Asian people

Aside

Why do Americans (or maybe some other people in west) only call eastern Asian people, Asian? Pakistanis, Afghans, Tajiks, Many Russian people, Iranians, Saudis, Omanis, and many other people are also Asians. Why do you (or them) don’t call us Asians?

Sacrifices

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You gotta sacrifice something to get something in return. My boss taught me a life lesson today. We were talking about the wrestling match between Rahman Amouzad and Kiyoota Kotaro in Paris Olympics and how Rahman unbelievably lost the match after dominating all of his previous opponents without losing even one point and he told me something erudite.

He said sometimes you want to prevent losing 2 points and end up losing ten for that. You gotta give the two points and fight for a better position to win.

It’s exactly like that in life. You gotta sacrifice something to get something. It’s just how life works. You gotta give the two points in life so you can continue fighting and getting more. If you stick to the two points, you end up losing everything else.

Human captcha

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Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have captcha on us? Like when people want to interact with us, we would make them solve the captcha. Are you human enough? They would be forced to answer it with real answers.

Human Captcha: Verify you are human
Human Captcha: Verify you are human enough

A list of random questions would be presented to people:

  • Are you racist?
  • Are you sexist?
  • Are you a bigot?
  • Do you support fascists?
  • Do you support terrorists?
  • Have you ever discriminated against a group of specific people?
  • Do you respect people’s privacy?
  • Are you a cheater or a betrayer of trust?
  • Are you a professional liar?
  • Do you secretly do what you preach against?
  • Are you a snob?
  • Are you trying to interact only to use me for some benefit?

These are just few questions I had in mind. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could present people with this kind of captcha?

What would you put on your human captcha?

Blogging

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I love blogging. If you know a little about me or follow this blog, you surely know I don’t use social networks, they’re not built for me, but I love blogging and writing about what matters to me on my blog.

I try my best to keep my blog updated but sometimes it gets hard. It’s not only publishing, the server, the program behind the blog (WordPress), plugins installed on it, and some other stuff, such as the domain, needs to be update and taken care of.

Keeping stuff running may not be hard but publishing and being updated is. It’s not that I write and publish because I have to, but sometimes expressing yourself and finding the right way to publish something on your mind is hard.

I have a lot of stuff on my mind that I want to share with people but most of the times it just won’t make it to the blog. I just don’t find a way to put it here. I can’t find the correct words, the correct format, sometimes the correct source, and sometimes the correct category for what I want to share so time passes and I just let it go.

I’m sometimes tempted to create a social network account and write small posts there. Sometimes I think about creating a small micro-blogging platform on this blog and use that but I know it’ll be temporary and a waste of time and energy.

Sometimes I think about closing this blog. Just delete everything and shut it down. No online presence whatsoever. Last time I did I got a bunch of emails from friends and readers telling me they miss the blog. It was a joyful feeling knowing someone cares about what you publish online and actually reads them.

I don’t use any tracking or analytic program on this blog so I have no idea how many people read my posts. The blog is not commercial and it’s not even reader-based, its sole purpose is to give me a safe space to publish what I want.

Blogging is hard. Writing and publishing while you preserve your own standards is hard. Keeping it updated is hard. But even with all that, blogging, writing, and being a part of this great community of indieweb bloggers is so awesome that it’s absolutely worth it.

This morning I woke up thinking about deleting this blog and letting it go. I thought real hard about destroying my last home online but I needed only one click to open up my blog and take a look at it to stop.

This post supposed to be a goodbye post but it’s not. I only need to start writing again to feel good about what I have here. I’m planning to keep it alive for a long time and I hope I can succeed doing so.

Privacy and data regulation

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I’ve recently come across a lot of posts questioning data and privacy regulations. What is more common among them to describe privacy regulation as failed or worthless is that the dis-services we might use need that data to function.

That is far from truth. No flashlight app needs to access my contact list. No shopping site needs access to my microphone. No museum needs to know where I’m precisely located to show me a famous painting. Privacy regulation is exactly for that.

Privacy regulation is not there to make sites dysfunction, it’s there so the site won’t sell my personal information to data brokers. It’s there to make sure my privacy won’t be violated solely because I bought a new mobile phone.

My privacy is valuable to me and it should be protected. Regulation is there to protect my rights while also giving you a choice. You can consent to data collection and I can tell the dis-service to not to do so. It’s a choice, much like free speech.

I want my freedom of expression no matter what. Now I can choose to say something or be quiet but I want this right to be protected. Much like that, data should be regulated so you can choose to share it or not and also reverse the choice if you change your mind.

EU, no matter what some people might say, is the leading continent on protecting its people regarding data and privacy and I admire their work. It might not be complete, it might need a lot of work to be as good as it needs to be, but their work is nonetheless admirable.

Privacy and data should be protected, regulated, and violators should be punished. It’s the way it should be and I hope it’s the direction all countries take. We should force our lawmen to follow that route and we should help them with civil protests against violators of our privacy.

Specially now, that free (as in freedom) tech had a lot of progress and made it possible for people to experience same experiences and technologies without being forced to give away their personal information to giant corporations and data brokers.