I’ve made it very clear I am not a fan of Zuckerberg in the past, but I worried about the fate of Twitter when I heard about threads and how Zuckerberg was able to get about ten percent of his one billion users (100 million) to get a profile on threads which is not that impressive considering that he had all the data already and creating an account was as simple as pressing a button. But it seems that was unfounded since as this chart (which shows the google search for Twitter in blue and threads in red) it seems like all interest for threads has quickly become zero. I know I won’t be getting a threads account but it will be interesting to see if there is some effort to increase daily users of if threads will be a failure and cease to exist overtime. It seems unlikely to usurp Twitter as the premier text based social media app.

International travel, I am sorry for being absent for the longest stretch of time since I started the website but I am not done posting here, just wanted to enjoy my vacation. Will be posting back to my regular schedule soon.

Did learn that the earths rotation can affect the length of two similar trips, despite what the estimated durations say the flight from the states to Europe was longer (even with a 3 hour layover) than the flight from Europe to the states plus you don’t lose a day if you start early enough.

Denver/Calgary/Dublin was : 19 hrs (3 hour layover)

In case you were curious, Dublin to Barcelona is about a 3 hour flight but you will lose an hour when you arrive in Barcelona. I left at 6:50pm locally in dublin and arrived at 10:30pm locally in Barcelona.

Barcelona/ to states was : 16 hrs (3 hour layover)

If you’ve been on tiktok lately you might have heard of the pick pocket lady. Here is a super cut of her tiktoks. She goes around tourist traps in Venice and catches pick pockets in the act and publicly shames thems, yelling “attienzone! borseggiatrici! pickpocket!” I love she bold this woman is you should go to her tiktok page and scroll thru the greatest hits, she even got spat at once, she is putting her self in situations that could be exteremely dangerous for her and I hope she is safe and contiues on. I personally think this lady should recieve accomadation for what she is doing some of the offenders look young so hopefully some of these people will not steal again in the future.

(P.S. The reason I have been absent for the last 10 days is because I was traveling in Europe so I was enjoying the vaction and didn’t focus on the blog. I was so worried about getting pick pocketed my self I near bought a neck wallet I was able to visit and not be a victim of theft. I am back now and will be posting regularly again.)

You might remember hearing a story back in late may, before the titanic submarine disaster, about orca’s attacking and disabling ships of the Iberian coast near Spain and Portugal. Well apparently it’s been happening since 2020. Orcas are taking action against something that has probably caused damage to them in the various ways a ship can (getting run over is the obvious one, noise, distrubing hunts are other possible reasons). Orcas are incredibly smart, social creatures living and hunting in a family pods that can be up to fifty indivduals. Orcas have developed a complex communication system (including the adaption of accents, dialects and even slang) and hunting techniques some of which are unique to a specific area. Although it is smaller than the sperm whale, its toothed whale relative, I think orcas are more dangerous due to their ability to work together. So this story is really interesting since this is a learned behavior by powerful, smart hunters that work in a group. As of yet there has been no recorded instance of any aggresion towards humans, they orcas will tear the boat up sure but they will not disturb the people on the ship, which is fantasic news for the orcas and people alike.

However orcas being social animals and this being something that has been going on for years it seems likely that this learned behavior may well be continusly learned and may improve over time, and be passed down by generations of orcas to come. To me this is a way of nature finally “fighting back” against the humans who have destroyed so much of their ecosystem. I fear that if this continues some orcas may be hunted but hopefully it doesnt come to that. I do not think we will see a ceasation of this behavior and in fact it may continue and pehaps become more and more common in various parts of the ocean as more and more orcas communicate this behavior across pods and seas. The social and cultural differences between orca pods in different areas of the sea is fascinating such as unique, language, hunting strategies proves these are animals with unique abilites and should be respected. Wonder what the first ship to piss off orcas in the Iberian coast is up to.

it’s crazy to me how by the simple act of buying a flight now all the apps on my phone want me to be ready, recently got a similar notification from my service provider to avoid international fees. While I’m thankful for things like this and this kind of data sleuthing can make our lives easier I do long for the private world we used to live in not to long ago.

His name is enzo, hes one year old and his nick name is the whippersnapper. I made this on photoshop, and Snapchat in under an hour (maybe 15 minutes of actual effort)

I don’t think there has been a more captivating story in all of 2023 and yet in two weeks no one will give a care. The story is amazing. Billionaires lost at sea while visiting the world’s most famous shipwreck. Sadly, at this point it seems unlikely their souls will be saved. To be honest it’s hard for me to feel too much sympathy as sad as it is whenever a human life is lost. The sea is an insane place and making a visit to such depth is extremely difficult, and -a marvel of modern engineering, to make such a trek for no other purpose than personal entertainment is foolish. So sad that these poor souls paid for a quarter million dollar coffin. The son of one of the victims is also making a fool of himself online, by going to a blink 182 concert and thirsting over an onlyfans model. Granted his online handle is audioguy182 so clearly he’s a big blink182 fan, and I don’t want to roast him to hard because I too, went to a concert only a few days after my grandmother passed but I also went with my cousin and sister and in a way, it was a great bonding experience and helped us take our mind off the loss even if it was only for a short while. But this situation is different because his step-father is in a situation where he may still be alive, how could you not be by the phone crying 24/7, hoping and praying for good news. Like can you be sad and not horny for just five days Brian? Also it seems like the CEO may also have been operating his submarine in waters it was not meant to be in.

I don’t think the submarine will ever be recovered. The titanic is a 882 ft ship and it wasn’t seen until an private and government funded expedition was able to capture still pictures of it in 1985, 73 years after its crash in 1912. I am less optimistic that despite the ever-growing pace of technology the 21 foot OceanGate submarine will be found. People need to understand that being that far down makes searching extremely difficult, less people have been that deep in the ocean than in space. Radar mapping is possible but not extremely helpful in this case large obstructions under the sea such as larger animals, schools of fish or rocks would be picked up in this type of imagining scan. It may be that sending another submarine may be best the best option for a rescue but the visibility would probably be awful, imagine searching for something in your room but you’re the size of an ant and can only see an inch ahead of you. I also speculate that the death was quick and had to do with pressure, I’m not very scientific and I can’t pretend to understand the principles of pressure but I think that from one second to the next the submarine either had a massive leak, was crushed like an aluminum can, or just exploded. Lastly, despite reports from the rescue team of hearing banging noises underwater I think this is just a coincidence and not survivors on the ship trying to alert their rescuers.

UPDATE (6/22/23) : I was wrong about the ship not being found, and also apparently the NAVY had picked up a sound consistent with implosion on the day contact was lost in the area of the ships dive path. Overall, it seems that the lesson of the titanic (engineers, designers, founders, etc taking risks and cost cutting measures that also cost lives) has not been learned. It seems generally agreed that the “innovative” carbon fiber hull was the culprit responsible for this tragedy. I do think the media should be ashamed for feeding us, and potentially, close family members of the victims this false hope of banging noises even though I never bought it. Really completely avoidable good news is Stockon Rush the CEO of the company responsible was also in the sub and paid the ultimate price as well, the only difference is that in the media coverage his name is the only one out of the other four victims that is being dragged thru the mud.

So back in May of 2021 my Facebook account was hacked and the hacker enabled 2FA. I explain it in detail here. Basically, if this happens to your Facebook account its extremely unlikely you will be able to recover your account or data. Incredible to me that a billion-dollar company would not have more caution for users’ data in this instance. So, I decided that I would not be getting a new Facebook account and even used google plus as an interim (RIP google plus). I just could not get over that Facebook would not be able to recover me my account despite multiple attempts at verifying my identity. I honestly wish for the day Facebook goes the way of myspace, why did we ever turn our back on my space? Tom, customizable websites, HTML and CSS, top friends, music on your page, way better than Facebook profiles even today granted Facebook did have some major improvements but still myspace was a good website with a lot of nice custom features and we still traded it for Facebook. In a way I felt a personal grudge against Mark Zuckerberg but continued to support him thru WhatsApp and Instagram. Up until May 2023 I had Instagram and WhatsApp. After some careful thinking I decided that I would delete those accounts too. It was something that I thought about for a while as it is a pretty big decision, but I ultimately decided this was a net positive for me. In the two months since I can say I have no regrets deleting these social media accounts. I still have twitter, TikTok and snapchat but I spend far less time on those accounts than I ever did on Facebook or Instagram, even since deleting my time spent on those apps have not changed and overall, my screen time is down to 30% less than what it was when I had Instagram and Facebook. I am considering a full social media purge but have yet to go thru with that. I will say that there are out of the nearly 1000 accounts of combined followers and following accounts there are only a few dozen people who I genuinely miss seeing there updates and ease of contact, some people who i may sadly never see or speak to again, but otherwise it has made no difference in my social life. In general the people who I don’t see often seem more happy to see me since my digital replica isn’t accessible anymore and the same goes for the people I see often. I also think that some people think I blocked them or something else and took it personal, not realizing I deleted my account for my own personal reasons that did not include any particular individual. Deleting your social media account is a big decision that you have to make for yourself, I would recommend downloading any available data before doing so. I’d also recommend reaching out to a few people personally you’d like to keep in touch with or to write a farewell post (I did the former) before closing a huge avenue of social interaction. There are still some people who I did lose contact with but that’s life, it goes on. Ultimately for me I think it has been a good decision and is another thing to add to the list of changes I’ve made during my journey of personal development. I’ve had no regrets my screen time has gone down giving me time to do other things instead and I feel more present overall in my day-to-day life.