Unsafe at Any Speed

--Sea Battle, Kandinsky

On est à l’abri nulle part

(“there is no shelter anywhere”) 

--“Murder in a French Village”, 

Roger Cohen 

why, why, why, why start it over?
nothing was lost, everthing's free
i don't care how impossible it seems 

--Girlfriend is Better, Talking Heads

"to wear an improper expression on your face...;

was itself a punishable offense.

There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime..." 

--1984, George Orwell

____________________

I stay with Yahoo! because, like President Obama, I'm Old School, too. I just wanna send some data, sans bells and whistles. I was not much wooed by Gmail when it first arrived as "invitation only"; I do not need to be part of a club. When Blogger offered a truncated address to cut out the "Blogger", in order to make your site look like a paid custom one, I demurred. Why the pretense? I like being frugal and appreciate the free platform.

But Yahoo has been pressing me the last few days to upgrade to the new with the following come-on:

Yahoo! Mail is now even faster, safer, and easier to use. Yahoo! now automatically identifies items such as words, links, people, and subjects from your email to learn what matters to you so that we can deliver exciting new product features and relevant ads.

 Before you can access Yahoo! Mail, we need your consent to our new Terms of Service and the Yahoo! Mail Privacy Policy. Learn more about how we protect your privacy.

So Yahoo! will now rifle through my private correspondence to "identif(y) items such as words, links, people, and subjects from your email to learn what matters to you" and pimp it to advertisers and god knows who else, AND will "protect (my) privacy". These two agendas are at loggerheads, nu?

Motto of the 21st century: Stop making sense.