Google the Monster

Originally Posted Friday, October 4, 2013

Something has happened to Blogger.  When I upload a picture, it changes completely in tone and color.  This picture on my computer looks nothing like this picture on this site.  I may go looking for another platform on which to continue this blog.  I can't insert video from YouTube any longer (Google owns it now), and I've gotten a letter from YouTube/Google telling me I've violated something by putting up one of the songs I've posted.  I liked Google in the beginning, but it has become a monster. 

To wit:  The FBI arrested "Dread Pirate Roberts," the alleged owner of The Silk Road.  In case you don't know, The Silk Road is part of the "dark web."  I'm pretty certain that most of my readers have not been there nor have even heard of its existence.  I had heard about it a while back from a model I was shooting with who was doing some illegal things there.  One day, she said, she was using a fake i.d. she had gotten there to move some shady money through Western Union, and they started questioning her.  She left and ran off through the woods, she said, and sent someone else to come back for her car. 

"You can get anything there," she said.  "You can get any drug you want delivered to your door.  You can get a new identity.  Anything, really." 

"And you don't think the NSA is watching this?  You think they can't read what's going on?

"No. . . it's all triple encoded," she said. 

"You're crazy." 

Perhaps I have too much faith in U.S. intelligence, but it didn't seem plausible to me.  But the news reports indicate that they didn't catch Pirate Roberts by hacking his web but because he was careless.  He used his Gmail account from an internet cafe on the same day he used his VPN to go to The Silk Road.  Perhaps she was right.  Perhaps there are encryption geniuses, etc. 

The point is, he was done in by Google.  O.K.  That's not the point.  I'm just pissed off about Blogger. 

But there are still websites on the dark web dealing in outlandish things.  I'm not the sort to go there.  I'm the paranoid sort when it comes to that or to crime in general.  I may be ideologically inclined, but I am not a good criminal.  I am careless and lazy, a bad combo for breaking the law. 

But "the dark web". . . there is some allure just knowing it is there.  The potential.  The possibility of such a thing. 

Is this what Al Gore had in mind when he said that he invented the internet? 

I've been shooting with my film cameras.  I've been taking them with me wherever I go.  But I don't shoot a lot and I've been shooting with different cameras, so I haven't finished a roll in any of them.  But I will.  And soon. .  . new photos.  They may be awful, I warn you, but they will be something. 

And, of course, Blogger will change the way they look.  And so it goes.