The US Military has some quite excellent, and approachable, guides to improving your safety online. These are all accumulated on their fact sheets page. In particular, the Identity Awareness, Protection, and Management Guide is very friendly for the non-technical. It’s a goldmine of handy visual references on how to configure everything from social media to WiFi networks and dating websites. I highly recommend going through and taking their advice as far as locking down the social networks you use and locking down privacy settings on your phones.

Recently, an old friend of mine asked the following How much of this is hyperbole? From an outsiders perspective much of the USA (news, politics, entertainment, ..) is loaded with hyperbole. Facts & intellectual discussion seem to be obscured by emotions and extremes. in response to a post linking American Democracy Will Die in 150 Days and having the following lead: There is only one issue in this US election: Fascism vs not Fascism.

I was watching the reopening protests the other day (yes, I write a bit slow, this post is about the reopening posts not the police protests) and noticed that many of my friends, mostly, but not entirely, those who don’t live in the USA, were rather shocked by the scene. So, I thought it might be useful to write up a little of US culture and why some people might look at the lock down as an existential issue requiring lobbying to return to work.

If you’re interested in political history (or just current affairs viewed through the lens of a political historian) haven’t come across Heather Cox Richardson, I highly recommend her daily summaries. Specific to this one, it’s worth remembering that we still have an election running and, it seems that the Republican Party is intent on using the pandemic as a way of magnifying their power. In this case, we have primary elections which really should be either postponed, moved to vote by mail or otherwise have significant allowances for the pandemic.