Q: What's the fastest way for a kid to get pictures of their grandmother?
A: Instagram

I try to maintain a policy of being only moderately dumb (great slogan for moderates!), which is to say, I will continue to do some things that I know are dumb, but I try to mitigate the harm that my dumbness will cause me. (On the bright side, often the worry with dumbness is that it will harm others, so if my dumbness mostly just harms myself, I feel I'm doing pretty well.)(But also I'm moderately dumb so it's conceivable that my analysis is imperfect.)

One moderately dumb thing I do is to remain on Facebook. Some people would say that Facebook algorithmically encourages people to follow their worst impulses and gathers all your personal data to sell to everyone and fills your feeds with spam instead of your friends whose updates you might actually like to see. (Other people wouldn't say this but that wouldn't prevent it from being true.)

Some of my favorite people are, wisely, no longer on Facebook. But Facebook remains the only way I'm in touch with a number of friends, and updates on local events, etc.... (etc. is such an inconvenient abbrev. because if you follow it with a period etc.. looks wrong and if you follow it with an ellipsis etc.... looks weird.)(It's a 2-dot or 4-dot, like a sedan, only not.)(et sedanra) Anyway, in spite of creating this newsletter almost five years ago in hopes of staying in touch with people outside of Facebook, I remain on Facebook. But Facebook has once again gotten worse.

FACE: THE FACTS

Recently I saw people online complaining that Facebook had used their face in advertisements served to their friends without their permission. I also saw a disturbing complaint from a random dude whose photo Facebook had attached to a news story he was not involved with. I should have grabbed the sources because now I can't find either of them, although I did find this story from last year about Meta using random photos of schoolgirls that had been posted on Instagram to advertise Threads to older men. Which, yuck. (There's quite a bit more than "yuck" that needs be said about the pervasive rape culture that treats women as "these bodies are prizes to be claimed" rather than people, but perhaps next issue.)

Suffice to say, you can expect Meta to take your personal data and your photos and monetize them in ways you did not want, and that was already true before Meta added facial recognition to their smart glasses earlier this year, and the latest spate of Meta's Muse AI going through people's photos and training on them, and all of this has made me decide that although I remain on Facebook, I'd prefer my face didn't. I have untagged myself in every photo of my face on Facebook (although a friend recently posted a lovely photo of my arm)(aye, it seemed 'armless)(gotta hand it to her) and my friends have been kind enough to keep any photos of my face for their personal dartboards rather than posting them on Facebook.

I realize that my face still appears on my column, and that Facebook still has all my personal data to abuse, and this affords me no real protection from the panopticon, but as mentioned, I'm moderately dumb.

SOMETHING EVEN DUMBER

Our healthcare system!

Some months ago my doctor had prescribed a medication for me but my health insurance denied it. The doctors said they'd contest it and it took months but finally last week they heard back and it was denied again. So I wrote this column:

• The American Insurance System

A recent survey found that 1 in 3 Americans with health insurance still carry medical debt. As health insurance costs continue to rise, this problem will only get worse. Thankfully, the Trump Administration is protecting Americans from that problem by making sure they have no insurance at all. By now kicking another 760,000 people out of ACA enrollment, that's at least three quarters of a million more people who won't be overpaying for ACA insurance.

Admittedly this means prices will continue to rise even faster for those remaining insured, but that's a small sacrifice to be part of America's incomparable healthcare system. Your doctor has access to a massive list of potentially helpful treatments, and after examining you and determining which is most likely to ameliorate your condition, they can prescribe a solution for you which is instantly sent to your insurer, where it is immediately denied. Efficient!

Of course, this is a bit of an exaggeration. In real life, denials are not immediate, because first it is important to delay for a long time. This increases the odds that you will not contest the denial because you have either spontaneously gotten better, or died. Win-win!

This system has been described in many ways, but since most of them aren't printable in a family newspaper, we'll use the term "for-profit". Wealthy health system CEOs insist that they can make money while also providing good healthcare, but some have argued against this. I find a convincing counterargument from one of my favorite writers who grew up at around the same time as Mitch McConnell: Plato.

Plato argued that although people may claim to act virtuously because they want to do good as well as receiving rewards for it, that if we separate the good from the rewards we can figure out what truly drives them. He imagined a ring of invisibility, and suggested that if a man were invisible and thus his unseen actions went unpunished and unrewarded, we could then see whether he was more driven by a desire to do good, or a desire to receive rewards.

Yep, putting that philosophy degree to work! I love Plato. (not that I'm attracted to him. I love him Platonically, which is the way that most people love philosophers who have interesting ideas but who are also weird and sometimes annoying to hang out with)(oh no it me). I used him as an example for the "one true motivation" thing here even though the FIRST way I understood this concept (and actually the way that helped me easily understand Plato's Ring of Gyges when I first encountered it in college) was the Ultima series of video games and their moral dilemmas. (Yes, my moral compass was shaped by video games. I'm everything our parents warned us about.)(By which I guess I mean I'm falling and breaking your neck and also drugs and also your face getting stuck like that)(Okay, I'm only some things our parents warned us about.)

Anyway, last Banner column:
Let's Get Physical

SOME SHAMELESS SETH-PROMOTION

As you may have seen if you're foolish enough to still be on Facebook with me, Amazon appears to be running a 50% off sale on physical editions of From God To Verse, my line-by-line rhyming translation of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, which I spent my 20s writing. I do not control or have any information about this sale, and indeed came across it purely by chance, so I have no idea when it may end, but $12.50 is a better-than-usual price for a very thunky (by which I mean massive, but also I thunk of it) book.

Still, if the pleasures of physical media (you can wear it as a hat!) don't appeal to you, the ebook remains its regular pittance of a price at $5. Cheaper and lighter to carry around, albeit less substantial as a holiday gift.

SOME SHAMEFUL YOU-PROMOTION

Years ago I used to do a FoaF gift guide and try to highlight cool things my friends had made that other friends of mine might wish to buy as holiday gifts. I stopped doing this because I couldn't get people to link me their stuff, but I would like to be better about promoting my friends and their endeavors (and I'm ashamed I'm not).

So, if you have thing(s) you create(d) - art, music, jewelry, writing, etc. - with a convenient link where people can click on it and purchase it, please reply to this email (or message me elsewise) with said link so I can share it more widely in November and will be spurred to do so. Help me help you! (and not get stuck in a morass of knowing I have friends who make cool things but not knowing where to start researching links and becoming overwhelmed and then losing all motivation and giving up.)(which is what I've done in previous years, but I'd love to do better this year, and having you send me a link to your stuff would be a tremendous help in achieving that.)

WHERE DOES THE TIME GO?

Greenwich, I guess? (Ain't they got fun!)(In the mean time...)(I promise not to ramble for three paragraphs about Greenwich Median Time and Greenwich Mode Time). Anyway, now it's late and time I goes, to draw this letter to a close, but first as always have my thanks, for bearing with my verbal pranks, in two weeks' time I shall return, with newest column fit to burn, 'til then may you enjoy Autumn, and always moderate your dumb.

Your Friend In Every Metered Breath,
The fool who bears the name of Seth