15 Million Views

Two days after posting, on another blog how the photos I've uploaded to Google Maps have received 15 million views, I got an email from Google Maps acknowledging my accomplishment.

Of course, I would have preferred to receive some of the elusive spondulicks, but it is what it is.

My Love/Hate Relationship With The Internet

I've often written that my primary way of getting ebooks to read is by going to the Project Gutenberg website. 

Many books that are now in the public domain can be downloaded from the website. FadedPage is a great source for books that might not be in the public domain in the U.S. but are in Canada.

The reason for my deciding to write of my feelings for the Internet came to me while I was listening to music online. This afternoon I was listening to an album released in 1982 by Jean Luc Ponty - Mystical Adventures. I loved that album when it was released. In those days, however, it wasn't always easy listening to music such as this. It certainly wasn't being played on the radio in Georgia - not even on FM.

It's remarkable to me that I have lived long enough to be able to listen to nearly every piece of music ever recorded. I wanted to write about this and I wanted to refresh myself on Jean Luc Ponty for the post.

I typed the musician's name into the Google search engine and immediatel had to prove I was not a "robot". This has been happening to me quite a lot recently, and I was tired of having to go through this crap. This time, I clicked on "why is this happening" and I read some terms of service garbage. After reading the terms of service, I attempted to search again but received the same robot crap for three or four more attemps.

I signed into my Google account and tried again. This time the search engine worked fine - no problem.

Of course, this could have very well have been a coincidence, but who knows? With algorithms you can never be certain.

Hence, my new title for this blog post - "My Love/Hate Relationship With The Internet".

Facebook Bans

On a number of occasions, I've complained on this blog that sorryalltheclevernamesaretaken has been banned by Facebook for violating "community standards" though, for the life of me, I can't see how I've done so.

The result of that ban has been the creation of another blog, robertsimms.blogspot.com, which seems to be harmless as far as Facebook is concerned.

I'm Facebook friends with Matt Archbold, creator of the blog, Creative Minority Report. Matt has recently published a book, American Antigone, which Facebook refuses to advertise. On a Facebook post today, Matt wrote:

"Instapundit wrote: 'Abandoning the decentralized Blogosphere for the walled gardens of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube was a huge mistake, particularly for conservatives.'

I couldn't agree more. This election season has proven it. The mask is off. Big Tech is censoring, shadow banning, and demonetizing conservatives. Facebook, just this week, banned ads for my pro life book. Why? They said it could influence the election

. We should get back to blogging. We could write what we wanted, without concern that Big Tech would limit our reach.

I recently began posting more at CMR exactly because of this. We cant allow our speech to be censored."

I'm reasonably sure that the banning of my blog from Facebook was not part of the overall ban on Conservatives, but rather due to someone I had "unfriended" on Facebook flagging my links to the blog as an act of petty revenge. However, I do see a trend by "the walled gardens of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube" to make it hard for Conservatives to express their views.

I've missed going the Matt's blog every day. I'm glad to see that he's back to blogging.

Michael Moore's Insane Rant

According to news reports,Director Michael Moore is claiming that President Donald Trump is "pretending to have COVID-19 to win sympathy amid his dwindling poll numbers, or attempting to have the election day pushed back from November 3."

First of all, where is the sympathy? Immediately following the reports of Trump having COVID-19, many of the Left went to social media to express their joy at the news and their wish that Trump die of the disease.

Secondly, to believe that Trump is lying, you have to believe that the medical professionals in charge of treating the President are also lying. There's no whistle blower at Walter Reed hospital willing to expose the lie?

Moore also believes the lying is an attempt to postpone the election. Sorry, Michael, the election cannot legally be postponed regardless of Trump's (or Biden's) health.

Not wanting to waste an opportunity to concoct a conspiracy theory extraordinaire, Moore also believes this could be Trump's way of stepping down before the election so that President Pence can pardon Trump of any crimes he may have committed.

Moore finished his rant by admitting that Trump 'probably does' have COVID-19.