As an attorney, I litigated for 30 years. I’d still be doing so, except for something a low-integrity judge did in the case that became my last. I won, but… That story’s too long to tell today; maybe on some other occasion. During those 30 years, I went up against countless attorneys. I got along well enough with most of them. With a few, there was reciprocal antipathy. It depended. Once someone crosses a line with you in that realm, it can be hard to overlook.
Sep 28, 2023·edited Sep 28, 2023Liked by Mark Oshinskie
Beautiful. Admittedly I am an always with me phone, which I refer to as my MindEraser™️, caveman.
Your excellent anecdote reminds me of a time when, as a child, an adult wrongly accused one of us in a group of some property damage from bottle rockets because we were launching Etes model rockets at a park. The neighbor conflated confused and correlated the model rocketry and fireworks and came out to the the park to confront us. Ultimately the man struck one of us in the face. A mom was somehow notified and came barreling into the parking lot, flinging gravel in all directions from the spinning radials of that wood paneled station wagon, and power slid the beast to a stop making everyone jump back and ending the situation in confrontation with the deranged man. She had come from work and I never knew who alerted her, or how, but it was long before people even carried beepers.
We used to launch Estes rockets from empty lots in the neighborhood. While we were never accused of property damage, uptight parents would wag their fingers at us and tell us we might blow our fingers off or something. That crisis never happened. I can't imagine phone toting 13 yr olds building and launching those things now.
This is deserving of an expanded post. We as a society have too much tried to engineer the dangers out of our lives. To our detriment. We have fundamentally changed human behavior that may well be a real existential threat. Think of the implications. Today's humans would unlikely emerge from the stone age.
Or, protect our Nation in armed conflict. The Second World War comes to mind. All fronts. The sacrifice was beyond comprehension. Now we're worried about riding bicycles.
Yes, that is a loss for those of us who do without cell phones. Of course, with so few of us, the pay phones no longer make their owners any money, so they can't keep them.
All your points were accurate Mark, but you stopped short of describing what the big picture is. Corona mania was part of it, but the whole story is how Western Society has become risk-adverse. There's a whole field of engineering devoted to "engineered safety" that seeks to reduce previously tolerated risks to a danger- free Utopia. You see this in the safety features built into cars, safety requirements on construction job sites and industrial environments, risk-aversion in our military, and all the alerts and warning systems out there, be it Amber or weather. Think of all the new rules and penalties in pro sports to promote player safety. There are countless other symptoms of it, but Western Society expects to be safe from everything at all times to the detriment of the society.
Our hysterical culture of safety is really showing with military recruiting numbers. All branches are way below quotas. Doesn't bode well for the future of the nation.
Absolutely. I also believe that the American Warrior Class i.e. Shawn Ryans and Jocko Willinks of the future are rejecting the "new" military in droves as well. They not only see the craziness within the military but also the foreign policy insanity.
Yes, safety-ism in health care. I've often blamed the lawyers. The practice of defensive medicine by doctors ordering unnecessary tests and procedures was a reaction to medical malpractice lawsuits. Which got doctors used to checking the boxes on med-mal insurance protocols.
Which became Obamacare standardized health care protocols. Leaving no room for professional discretion and practicing the art of medicine. Shifting the profession into cookiecutter, one-size-fits-all medicine by number. So when edicts came down from high above about covid care it was normal operating procedure. Decades of being trained and conditioned not to think. Just check the boxes on the forms and submit. Lawyers were the gateway to rule by public/private bureaucratic authorities.
I just got back home after seeing Mt Rushmore for the time. Besides being in awe of the beauty, artistry and majesty, I thought that it would never be built today. OSHA would have a conniption fit over the safety challenges. Can you imagine dynamite being used to create art today let alone allowing people to hang off Washington’s head chiseling in detail and shadows?
It’s funny - my most recent emergency was a flat tire about 2 years ago. In a remote part of Texas that had no service. A wonderful lady and her 2 daughters gave me a ride. I told her that if she had been wearing a mask I would’ve turned down her offer. She said that if I had been wearing a mask she wouldn’t have stopped!
You and my husband would get along well...he has a flip phone he takes when he is out on a bike ride alone..I guess for "emergencies"! But me coming to bet him is better than him walking for miles home in bike cleats I would imagine. I used that "emergency" fallacy argument on a middle schooler years ago about why she needed a cell phone. It was in case she got kidnapped walking on the way home from school. Uh...yeah, okay. "Wait I gotta call my mom!" I hate that we were texted after the birth of our second grandson instead of a phone call. Absolutely hated it. And :well wishes" texted by "friends" after my brain surgery this year.Give me a good old fashioned phone call. What has happened to people NOT wanting to hear each others' voices? Just another way to separate and isolate. I refuse!
I agree with every word of this article. I remember the days when cell phones did not exist, and guess what, these were better days in every way. These devices have created a lost generation. The stupid spectacle of everyone, no matter where they are, staring into their phones looks insane to me. Society is no longer a real society at all. Phones have become the soma drug from Huxley's book, Brave new world. He was not writing a warning, but rather a view of our future. Some quote him as a visionary but he and his entire family were eugenics pushers, as is the Gates family. Musk is in this camp as well, but he portrays himself as a liberal hero, not! He is a construct of the DOD that financed him, still does and his satellites are used to spy on all of us. He is a fraud, a Manchurian candidate, posing as something he is not and never was. James Corbett has an excellent documentary on our Mr. Musk that shows just who he really is. This guy states how dangerous AI is while actively working on AI, brain chips with the hope of implanting them in all of us. The electric car joke is another device toward the dystopian future. Solar, wind is not scalable and never will be. If people would think critically, they would see that this is the case. In order to make it work it would take the area of sunbelt states entire land mass for the hundreds of millions of panels to generate enough power to \replace fossil fuels, then it would take hundreds of thousands of window cleaners to constantly clean them, so no it will not happen, but the greening con game is not about sustainability. It is about destroying all economies for the élite plan to depopulate the planet. Ask yourself what progress is! If people saw a legless man crawling up the side of a mountain, struggling, sweeting, and everyone started cheering him on, and encouraging him to keep on trying, you can do this, only to find that his motive was to hurl himself off the cliff, well is that progress? In a sense it is for him but not generally. So, all progress is not a good thing. I put cell phones in this category because the use of them will eventually hurl you off the cliff of enslavement, a digital prison if you will. Every industry has been slowly indoctrinating your mind to accept being a transhuman, stealthily, making the insane seem desirable. It is a cage, and this cage has three walls and a roof now, and they are busily constructing the last wall of our dystopian future, while we sleepwalk with our enamored view of technology. Ted Kasinski, the Unabomber was not wrong about his view of technology, but his methods were, and he would never have accomplished his goal by murdering tech people. Now he is just a pathetic prisoner, insane, with a twisted view of technology. So, people just keep on pushing the tech. and ignore what his message actually was, although twisted methods made it appear that he had a personal problem, unrelated to the wonderful tech. We think technology will save us, when it will be the end of us. All the agencies that are supposed to be looking out for our wellbeing are actually not. They are out there keeping America free for hypocrisy. This is how the covid scam worked, how 911 lost rights worked, how people could not believe that giant steel framed buildings cannot free fall into their own footprint, powdering concrete to dust, and yet they did. NIST report was another Warren report, engineering twisted into something impossible in the realm of physics of this world, and yet they sold this impossible story as truth. Thousands of Engineers, fire and demolition experts from around the world have studied this and came up with the real evidence, the real science, and guess what, they cannot get a hearing in the public arena! Ye shall know the truth and the truth will piss you off. Jack, awake not woke, critical thinker, not a matrix dweller. If you think the good Shepard is saving his lamb because he loves, it and is kind, then you have not looked at the entire story! He wants to fatten it up, sheer it, then slaughter it for the meat, so, how good is he?
Well, Rev I do not see what Kaczynski's death has to do with anything I stated. As far as critiquing my lack of Gramer, punctuation or writing skills, or lack thereof. I do not need to possess any of these skills to communicate idea to most people who understand what it is I am saying. You on the other hand do not seem to understand at all, just criticize the structure of the writing, but never comment on the subject, so are you a troll? an English professor? Writing critic? or just an ass who criticizes anything you do not like. I am not ashamed of my inability, and it does not make me any less intelligent. So, what is your point in this comment?
I stand by my statement that massive undivided paragraphs are difficult to read. I also don't appreciate your hostility and name calling and there's no place for that on this substack.
It makes sense. The media and the government have been hyping the fear for decades. People became addicted to fear and the fear seekers loved that they were finally involved in a real-life drama. A drama that was bigger than any of the fictional dramas they watched on TV. What could have been better??? Nothing could have been better! This was as good as it gets. They wanted to believe. They needed to believe it to make their lives exciting again. And, in the end, the government was here to "Save the Day for America". What a great end to that show!!! I wonder if they'll make a sequel?
Yep, in the very beginning of the lockdown a friend expressed this sentiment (over a messenger) that it's like being in a movie. Isn't it exciting to be in a Sci-Fi movie from the comfort of your own home, with digital apps providing for all your needs? I always thought that it was such a big cognitive dissonance with the sheltering; you stay at home and order deliveries not to spread the virus, but you have a bunch of people delivering things for you.
When we were kids and my parents did a weekend away we were given the # of the hotel, but Mom would say "don't call me unless it's an emergency, and a broken leg is not an emergency." To this day I am not sure if she was kidding or not. Ah, the good old days!
Some irony though: now that she's 95 and alone and I am the closest child to her I carry my phone all the time. It seems whenever I don't (or sometimes have it on airplane mode) some panic ensues and it causes her great anxiety if I'm not immediately reachable. I'm also the emergency contact for my granddaughter at school. So I will carry for now but maybe someday I can ditch it at least part of the time...
I grew up without cell phones and don't recall any emergencies in my life where a cell phone would have made a difference. They can be a handy tool but they are also being used to track and manipulate us. I usually carry mine but I keep the GPS turned off and more and more I'm putting it on airplane mode when I'm out and about. The ability to monitor where everyone is via their cell phones is quite the tool to enable a totalitarian surveillance state.
Incidentally, unless it is completely powered off, your cell phone continues to transpond whether or not in airplane mode, with the GPS on or off. It is the law "in case 911 needs to find you". Depressing but true.
I suspected something like this was true but never had time to find a definitive answer. I often use airplane mode to use the phone to listen to downloaded podcasts while out & about. I may have to get a Faraday cage bag to block the signals (or turn it off or leave it at home...).
This is one of the reasons I continue to drive my '07 vehicle (with over 200K miles on it...); there is no tracking technology on it... so if I don't take my phone with me, Big Brother can't track me.
When I warned a friend about all the tracking devices in her new SUV and asked how she could escape Commiefornia if Governor Nuisance turned into a Trudeau dictator, she replied “there are no tracking devices on my horses” 😂😂😂
Thank you, Kathleen. The Uber-Surveillance State is partially why I no longer have a cellphone: like our host, Mark, I don't like being tracked. Everyone should go read the geofence link you post here. I also despise how everyone sleepwalks around with their face glued to their little digital dictator.
So couple of years ago, I decided to ditch my iPhone and bought a LightPhone II (non-internet connected minimalist cellphone with calling, texting, and one of the worst GPS implementations ever known to man.) I threw my iPhone and Apple Watch in a drawer and did not use them again.
I struggled through the LightPhone's craptastic LCD screen which often doesn't respond, and though I wanted to love it, never did. But I soldiered on anyway until it permanently froze in June. I've been without ever since, and I'm getting used to it.
My anti-cellphone resolve was nearly shaken recently when my RN wife failed to show up at a pre-arranged spot one morning. After she was more than an hour overdue, I borrowed a janitor's cellphone to make contact.
Guess what! Since everyone else in the universe has a cellphone, you're never more than a person away from being able to call someone even if you're a curmudgeonly Luddite like myself or Mark Oshinskie.
Not only law enforcement, but apparently private individuals can access (purchase?) this data. The movie "2000 Mules" showed how community activists in select cities dropped off thousands of ballots. The movie used geofencing to show this.
Brilliant piece! Reminds me of the story my pops used to tell about how before T.V.s came into the neighborhood, everyone would be outside, sitting on their stoops, playing stickball in the streets, rollerskating. It was like having a block party every night. Especially during summer. Then the T.V.s came. And nobody went outside in the evenings anymore.
Today, nothing is sadder than seeing a family at dinner and everyone is on their phones.
Interesting that you wrote about this because I got a text last night from a friend who said there will be a test of the emergency alert system on the 4th with the 11th as a backup date. She’s turning off her phone and leaving it at home both days. I constantly get alerts from the NWS about “dangers” that don’t turn out to be anything. Much like the Covid emergency. I’m old. I don’t scare easily.
Cell phones are a crutch for the mass psychosis crowd, as the phones help them stay in touch with others like them to share their respective fears and thoughts. I leave mine in my office as often as possible but because I used to travel often, had to carry one. But I turn it off all the time and just catch up from time to time. Some people probably have to use them all day because of their vocation but they are a distinct minority.
Yes, phones have some logistical value when traveling,
But I've often traveled without one. I just talk to people I meet and ask them what place they like. Depending on how they present themselves, I either adopt or decline to adopt their suggestions.
Excellent observations. I do constantly have my phone on me and it does bother me! I will say that I think having a big family has some built-in advantages, in that we cannot possibly helicopter-parent seven children and we can't afford phones for them, so they buy their own phone when they turn sixteen and start driving. That gives them a bit of a childhood reprieve from the scourge of the smartphone and proves that they're all surviving, even though they can't reach me 24/7 when they're out roaming the neighborhood or at activities away from home. Do you think our matriarchal society has brought safetyism down upon us? As a mom, I'm much more worried about my kids' safety than their dad, who reassures me that they need to be exploring and adventuring (and I'm a pretty laid back mom in the first place).
The tracking of cell phones is what really disturbs me. I'm in Pennsylvania and in 2021, Gov. Wolf told people to stay home the week of Thanksgiving and ordered bars to close...so of course my husband and oldest son immediately decided (separately) to go meet friends for a drink. My son went one way over a county line and my husband went the other way, over a different county line. *They both immediately got text messages to stay home and stay safe!* I was home with the younger kids and received no text message from Big Brother. That was the creepiest instance of government tracking I've ever witnessed.
Beautiful. Admittedly I am an always with me phone, which I refer to as my MindEraser™️, caveman.
Your excellent anecdote reminds me of a time when, as a child, an adult wrongly accused one of us in a group of some property damage from bottle rockets because we were launching Etes model rockets at a park. The neighbor conflated confused and correlated the model rocketry and fireworks and came out to the the park to confront us. Ultimately the man struck one of us in the face. A mom was somehow notified and came barreling into the parking lot, flinging gravel in all directions from the spinning radials of that wood paneled station wagon, and power slid the beast to a stop making everyone jump back and ending the situation in confrontation with the deranged man. She had come from work and I never knew who alerted her, or how, but it was long before people even carried beepers.
We used to launch Estes rockets from empty lots in the neighborhood. While we were never accused of property damage, uptight parents would wag their fingers at us and tell us we might blow our fingers off or something. That crisis never happened. I can't imagine phone toting 13 yr olds building and launching those things now.
This is deserving of an expanded post. We as a society have too much tried to engineer the dangers out of our lives. To our detriment. We have fundamentally changed human behavior that may well be a real existential threat. Think of the implications. Today's humans would unlikely emerge from the stone age.
Or, protect our Nation in armed conflict. The Second World War comes to mind. All fronts. The sacrifice was beyond comprehension. Now we're worried about riding bicycles.
I dropped my phone in disbelief while reading this. 😎
LOL, Real Steven.
They took away our pay phones, though.
Yes, that is a loss for those of us who do without cell phones. Of course, with so few of us, the pay phones no longer make their owners any money, so they can't keep them.
I guarantee you, if they were reintroduced today, people would use them. They are anonymous.
Though any modern redesign probably would not be. You'd probably need a QR code or iris scan.
You would be scanned without consent no doubt.
All your points were accurate Mark, but you stopped short of describing what the big picture is. Corona mania was part of it, but the whole story is how Western Society has become risk-adverse. There's a whole field of engineering devoted to "engineered safety" that seeks to reduce previously tolerated risks to a danger- free Utopia. You see this in the safety features built into cars, safety requirements on construction job sites and industrial environments, risk-aversion in our military, and all the alerts and warning systems out there, be it Amber or weather. Think of all the new rules and penalties in pro sports to promote player safety. There are countless other symptoms of it, but Western Society expects to be safe from everything at all times to the detriment of the society.
Yes, safety-ism has gone way too far.
I could have used more examples but I wanted to prove to myself and to readers that I could write something a little shorter than usual.
God Bless Mike Rowe
https://mikerowe.com/2022/03/the-origin-of-safety-third/
Hi Mark O! Wore our ‘t shirt’ up in Moscow Idaho last week...no comments but a lot of people lingered to ‘read my chest’ as they passed by. 👋🏼😉🧐😜
Our hysterical culture of safety is really showing with military recruiting numbers. All branches are way below quotas. Doesn't bode well for the future of the nation.
Plus those that volunteer are poisoned by mRNA injections. It would be naive to believe that played no part in it.
Absolutely. I also believe that the American Warrior Class i.e. Shawn Ryans and Jocko Willinks of the future are rejecting the "new" military in droves as well. They not only see the craziness within the military but also the foreign policy insanity.
Yes, safety-ism in health care. I've often blamed the lawyers. The practice of defensive medicine by doctors ordering unnecessary tests and procedures was a reaction to medical malpractice lawsuits. Which got doctors used to checking the boxes on med-mal insurance protocols.
Which became Obamacare standardized health care protocols. Leaving no room for professional discretion and practicing the art of medicine. Shifting the profession into cookiecutter, one-size-fits-all medicine by number. So when edicts came down from high above about covid care it was normal operating procedure. Decades of being trained and conditioned not to think. Just check the boxes on the forms and submit. Lawyers were the gateway to rule by public/private bureaucratic authorities.
I just got back home after seeing Mt Rushmore for the time. Besides being in awe of the beauty, artistry and majesty, I thought that it would never be built today. OSHA would have a conniption fit over the safety challenges. Can you imagine dynamite being used to create art today let alone allowing people to hang off Washington’s head chiseling in detail and shadows?
It’s funny - my most recent emergency was a flat tire about 2 years ago. In a remote part of Texas that had no service. A wonderful lady and her 2 daughters gave me a ride. I told her that if she had been wearing a mask I would’ve turned down her offer. She said that if I had been wearing a mask she wouldn’t have stopped!
We are now friends :)
Love this!
Mrs. "the Knife"
You and my husband would get along well...he has a flip phone he takes when he is out on a bike ride alone..I guess for "emergencies"! But me coming to bet him is better than him walking for miles home in bike cleats I would imagine. I used that "emergency" fallacy argument on a middle schooler years ago about why she needed a cell phone. It was in case she got kidnapped walking on the way home from school. Uh...yeah, okay. "Wait I gotta call my mom!" I hate that we were texted after the birth of our second grandson instead of a phone call. Absolutely hated it. And :well wishes" texted by "friends" after my brain surgery this year.Give me a good old fashioned phone call. What has happened to people NOT wanting to hear each others' voices? Just another way to separate and isolate. I refuse!
We found out my husbands brother died on FaceBook! Seriously?
Sorry that’s just sick and I would have to call someone out on that behavior!
I agree with every word of this article. I remember the days when cell phones did not exist, and guess what, these were better days in every way. These devices have created a lost generation. The stupid spectacle of everyone, no matter where they are, staring into their phones looks insane to me. Society is no longer a real society at all. Phones have become the soma drug from Huxley's book, Brave new world. He was not writing a warning, but rather a view of our future. Some quote him as a visionary but he and his entire family were eugenics pushers, as is the Gates family. Musk is in this camp as well, but he portrays himself as a liberal hero, not! He is a construct of the DOD that financed him, still does and his satellites are used to spy on all of us. He is a fraud, a Manchurian candidate, posing as something he is not and never was. James Corbett has an excellent documentary on our Mr. Musk that shows just who he really is. This guy states how dangerous AI is while actively working on AI, brain chips with the hope of implanting them in all of us. The electric car joke is another device toward the dystopian future. Solar, wind is not scalable and never will be. If people would think critically, they would see that this is the case. In order to make it work it would take the area of sunbelt states entire land mass for the hundreds of millions of panels to generate enough power to \replace fossil fuels, then it would take hundreds of thousands of window cleaners to constantly clean them, so no it will not happen, but the greening con game is not about sustainability. It is about destroying all economies for the élite plan to depopulate the planet. Ask yourself what progress is! If people saw a legless man crawling up the side of a mountain, struggling, sweeting, and everyone started cheering him on, and encouraging him to keep on trying, you can do this, only to find that his motive was to hurl himself off the cliff, well is that progress? In a sense it is for him but not generally. So, all progress is not a good thing. I put cell phones in this category because the use of them will eventually hurl you off the cliff of enslavement, a digital prison if you will. Every industry has been slowly indoctrinating your mind to accept being a transhuman, stealthily, making the insane seem desirable. It is a cage, and this cage has three walls and a roof now, and they are busily constructing the last wall of our dystopian future, while we sleepwalk with our enamored view of technology. Ted Kasinski, the Unabomber was not wrong about his view of technology, but his methods were, and he would never have accomplished his goal by murdering tech people. Now he is just a pathetic prisoner, insane, with a twisted view of technology. So, people just keep on pushing the tech. and ignore what his message actually was, although twisted methods made it appear that he had a personal problem, unrelated to the wonderful tech. We think technology will save us, when it will be the end of us. All the agencies that are supposed to be looking out for our wellbeing are actually not. They are out there keeping America free for hypocrisy. This is how the covid scam worked, how 911 lost rights worked, how people could not believe that giant steel framed buildings cannot free fall into their own footprint, powdering concrete to dust, and yet they did. NIST report was another Warren report, engineering twisted into something impossible in the realm of physics of this world, and yet they sold this impossible story as truth. Thousands of Engineers, fire and demolition experts from around the world have studied this and came up with the real evidence, the real science, and guess what, they cannot get a hearing in the public arena! Ye shall know the truth and the truth will piss you off. Jack, awake not woke, critical thinker, not a matrix dweller. If you think the good Shepard is saving his lamb because he loves, it and is kind, then you have not looked at the entire story! He wants to fatten it up, sheer it, then slaughter it for the meat, so, how good is he?
Just a heads up: Ted Kaczynski is dead - died this past June 2023:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski
Also - when you write your Substack articles - do you use paragraphs? Just wondering...
Well, Rev I do not see what Kaczynski's death has to do with anything I stated. As far as critiquing my lack of Gramer, punctuation or writing skills, or lack thereof. I do not need to possess any of these skills to communicate idea to most people who understand what it is I am saying. You on the other hand do not seem to understand at all, just criticize the structure of the writing, but never comment on the subject, so are you a troll? an English professor? Writing critic? or just an ass who criticizes anything you do not like. I am not ashamed of my inability, and it does not make me any less intelligent. So, what is your point in this comment?
That kind of massive paragraph is unreadable. If you had divided your comment into a dozen smaller ones I might have read it.
Me too.
I stand by my statement that massive undivided paragraphs are difficult to read. I also don't appreciate your hostility and name calling and there's no place for that on this substack.
It makes sense. The media and the government have been hyping the fear for decades. People became addicted to fear and the fear seekers loved that they were finally involved in a real-life drama. A drama that was bigger than any of the fictional dramas they watched on TV. What could have been better??? Nothing could have been better! This was as good as it gets. They wanted to believe. They needed to believe it to make their lives exciting again. And, in the end, the government was here to "Save the Day for America". What a great end to that show!!! I wonder if they'll make a sequel?
Yes...there is a sequel on its way.
For some, but not nearly as many as the first hit show.
Yes. Sequels are rarely as good as the first show.
You mistyped "never."
So will this sequel be better for the Sheeple or the Non-Conformists? Any speculation? Is there a better term for Non-Conformists?
I wish I knew who it would be better for. I don't. But I'm hoping it is better for all of us.
Yep, in the very beginning of the lockdown a friend expressed this sentiment (over a messenger) that it's like being in a movie. Isn't it exciting to be in a Sci-Fi movie from the comfort of your own home, with digital apps providing for all your needs? I always thought that it was such a big cognitive dissonance with the sheltering; you stay at home and order deliveries not to spread the virus, but you have a bunch of people delivering things for you.
When we were kids and my parents did a weekend away we were given the # of the hotel, but Mom would say "don't call me unless it's an emergency, and a broken leg is not an emergency." To this day I am not sure if she was kidding or not. Ah, the good old days!
Some irony though: now that she's 95 and alone and I am the closest child to her I carry my phone all the time. It seems whenever I don't (or sometimes have it on airplane mode) some panic ensues and it causes her great anxiety if I'm not immediately reachable. I'm also the emergency contact for my granddaughter at school. So I will carry for now but maybe someday I can ditch it at least part of the time...
Yes JFly completely understand your current situation.
Same with myself.
My father seemed to have contracted turbo cancer.
Sister is near by but Im also on standby.
Son is special needs and lives with Dad half the year so again need to be reachable.
I’ve thought about the flip phone
Not sure those are around anymore
Think they might have faded like Pagers
Still hoping someday to find that off-grid piece of property but I’m not really sure that buzz word is really a real thing anymore
“Off-grid” 🤔
I still think “they” may be able to track ya down even without a cell shadow tracking your every move
🤔🥺
I grew up without cell phones and don't recall any emergencies in my life where a cell phone would have made a difference. They can be a handy tool but they are also being used to track and manipulate us. I usually carry mine but I keep the GPS turned off and more and more I'm putting it on airplane mode when I'm out and about. The ability to monitor where everyone is via their cell phones is quite the tool to enable a totalitarian surveillance state.
Incidentally, unless it is completely powered off, your cell phone continues to transpond whether or not in airplane mode, with the GPS on or off. It is the law "in case 911 needs to find you". Depressing but true.
I suspected something like this was true but never had time to find a definitive answer. I often use airplane mode to use the phone to listen to downloaded podcasts while out & about. I may have to get a Faraday cage bag to block the signals (or turn it off or leave it at home...).
This is one of the reasons I continue to drive my '07 vehicle (with over 200K miles on it...); there is no tracking technology on it... so if I don't take my phone with me, Big Brother can't track me.
Bingo
When I warned a friend about all the tracking devices in her new SUV and asked how she could escape Commiefornia if Governor Nuisance turned into a Trudeau dictator, she replied “there are no tracking devices on my horses” 😂😂😂
FBI rounded up J6ers from their phones.
Even some poor schmuck walking his dog or being in the vicinity of the nearest Metro stop.
Ugh.
Here's how the FBI did it...geofencing.
https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-google-geofence-warrant-january-6/
Thank you, Kathleen. The Uber-Surveillance State is partially why I no longer have a cellphone: like our host, Mark, I don't like being tracked. Everyone should go read the geofence link you post here. I also despise how everyone sleepwalks around with their face glued to their little digital dictator.
So couple of years ago, I decided to ditch my iPhone and bought a LightPhone II (non-internet connected minimalist cellphone with calling, texting, and one of the worst GPS implementations ever known to man.) I threw my iPhone and Apple Watch in a drawer and did not use them again.
I struggled through the LightPhone's craptastic LCD screen which often doesn't respond, and though I wanted to love it, never did. But I soldiered on anyway until it permanently froze in June. I've been without ever since, and I'm getting used to it.
My anti-cellphone resolve was nearly shaken recently when my RN wife failed to show up at a pre-arranged spot one morning. After she was more than an hour overdue, I borrowed a janitor's cellphone to make contact.
Guess what! Since everyone else in the universe has a cellphone, you're never more than a person away from being able to call someone even if you're a curmudgeonly Luddite like myself or Mark Oshinskie.
Correct...everyone should read that article. From what I understand, local law enforcement are also using the same geofencing techniques.
Not only law enforcement, but apparently private individuals can access (purchase?) this data. The movie "2000 Mules" showed how community activists in select cities dropped off thousands of ballots. The movie used geofencing to show this.
Good point.
Ballot fraud proven the same way. 🦗🦗🦗
Brilliant piece! Reminds me of the story my pops used to tell about how before T.V.s came into the neighborhood, everyone would be outside, sitting on their stoops, playing stickball in the streets, rollerskating. It was like having a block party every night. Especially during summer. Then the T.V.s came. And nobody went outside in the evenings anymore.
Today, nothing is sadder than seeing a family at dinner and everyone is on their phones.
And life goes by.
Can't wait to hear the Tale of the Last Case.
Interesting that you wrote about this because I got a text last night from a friend who said there will be a test of the emergency alert system on the 4th with the 11th as a backup date. She’s turning off her phone and leaving it at home both days. I constantly get alerts from the NWS about “dangers” that don’t turn out to be anything. Much like the Covid emergency. I’m old. I don’t scare easily.
file:///var/mobile/Library/SMS/Attachments/d8/08/BDCD9CF2-E237-4FB3-9A26-38B4AF1DA8D3/image000000.png
Everybody that turns off their phone is probably going to be placed on some list.
Cell phones are a crutch for the mass psychosis crowd, as the phones help them stay in touch with others like them to share their respective fears and thoughts. I leave mine in my office as often as possible but because I used to travel often, had to carry one. But I turn it off all the time and just catch up from time to time. Some people probably have to use them all day because of their vocation but they are a distinct minority.
Danny Huckabee
Yes, phones have some logistical value when traveling,
But I've often traveled without one. I just talk to people I meet and ask them what place they like. Depending on how they present themselves, I either adopt or decline to adopt their suggestions.
Excellent observations. I do constantly have my phone on me and it does bother me! I will say that I think having a big family has some built-in advantages, in that we cannot possibly helicopter-parent seven children and we can't afford phones for them, so they buy their own phone when they turn sixteen and start driving. That gives them a bit of a childhood reprieve from the scourge of the smartphone and proves that they're all surviving, even though they can't reach me 24/7 when they're out roaming the neighborhood or at activities away from home. Do you think our matriarchal society has brought safetyism down upon us? As a mom, I'm much more worried about my kids' safety than their dad, who reassures me that they need to be exploring and adventuring (and I'm a pretty laid back mom in the first place).
The tracking of cell phones is what really disturbs me. I'm in Pennsylvania and in 2021, Gov. Wolf told people to stay home the week of Thanksgiving and ordered bars to close...so of course my husband and oldest son immediately decided (separately) to go meet friends for a drink. My son went one way over a county line and my husband went the other way, over a different county line. *They both immediately got text messages to stay home and stay safe!* I was home with the younger kids and received no text message from Big Brother. That was the creepiest instance of government tracking I've ever witnessed.
1,000%