them to take my email address off their customer’s account.

It’s kind of hilarious when the company then gets all concerned about security. “What’s your date of birth?” Um, my DOB isn’t useful to you, and I have no idea what your customer’s DOB is. “We’re sorry, we can’t make any changes to the account without verifying your identity.” So you’re going to keep sending me your customer’s private information? Okay then.

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