Goodbye Reddit

 I listed 10 things last night because I've got to get the numbers up. Ken's business, Ebay in general, is not doing well. 

I packed the 10 things that had sold since my last post office visit, plus one more that just sold, making 11. I'd been in the last couple of days so I wanted to get a good ride in. It's windy and blustery out there, and sure enough, with all the crap the trees are shedding, I ended up coughing. 

After dropping the things off at the post office, I went over to 99 Ranch for a pastry, a can of coffee, and a mask. They sell some rather nice Korean cloth masks that are just a bit big, but I "adjusted" the straps using a couple of zip ties and now it fits great. I kept it on all through the rest of my ride, after eating the pastry and drinking the coffee, of course. 

I got onto the road that 99 Ranch is on, and rode South thinking that sooner or later I've got to cross Santa Clara street and indeed, eventually, I do. At 34th street. So then it was the long ride back to downtown. I stopped in at the Amazon place and picked up a bunch of bubble mailers, picked up a couple of interesting books at the free libraries, and stopped in at Cardenas Market for cheese and a couple of things. They sell "Joseph Farms" string cheese which at least approaches the quality of the "Precious" brand I used to get decades ago that's a true string cheese, very dry and fairly salty. I looked up "Joseph Farms" and it's Joseph Gallo of course - the good old Gallo family keeping us in wine, brandy, and I guess, cheese. 

I took off for here and got in at about 8:30, really late in these times. It's supposed to rain tomorrow and it was cloudy and looking like it's winding up to do it today. I'll not be surprised if it rains overnight. 

I used to check Craig's List for the weather report but Craig's List is dying and so, apparently, is Reddit. There's a boycott of Reddit scheduled for next week and a lot of people are talking about leaving and not coming back. 

I was on Reddit back in 2008 or 2009 or so. I was away from it for some years and then came back in 2010 or 2012, and eventually just went to "read only" because it's a huge time sink. But I learned a lot, learned a lot of history and Socialist theory and politics. The boycott is because Reddit's not going to allow something called "Outside APIs" any more, and this seems to mean you have to use their reading app only, and this excludes a lot of people, for instance people who are disabled. All of the sub-Reddits are talking about shutting down for the boycott, and it seems to be very popular with the users. 

At one time I thought participating in Reddit might help me find a place to "land" in Hawaii but people on the internet are not real people. Not real in that they'll talk like crazy online but when it comes to doing something, they won't. Say you're stuck by the side of the road with a flat tire or something, and you post about it on Reddit. You'll get 1000 opinions on flat tires and the fixing or non-fixing thereof, but even if the "Redditors" are 1 mile away, you'll never see 'em. You need something that works in the real world, like triple-A. 

The "enshittification" of the internet is sad to see, but I guess to be expected. Craig's List is just about unusable. For some reason the Hawaii Craig's List still seems OK but it probably won't be in another year or so. Fortunately a lot of the things I planned to sell on Craig's List can be dribbled out, $100 or so at a time, to Ken who will buy them for himself or for his daughter.