About a week ago I went to post something on this blahg, which I rent from WordPress (they never fail to thank me each time they automatically bill my credit card), and got this message:

Currently, my laptop won’t allow me to so much as visit my blahg, out of an overwhelming concern for my privacy. There was no way to overcome this uncompromising protection of my privacy to post on this blahg, or even visit, except on my phone. I contacted WordPress (email only) and was told I probably need to update my macbook operating system. I noted:

I resist doing the updates on the macbook because Apple, in its infinite greed, is notorious for disabling useful features of their native programs with each update, clawing back once-included capabilities so they can sell them back to you.   

A few days later I was given three things to try, by Happiness Engineer Tish, (the second idea was overcoming my reluctance to have all programs reformatted and some randomly rendered useless) and wrote back:

Hi Tish,

Took a weekend away from technology.   Now I’m trying your suggested fixes.

1- clicking this link got to the same message as the screen shot I sent a few days ago, Your Connection is Not Private!

2– still reluctant to have all of my programs reconfigured/disabled by Apple as they have been every update since at least 10.6.7

3– installing Firefox now (unless I get a Connection Not Private! message preventing it),  Here you go:

There used to be a game in the Chinatown Arcade in NYC where a live chicken would play all comers at tic tac toe for 50 cents a game.   The bird went first.  If you played well you could tie, but I’d never seen anyone beat the bird.  After the bird beat the sucker, right after its victory dance (the disk it stood on would wobble and it would exert itself not to fall over) it would frantically claw for a couple of kernels of dry corn, literally two or three, that were its reward.  While this was going on a big lighted sign flashed BIRD WINS.

Perfect parallel for technology companies of all kinds.   You want the feature you’ve always used?  Tough.  We had a team of geniuses redesign it completely and it’s what you want now.  Choice is for the people who bring you this miraculous technology, they know better than mere “users” what is actually desirable in the product.  Capitalism runs on eternal “improvement” and built-in obsolescence.  Tech companies, even a nice outfit like WordPress, are the masters of this.  New design, new world order.   Read Shoshanah Zuboff’s “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” and shudder for the amazing world of crushing pressure to conform kids are growing up in now, ushered in by “social media” and unlimited, ever more thorough data collection from “users”, in the name of… well, profit, mostly.

Anyway, thanks for your help.  I’ll probably wind up updating this machine and using it just as a word processor, as nature intended.

Eliot

P.S. Before I sent this I tried one more thing.   DuckDuckGo just fixed it, I can get to the innovative (and, like, totally improved, even if the theme I use is now “unsupported”) WordPress block composer from there.

I did not bother to add, for Tish, a complete stranger, that I am clearly, as my father more than once noted, the kind of person who’d complain if he was hanged with a new rope.

Punchline, which I sent to “tech support”:

DuckDuckGo allowed me to get on the WordPress site, write and post an entry.  Once.  Now I get this again:

BIRD WINS!

NOTE: had to add this using my phone…

when you try to defeat this unwanted “protection” you get this message:

gratuitousblahg.com normally uses encryption to protect your information. When Google Chrome tried to connect to gratuitousblahg.com this time, the website sent back unusual and incorrect credentials. This may happen when an attacker is trying to pretend to be gratuitousblahg.com, or a Wi-Fi sign-in screen has interrupted the connection. Your information is still secure because Google Chrome stopped the connection before any data was exchanged.

You cannot visit gratuitousblahg.com right now because the website uses HSTS. Network errors and attacks are usually temporary, so this page will probably work later.

Or, if you prefer, Go fuck yourself. Have a great day!