Posts for 2019-02-28

I’ve started using Safari on macOS again as my primary browser, for the first time in many years. What surprises me most is a) how fast it is, b) how few extensions I need to add. For the majority of tasks, I can just use the Share menu. Mind=Blown.

Related to last post—I still have a lot of love for Mozilla Firefox, and the current ‘Quantum’ version is a major improvement. And I’m a big fan of their Container system for isolating various groups of websites so they cannot leak tracking info or follow you elsewhere.

My big lifehack currently is to listen to podcasts and instructional videos at 2x speed. My brain can take in all the info, but in half the time. Works best for content that is mostly spoken words, obviously. But it has gotten me back into both learning & listening regularly.

In December 2017, FBI agents forced Rakem Balogun and his fifteen-year-old son out of their Dallas home. They arrested Balogun on charges of illegal firearms possession and seized a book called Negroes with Guns. After being denied bail and spending five months in prison, Balogun was released with all charges dropped.

To his shock, Balogun later discovered that the FBI had been monitoring him for years. He also discovered that he had been arrested that day for one specific reason: he had posted a Facebook update that criticized police.

Balogun is considered by some to be the first individual prosecuted under a secretive government program that tracks so-called “Black Identity Extremists” (BIEs).

A Black Extremist is what the FBI called my mother, fifty years ago.

[…]

Malkia Cyril, Watching the Black Body

History repeating, this time with tech help.