What did you think this was going to be about? Ferries? Taxes? The tech giants bleeding news media of advertising dollars?
On the last point, I’ve been listening to journalist-author-activist Cory Doctorow’s CBC podcast “Who Broke the Internet,” which, among other topics, details some of Google’s behind-the-scenes shenanigans in attaining and retaining search dominance (“enshitification” is thrown around a lot). It reinforces the reach of corporate interests that made themselves indispensable in our lives, interrupted our social patterns, and now hold us captive to their whims. It also reinforces how important it is to talk IRL (in real life), human to human, not chatbot to chatbot, where the subtleties of millennia of communication evolution aren’t subject to the algorithms of techbros –– Zuckerberg, Musk and their ilk.
(An aside here, if you’re looking for a social platform free of the junk on many other platforms, Lodestar, our parent company, has launched Syrup Social, managed by journalists and dedicated to community news, syrupsocial.com.)
But no, I wanted to piggyback on Sandra’s recent story about ticks. Because one of my favourite activities is to plug in my earbuds with an audiobook (or the podcast du jour), and go walking.
But you will find me walking right down the middle of the trail. If a branch brushes against me, I’m quick to swipe at my leg, as if I’m perpetually walking through cobwebs. (Those are arachnids I’d much prefer encountering –– Eight Legged Freaks was a favourite summer movie in my childhood). When watching people on TV walking through brush, I’m often distracted, wondering, “How often did they do tick checks?”
Ticks are even worse bloodsuckers than mosquitoes, because while only female mosquitoes suck blood, almost all life stages of the ticks need blood (according to The Conversation).
Googling (because what else am I going to do), “Is there anything good about ticks?” I came up with a 2012 New York Times article that essentially said deer ticks are good for population control as they’re effective at spreading disease.
Taxes aren’t looking so bad.
But, where taxes are inevitable (and yes, should a postal strike come to pass, you’ll still need to pay them), you can keep ticks away with long pants and bug spray.
Now what do we do about Facebook?
