LinkedIn Censorship, Power Grab, Bait, Jen Sassy

"Now, I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never dared to recognize their motives. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me."
— George Orwell (1984)

Well, good morning old friend, how are you? I’m fine, thank you for asking.  It’s a beautiful day here; sunrise was an 11, my pup is sitting on my writing bean bag soaking in that luscious sun.  My wife is in bed; we both woke up about 6:00, another 9 hours of great sleep.  She’s still in bed, phone flipping, I would guess; I am up making some word soup.

Something interesting happened yesterday; I got censored from LinkedIn. As a result, I got the following message:

“Your post goes against our policy on harmful content and shocking material. It has been removed, and only you can access it. View your post.

In case you’re not familiar with our policy on harmful content and shocking material, we encourage you to review our Professional Community Policies. Then, if you think we made a mistake, you can ask us to take a second look.

Thank you for being part of the LinkedIn community.”

When I clicked on the “view your post,” it takes me to a “something went wrong” site.  So I don’t know which of my roughly 2000 posts or articles was removed, but I did ask for a second review, and we will see the results; I’ll keep you posted.  As far as I know, Twitter, Facebook, and Substack all allowed the offensive content to remain.

Do you find it odd that other humans can deem your ideas and thoughts offensive?  I know, it’s a private business, but recently it was announced by Jen Sassy, the White House Spokesman, that they, the White House, had been working hand in hand with Facebook to remove content they thought was misinformation. So Orwell texted me and said, “I was right!” Of course, Sassy also said if you get removed from one platform, you should get removed from all. Exciting times my friends, exciting times.

Who gets to decide what information and misinformation is? For example, the Wuhan Lab leak was deemed misinformation under one administration but a possibility under another.  I was listening to the Democratic National Committee talking points via NPR, and the woman stated without a doubt the virus came from animal to human transmission; I don’t think this is a fact; the fact is we don’t know.  Is it misinformation to deem something fact when the truth lies somewhere in between?

Aside from my minor censorship issue, we had a house full yesterday.  We had five here and discovered our internet is good at supporting two, maybe three, but five folks using our pipe was a little too much. So we had many meetings that got cut short, but all in all, a productive day.  At 4:30, we headed down the hill to unload our Little Bus of Joy and get a final dinner at BPT with our team.

As we dined, a new friend, Troy, came over and started talking to us.  Troy is from Pekin, IL has lived here for 25 years.  Bay was sitting at our table and shared she was going to Pekin this weekend for a family reunion.  As they chatted, Troy asked Bay if she had a boyfriend; she said no; he followed up with, “are you going to be here tomorrow?”  As we walked out, my wife looked at Bay and said I think your new name is “Bait.”  She’s a favorite of the men of BPT.

We all came home, Bay and I played gin, she kicked my butt, after the ass beating, we joined my wife on the deck and listened to Dave Matthews and sipped some SALDO. Finally, we hit the bed by 9:00 enjoyed a lovely night of slumber.  We will work here today, I’ve got an errand to run, but most meetings are virtual.

We will know the linage of Parker Van Halen in two to three weeks.  We took her to Elevation Celebration, and a few commented they thought she was a mix of a healer and greyhound.   It will be interesting to see what makes up this unique beast; she's become a sweet addition to our family.   She turns one in four days; we will have a party with some of the other dogs in the hood; this year's theme is Buried Bone Bonanza.  

I had a call with a firm with virtual assistants in the Philippines; the cost is $9.00 an hour and my friends who use the company rave about their quality of work.  Austin, the owner, is a bright young fellow, his company Lava Automation is worth checking if you need some additional support.   We are currently reorganizing some of our processes and look to bring on one or more assistants once we deem what $10.00 an hour work is. Also, he shared his tracking system that tracks the team's work; we might add that to the toolset we call trust but verify.

We are constantly revising our policies and procedures; I think that is what business owners should do to look at their way of working and make minor improvements.  Our team is solid; we’ve made a couple of recent additions.  Dakota, our operations manager, is a force of nature; he has skills neither my wife nor I possess.  When building a team, find complementary styles that help move your company forward.

Well, I guess that’s all I have today, be good, be kind, try and make someone smile, do one random act of kindness. I’ll keep writing and sharing my thoughts and ideas, and if I’m deemed too much for some, well, so be it.  I like our free speech laws and want to test them at times; we need folks to push back against our new systems of controlling the messaging, misinformation, disinformation, you get the point.

"Now, I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never dared to recognize their motives. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me."
— George Orwell (1984)