One thing I did notice over the weekend was the heavy traffic into, out of, and around the Lakes Region, with a lot of people getting one last summer weekend in before schools start again. A lot of schools start this week while others won’t start until the day after Labor Day. Mush as it had when I was going to school.
Speaking of Labor Day, that’s next weekend and I expect we’ll see very heavy traffic starting sometime late this coming Thursday and ending sometime Monday afternoon. Some folks will be pulling their boats out of the water and closing up their summer camps over the weekend. Others will do so over the next few weeks leading up to Columbus Day. (The Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout will come out of the water before the end of October.) Many of the summer food stands, restaurants, and attractions will be dialing back after Labor Day, mostly open only on weekends until Columbus Day. Others will close their doors until next May.
I have no idea where the summer went as it seems that the Fourth of July was just a couple of weeks ago.
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This sounds like it’s going to be fun!
It looks like 4chan will refuse to pay the daily UK Online Safety fines.
Basically the UK is fining 4chan because it is exercising its freedom of speech in the US, posting about the Orwellian turn of the UK government.
A lawyer representing the online message board 4chan says it won't pay a proposed fine by the UK's media regulator as it enforces the Online Safety Act.The US government has already stated the UK does not have the power to enforce their laws in the US against either organizations or individuals in the US who have not broken US laws, particularly when it comes to Constitutional Rights.
According to Preston Byrne, managing partner of law firm Byrne & Storm, Ofcom has provisionally decided to impose a £20,000 fine "with daily penalties thereafter" for as long as the site fails to comply with its request.
"Ofcom's notices create no legal obligations in the United States," he told the BBC, adding he believed the regulator's investigation was part of an "illegal campaign of harassment" against US tech firms.
Ofcom has declined to comment while its investigation continues.
"4chan has broken no laws in the United States - my client will not pay any penalty," Mr Byrne said.
From the comments in the linking post:
If 4chan doesn't have a physical corporate presence in the UK how would the UK imagine it is in a position to extract fines?And this one:
No mere treaty can threaten the free speech of American Citizens, and any fine trying to do so from overseas is null and void on the get-go. Being incorporated in Delaware and not having foreign operations, 4Chan can do as it wishes under our Constitution and Amendment I. Go ahead and levy meaningless fines to show just how limited you really are. Please. Make fools of yourselves so the people of the UK can see you for what you are: children trying to bash down free speech to get their way. It was never about protecting children, but about silencing adults and those in power in the UK have said as much.Indeed.
I can almost hear George Orwell spinning in his grave and with a ghostly moan saying “I wrote 1984 as a warning, not as a how-to manual!”
It will be interesting to see how all this will play out.
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On more than one occasion I have stated that I believe that social media is not the great panacea so many thought it would be. Yes, it makes instant communications to a group of people a possibility, but it has psychological effects that very few, if any, thought about. On thing I have mentioned more than once is the anonymity that allows otherwise reasonable and nice people become absolute monsters online. Social boundaries that exist when people are face-to-face disappear when people are on social media. Their ways of thinking, their ways of interacting with people change, and not necessarily for the better.
When a healthy person has multiple roles in life, they develop what we might call “modes.” These are mental states suited to their current circumstances, such as Work Mode, Parent Mode, or Friend Mode. Colloquially, we often refer to this as “putting on a hat.”I have seen this more than a few times. I would like to think I have managed to avoid this, for the most part.
These modes may overlap at times—a doctor might need their Doctor Mode when advising a friend about a medical issue. Recently, in conversation with two friends, I was asked to “put on my data scientist hat” and explain something about statistics. But generally, these modes remain distinct.
Healthy flexibility, called adaptive compartmentalization, allows psychologically normal individuals to shift between roles effortlessly without losing a cohesive sense of self. Their core identity remains intact, and the modes do not fundamentally conflict. Even under stress, a healthy person can usually navigate these shifts, though it may take effort—for example, a father decompressing after a stressful day at work before switching to Daddy Mode to play with his kids.
Psychological fragmentation is the unhealthy extreme of this natural compartmentalization, typically caused by trauma. At its most severe, fragmentation becomes dissociation. Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly called Multiple Personality Disorder) is the farthest extreme, where one fragment is unaware of the others.
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I posit that social media turns most of us into the worst version of ourselves because it does, under the cloak of anonymity, something unique.
It creates and facilitates a situation where, in healthy people, a negative “mode”—or, in less healthy people, a destructive fragment—can operate freely, without restraint or challenge, and often with lavish dopamine rewards.
Social media not only allows these negative fragments to flourish—it rewards and amplifies them. Over time, this persona can overshadow our real selves, fracturing our identity further.
Mind you, my only real social media outlets are Facebook, which I primarily use to keep in touch with family and friends, and some blogs. I rarely post to my own timeline on Facebook but will regularly react and comment to other people’s posts. About 90% of the time it’s a Like, 8% will be HaHa or Care replies, and the balance Sad replies. Comments are usually either informational or asking questions. I rarely, if ever delve into politics on Facebook. I save that for here or some of the other blogs out in the blogosphere.
In any case Read The Whole Thing to dive deeper into the psychological effects of social media. I don’t necessarily agree with everything in the post, but Holly makes a pretty good case about the problems with social media.
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Who’da thunk it?
It looks like Hawaii is learning the hard way that criminals will continue to break laws.
Criminals get guns without too much of a problem in this day and age, but they did that before 3D printers were common, too. So banning it, even if it stopped the private production of firearms, wasn't going to have much of an impact. However, now officials are shocked to learn that the law didn't stop felons from getting "ghost guns."Ghost guns are those made privately by someone other than a manufacturer or those assembled from individual parts purchased separately. There are no serial numbers on such guns. Not that criminals really care one way or the other as it isn’t like they obtain their guns legally. All guns could be outlawed and confiscated tomorrow and criminals will still have them and will still be able to obtain them from many of the same organizations that smuggle drugs into the country.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where many of the summerfolk have made their last visit to the lake this year, boats are being pulled from the water, and where once again Monday is coming along to ruin our weekend.