First entry of the year. in A small but passable life.

It took me a month but I finally finished “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power” by Shoshana Zuboff. The book does a pretty good job of trying to explain the madness of the connected, online world. I only wrote down one quote from the book- “The forces of capital are dedicated to the production of compulsion.” Think about that. I’m proud of the fact that in over two decades of being online I’ve never clicked on an ad unless by mistake. And those few mistakes were more than likely caused by my male mammalian brain being fooled by an image of the opposite sex, titillating me with the prospect of being titillated more. Or just a clumsy finger slip. Anyway it will be this latest generation, the Alphas that will be the guinea pigs. Gen Z grew into it but these kids, these Alphas, have known nothing else but the feel of a smart phone in their paw. And once facial recognition gets commonplace which will then erase anonymity, then the great experiment of “Social Credit System” can begin. Remember the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive”?

Anyway, after six visits to the dentist I was able to come home with a mouth full of plastic. Strange, looking in the mirror, which I rarely do except to shave and trim facial hair once a week, and seeing a smiling stranger. Fucking weird. That first day I wore the dentures for about three hours. Until trying to eat and I took them out. And left them out. The next day after morning coffee and then lunch I put them in and went to the pool for the afternoon. I took them out before dinner. Yesterday I put them in for barely an hour while attending Ray’s birthday party. (Ray just turned ninety-something.) There was a “hotspot” forming so I took them out when I got home. I’ll leave them out until my next appointment at 1pm on Monday when he can whittle on them some more. He says I’ll have four months to get them right. He’s trying to get them to work without surgery to whittle on my jawbone, which ISN’T going to happen. I don’t really want to give it up without a decent try at it because Mom spent quite a bit of money on this project. Whatever.

I went to the library to pick up the next non-fiction book waiting for me and when I perused the “New” bookshelf I found the new Stephen King. Nice. I’m set for a few weeks now.

And about a week ago when I was perusing in a Goodwill store I found “Chapman Piloting, Seamanship & Small Boat Handling”. A huge tome. It is the 60th Edition published in 1991 but the only outdated section is some of the electronics references. Electronics are being refined yearly anyway so that is no big deal. The rest of the information is timeless. So, good stuff and a good place to start.

I also found a pristine hardcover copy of Stephen King’s “Nightmares & Dreamscapes” (1993). I had a copy once but it went missing. I also found a paperback copy of his “The Stand” which is a good book to take on a wilderness sojourn for late night or rainy day reading in a tent.

And I bought a new $6 inner tube for the free bike after the patch job didn’t work (too close to the stem). So now it is a $6 bike. I still need to find a better, more comfortable seat for it.

The battery in the nearly three year old $40 Chinese ZTE smartphone is dying. It is going from 100% at midnight to 52% by 8am. Just a few weeks ago it was only dropping about 8% overnight. Not good. Let’s hope a new battery doesn’t cost more than a new $40 phone.

Winter may be over. Daytime highs are back to the mid-seventies. The nighttime lows are still dipping down into the forties though.

Anyway, I’ve got a couple of books to read.