google locates you via android (quartz article)

[fragger]

Who the heck is that old geezer, BinnZ? Tell me it's not your grandad.

I sincerely hope that Belgium story isn't true. Hmm... isn't there a word for taking someone's life against their will? I believe that word is "murder". I can't believe the Belgians would be going in for something like that. People who make such wonderful chocolate couldn't be that evil, they just couldn't...

I'm all for people making the decision to have their own lives terminated if they're living in constant agony due to cancer or some other horrific disease. But if they're simply put down like an animal for expediency's sake, or to save a buck... That's a bit too Soylent Green for comfort, and that's not a world I want to live in.

Getting back to personal privacy, I'm not worried about the gov or big business or anyone else of their ilk knowing stuff about me as I don't have anything shameful or nefarious to hide. Criminals getting access to me are another story though - identity theft is my biggest concern, which is why I don't keep sensitive stuff like banking details on my PC and why I try to keep my online footprint as diminutive as possible. I don't shop online unless it's to buy things like texture packs for graphical purposes (and then only from reputable sites like Renderosity or Daz3D), and I never visit any online places that I think seem obscure or potentially shady. I certainly don't visit porn sites or anything like that.

As for social media, this is pretty much it. My interaction with this forum represents the extent of my online socializing. I'm not on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or any of those things, and I don't even text or email any of my family or friends when I want to contact them, I pick up the phone instead (the land phone, that is. I don't even own a smart phone, just an ageing Nokia mobile which I use once in a blue moon). But when it comes to the government or marketing types, it's the principle of the thing that rankles with me more than anything. I may not have anything to hide, but I resent the intrusion. My spending patterns, my interests, my life and the things I do in it are none of their freaking business and they should be somehow made to butt the hell out.

I'll have to get a new phone eventually because the one I have is 3G, which will be phased out before too much longer. I'm holding out as long as possible As I said, I rarely even use it and as a rule I don't even take it with me when I go out. A few years ago I went out for a w0#k Christmas dinner with about a dozen other people, and half of them spent half the night playing with their damn phones at the table. I felt like jumping up and yelling, "Hey! People in person here! Get some manners and put your blasted phones away!" Some people can't live without their precious phones, it seems. If you dropped them 40 years in the past, they'd go nuts

What PZ said earlier. I don't pick up the phone unless it's someone I know, but anyway I have call blocking active. Even so, some of thee scammers from India or Asia still get through occasionally. As soon as I hear that Indian or Asian accent mispronouncing my surname, I hang up.

[mandru]

My apologies.  I admit I am guilty in regards to reporting that Belgium is killing seniors without consent.

In trying to do too many things at once my post was purely my misunderstanding of the exact content of the report while working on the computer with my attention not fully on the news program material I related here.

Here's the best link for the most complete details for the situation that I've been able to dig up:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/11382843/Son-challenges-Belgian-law-after-mothers-mercy-killing.html

I will admit up front that I am not familiar with this news organization and it is entirely possible that they are as reliable in their accurate portrayal of this information as a barfly short on cash attempting to hit up anyone in the bar willing to listen for their next pint by spinning tall tales about their sorry situation. 

But still I am left with a lot of unsettled feelings about Belgium and any other self proclaimed civil society that has adopted this as ethical, legal, and normal.  I simply do not like giving the medical profession this much power over their patients and especially in a socialized medicine situation where the doctors are paid a flat monthly fee for their services leaving them no real reason to give a *bleep* about the quality of service they provide.


I'll follow with the details in this matter that cause me concern.

A woman in good health (roughly my age) other than having depression walked into a hospital and requested to be killed.  Her son was not contacted.  The hospital called her son the next day with a message to "Come pick up you baggage."  That much is inarguable.

I see it as she chose to commit suicide by doctor because she was too frightened to do it herself.  It's very possible that if she took things into her own hands she didn't want to botch the job and end up worse off than she already was.  That amount of forethought would demonstrate that in spite of how bad she felt she was able to recognize that she could make things could make things lot worse.

It's too bad that she also chose to dump the responsibility for her disposal on her son because she didn't care enough to make her own damn arrangements and the hospital's humane death panel didn't offer to assist her in that regard.  It's not like the result of an event like this could cause a cascade effect of incurable depression among her children's family.  Right? 

It is indicated that two of the five doctors on the death panel did not feel that her depression was incurable but then all five doctors (having acted within the provisions of the law) were able to go home that evening to their families and have a nice piece of chocolate for their after dinner.

Besides a One-and-Done shot of euthanasia drug is a lot cheaper for the nation's socialized medical budget than a daily ongoing prescription of 200mgs of Amitriptyline (the generic of Elavil) with a 50mgs chaser of Trilifon to ease any possible joint stiffness that sometimes accompanies Amitriptyline.

It does not miss my noticing that Belgium abolished the death penalty for all crimes August 1, 1996.  For me this creates a huge point to ponder of why a civil society insists on dumping obscene amounts of money into housing mass murderers, incurable psychopaths, or anyone else that has been given a prison sentence for the duration exceeding the length of their lives when they will turn right around and blithely check off all the boxes for someone walking in off the street asking to be killed. 


Maybe all that wasted mass storage space for incurable psychopathic prisoners could be freed up by legitimizing them and letting them w0#k on the death panels that every hospital in Belgium has to staff?  There's a few valid points that will support this wild thought! 

** Staffing the new death panels with liberated psychopaths would cost a lot less than the equivalent time loss in real doctors who would then actually be able to spend more time healing people.

** The new responsibilities for the now legitimized ex-cons would allow them to go back to their pre-imprisonment favorite activities under State approval and the rest of the humane civil society would be able to pretend that they've kept their hands clean.

** If one of the new panelists slips up and practices their "skill set" during their off time they can easily be reassigned to a hospital with a higher demand for euthanizations which will meet their more intense primal demands. 

There would need to be some sort of rotational scheduled assignment at each hospital for which death panelist's turn it is to give the actual One-and-Done injection to avoid conflict among them.  But I'm sure that's a fine detail that can easily be worked out as the program is instituted.


*** There I go again wasting my entire morning on a post when I'd planned on spending this entire time tearing up things in FO4.    ***

[Art Blade]

there's one thing you should consider, regarding "curable" and "treatable" (and their opposites) when dealing with depression: The patient's will to cooperate. If they don't want to, then you won't have any success with any therapy. I have never heard of any cured depression, only of depression treated well enough so the patient could lead a normal life, or normal to some extent -- until the next bout. Severe depression must be terrible for the patient and it may mount to suicide or attempted suicide. The actor Robin Williams who hung himself at the age of 63 is a prominent example.

[BinnZ]

Mandru I admire the energy you put into this issue, considering it being an issue of a small, overseas country.  I wonder what triggered you. Is it the idea of a state that puts money above life? Is it the idea of a state that relentlessly kills their citizens once they aren't worth enough? Or is it the fact that one can't trust the good intentions of his doctor?

Personally I think that the Belgian government and their medics are brave to dare and conquer the taboo of freewill and life end. I believe that there's people who are helped by that lethal injection more than by a thousand caring hands.

[PZ]

On a related note, we euthanize our pets to keep them from suffering, but a terminally ill person we force to suffer horrible deaths. That of course suggests that as a society we do not care how much a person suffers - we need to keep them alive as long as possible. I have personal experience with a family member in such a situation, and I most definitely would have supported anything he chose to do - fight to live or end the suffering, but that is not the way the law goes. It seems that as a society, we want to control the destiny of a person no matter what that person wants to do about their personal situation, which in my mind is simply as wrong as it gets.

[mandru]

PZ, while it's a practice I am firmly against there are also some people who will euthanize their pets because they are going on an extended vacation and they can't find (or don't care to find) someone to tend them while they are away or it's cheaper than boarding them.  But then I do not equate an animal (beloved pet or otherwise) as being the equivalent of -or- as having the exact same natural legally protected rights of a human.

When I lived in Washington state there was a considerable rash of disgusting people who were pet-napping cats and torturing them to death before dumping them back to where the owner would find them or leaving the disfigured animal in a public location.  In response lawmakers officially declared that cats were Wards of the State which allowed the judiciary to apply far more severe criminal penalties for anyone caught doing that and the occurrences rapidly declined when it was realized the the crime would be taken seriously and punished harshly.

Appropriately the sentencing for torturing and killing cats did not carry the same penalty as the same act against a human victim would.


Binn, it's not a matter of being triggered.  My radar is always out for intrusions into privacy and for increasingly good reason.  That story out of Belgium was just the most recent incidence of what struck me as people being treated as property by a ruling class.

The thread topic was Google tracking individuals movements and the implications of the invasion of privacy, loss of personal freedoms, and free movement for individuals that would come from Companies collecting our information in data bases to gain an edge in marketing to them and the sharing of that body of an individual's information being given into the hands of over-reaching government offices who in turn have proven their intent to weaponize stored information against any citizen they view as an enemy against their political agenda.

Because we have a small business and due to the strongly conservative comments I've made here on OWG we've already been targeted by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) which occurred not by coincidence during the campaign period leading up to Obama's last presidential run. 

Thankfully we have a excellent Certified Public Accountant (CPA) who has collected the information for and processed our tax returns consistently for the last seventeen years.  In a phone call from the IRS I was able to refer the IRS agent to my CPA's office regarding any conflict in our tax forms.  I told the agent (if he had any other earnings/tax debt related questions) that our tax forms are clearly marked as being filed by a paid preparer and the phone number at which he can be reached and that ended the call.  We were lucky that it ended at that.  Many IRS targeted conservatives were treated far worse but then we were small beans in comparison.


As far as the energy involved... 

Sure my life would be a lot less stressful if I didn't care or if I was willing to give trust to world leaders to take care of everything out of pure altruism and zero personal agenda.  It's my nature to consider myself a watchman with an eye on the horizon ready to call out an alert when I see danger.  I don't post to be contrary.  I can't help but warn those around me when I see us sliding into chaos and willing to accept the chains of compromise for the luxury of security at the cost of hard won individual freedom.

Beyond that if I have spoken clearly my responsibility is done.  I'm not into forcing people to Do, See, or Believe anything they are unwilling to accept.  That's not my job.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Life is a mix of pain and joy.  There really is no political answer to make every human experience perfectly neat and tidy with all the messy bits carefully tucked away forever out of sight.  There will always be stones to stub our toes on and thorns to rend our flesh.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something at a cost beyond what any of us can afford.

[PZ]

PZ, while it's a practice I am firmly against there are also some people who will euthanize their pets because they are going on an extended vacation and they can't find (or don't care to find) someone to tend them while they are away or it's cheaper than boarding them...

I'm surprised that is not illegal - seems like a form of animal cruelty to me.

[Art Blade]

Reminds me of "canaligators" in New York. It was a fashion of sorts in certain circles of society in NY some time in the 1980s to have a pet alligator. When they were babies, they were cute. When they started to grow out of cute, people flushed them down the toilet, alive. Which obviously caused some unusual problems in the sewers and for those working there..

[BinnZ]