Posts Tagged → social media
August 9th, 2026
We lost a most wonderful friend yesterday afternoon. One of the nicest people you could ever meet in your life, needlessly lost her life, while trying to cross North Front Street in Harrisburg.
Three factors caused Dr. Holly Engelman (55 YO) to be struck and immediately killed by a car: Careless driving, at speed far above what is posted (40 MPH transitioning to 35 MPH), in a marked crosswalk that lacks sufficient traffic controls to make drivers slow down and give the occasional pedestrian the right of way.
The driver whose car collided with Holly as she crossed within the crosswalk was young, driving way too damned fast, like almost everyone drives these days. And instead of seeing the adjoining lane blocked by a car waiting for Holly to make her way across Front Street, and taking note of it, her killer simply sped around it.
As Holly stepped past the stopped car, she was hit by the other car. While she was in the marked crosswalk.
Yes, this crosswalk at Vaughn and Front Street is marked on the pavement, and yes, it has signs on both sides, and yes, it has a flashing light and signs hanging over the crosswalk. But what it does not have is a couple rumble strips on both sides. Rumble strips, or speed bumps, can force drivers to slow down, by dint of the discomfort they cause when driven over at high speed. If designed to really slow a car down, they will immediately remove the tailpipe when hit at high speed.
Otherwise, these crosswalks are dangerous enticements, death traps that promise safety, but deliver death and injury.
I always drive the speed limit on Front Street. It is a residential street and also a low speed artery into and out of Harrisburg City. And yet, no matter where I enter Front Street, with however much lead time between me and approaching traffic, my doors are always blown off by passing vehicles that are going between fifty and sixty MPH. Some faster than this. Never fails, everyone is in a huge hurry to get into Harrisburg or out of it.
Plenty of tailgating, plenty of aggressive zooming up behind a vehicle that is already going the posted speed limit. As if Front Street is a race track, the Autobahn, a highway. But it is none of those things. Front Street runs along the scenic Susquehanna River, and right along the walking/ biking path above the river bank. Very little margin for error in this corridor, really no room for high speeds.
And yet, drivers speed there, and crash there, all the time.
There is no police presence on Front Street. Zero speed enforcement. None, ever. Not even at this one crosswalk.
Holly was a gentle, kind, beautiful person, with an uninhibited, attention-grabbing Woody Woodpecker laugh that made everyone around her laugh with her. Big time community volunteer, while also holding down a regular science job. She had a PhD in some polysyllabic hard science field that involved test tubes, lab rats, genes, big buildings, whatever, the whole gemish. Brilliant person, always positive to be around. Her two sons are good kids, smart in their own rights, and also hard working. Ditto her husband Andrew.
There is no replacing a Holly when something like this avoidable killing “accident” takes place. Holly was one of a kind, a super person of tiny stature who gave much more back to the community and society around her than her tiny size would indicate. She was one of the Princess of Patience’s best friends here in Harrisburg, and our home has been in mourning all day.
Folks, slow down in your vehicles. I do not understand why the hell so many people routinely drive like a bat out of hell in parking lots, or on residential streets, where people are around and where the margins for error are tiny. Nothing “pressing” in your life or mine is worth taking someone else’s life over. Driving fast in these enclosed spaces isn’t getting you anywhere any faster, but your risk factors are going through the roof.
And for those who will debate me on this, consider the young lady driver who killed our friend Holly. She likely faces the serious charge of manslaughter, in addition to reckless driving, etc etc. Her young life will never be the same, and will probably be much worse for a long period of time, simply because she was in too much of a hurry to slow down for Holly walking in the crosswalk.
In 2019, a young guy crashed into my truck’s rear, at pretty high speed, as I was stopped at a red light in Lewisburg. For about forty miles on our drive up Route 15, I had watched him staring at the dumb phone in his lap. He kept on slowing down as he became more absorbed in what he later told me was “the stupidest stuff.” And he would then suddenly speed up when he realized that other vehicles were passing him. He yo-yo’d like this for forty miles, and never once saw me waving to him, looking at him, trying to get his attention. He totaled his brand new Mustang, and hurt me.
Nothing on your social media feed is worth killing a Holly over, and if something on your phone really is so important, then pull off the road and give it your full attention. You, me, Holly, and the other person on your other end will all benefit.
Goodbye, dear Holly, sweet Holly, smart and humble and gentle Holly, mom Holly, doctor Holly, wife Holly, good friend Holly. We miss you very much.
UPDATE: Local news is covering this well. Here is a good example, and the reader comments are illuminating.
The scene of the crime. Killing a pedestrian here is no “accident.” It is negligent homicide, manslaughter.
How many signs and lights do drivers need? Apparently a lot
Another view. Northbound. People blasted through here while I tried to cross. Supposed to yield, a couple vehicles stopped, but most paid no mind
Is this the skid mark at the strike location?
Dr. Holly Engelman, on the left, as always
By Josh • Posted in
Family •
No Comment
February 8th, 2023
Because LinkedIn had driven me away years ago with their need to control everything I said about myself, I left and did not return until today. Not that I wanted to return to LinkedIn, but because the two people I was trying to reach for professional purposes left me, and their prospective audience, no other way to reach them. Their only presence on the Internet is through LinkedIn.
Turns out that even when I re-registered on LinkedIn, I still cannot reach the two people who advertise there, because they have no contact information published. Like no phone number, no website, no email, not even a FakeBook page listed. So I am left with the option of inviting them to connect to my LinkedIn page, or, for a fee, messaging them through LinkedIn. No other way to reach these people, because they do not have their own websites, and they do not advertise anywhere else on the Internet.
Because I value my privacy and I desire to keep my business work to myself, I decline to use the messaging functions on most social media companies, like LinkedIn. Myriad reports about social media companies’ staffers reading, manipulating, editing, acting on, and deleting people’s “private” messages indicate that using these functions comes with a high risk. You certainly don’t want to engage in anything personal through these messages that you would be embarrassed about in public. Because if a company employee feels like anonymously divulging your “secret” and “private” communications to the public, they can and will. Plenty of evidence of it.
So LinkedIn has these two people’s careers and livelihoods and even their personal lives by the throat, because they are in a cattle chute or a funnel. LinkedIn controls literally everything digital about them. And I imagine that many, if not most other LinkedIn users, are in the same boat.
The only way to actually benefit from using LinkedIn is if everyone literally buys into their whole package deal and submits to LinkedIn’s total control over your communications and networking. However, as we have seen in recent months, LinkedIn monitors every word its users say to one another, even in private messages, and some words (most of which are a mystery until a user steps on them and sets them off like the hidden land mine they are) are such huge no-no’s that people have had their LinkedIn account summarily suspended, indefinitely and without clear reason or evidence why.
And if your LinkedIn account is summarily suspended, and you have no other means of advertising yourself, no other way for people to find you and reach you, then you are basically canceled and do not exist. You literally are in virtual suspended animation. And now that there is cooperation or collusion between LinkedIn and other social media platforms, if you get suspended on one, you get suspended on the others. You can say just one “wrong” word on one social media platform and end up virtually unknown and unreachable on the Internet overnight. Your entire market presence is gone.
Something similar is afoot with Microsoft, where your laptop is no longer yours and yours alone. Now, unless you aggressively ward off all of their nonstop funneling and controlling efforts, you must sign in to your own computer through Microsoft. Microsoft controls your access to your own personally owned machine. It is a digital filter, a limitation, a brake, a collar, a control on how and when and under what terms you access your own laptop computer. And just because you said “No” to Microsoft’s cattle chute fifty times before does not mean that Microsoft won’t keep trying to funnel you into their control. The company will keep on trying to shunt you into their own login system so that they become the gatekeeper of your own personal computer that you paid for with your money. I myself do not need or want a gatekeeper over access to my work machine. That spooks me, because I need full control of my work and my digital life.
The gatekeeper function and corralling effect is a bad deal and I don’t accept it. I want full manual control over my computer and over my life. I do not understand how or why Americans allowed themselves to be corralled this way, their entire persona and professional presence centralized and controlled by someone else. Why they have allowed themselves to be put into a cattle chute or into a professional digital funnel, where the only way forward is the one given to you by some digital overlord in Silicon Valley, California. Usually that overlord is a twenty-something inexperienced kid with a computer chip in their hand and a hair trigger bad attitude chip on their shoulder.
What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, by the way, Steve Steen and Becky Geer, if either of you are interested in doing the OGM abstracting LinkedIn says you want to do, contact me. Right here.
October 7th, 2019
On a site like this where we pride ourselves on writing original content, it is rare to repeat writings by others. However, White House adviser Stephen Miller has given a radio interview, written up by journalist Matthew Boyle, that is so important, so accurate and incisive, it is being posted here because it must be. The URL for attribution is posted at the end of this post:
Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump:
“Miller’s comments came at the end of the interview, after he discussed immigration and exposed the deep state’s “saboteurs” throughout government, who are attempting to undermine Trump because he is actually delivering for American workers and families.
“It gets to the heart of all these issues, which is you have a president who is fighting for you and fighting for your family against this execrable Washington swamp like no one has ever done before,” Miller said. “Every day, hour by hour, I am blessed and fortunate enough to see it up close and firsthand. No one has ever fought harder for you or more valiantly for you from the Oval Office than this president. We need to support him right now more than ever in the face of radical leftist Democrats and socialists and their allies in the media and in the permanent bureaucracy.”
Miller said the reason why the deep state and Democrats are coming after Trump is because their livelihoods as part of the permanent swamp in D.C. are at risk because Trump is changing the order of things in Washington.
“He keeps his solemn promises to the American people,” Miller said. “These saboteurs within and without the government, as I said earlier, are like parasites feeding off the nation, feeding off its wealth, feeding off its vitality, feeding off its freedom for their own personal enrichment at all of our expense.”
Miller warned Americans, too, that now is the time to fight back.
“So do not be a bystander to history,” Miller said. “This is happening now. The chance for extraordinary victory is here and now, but we have to win this battle, and we have to be successful in implementing these policies and beating back the Adam Schiffs of the world and the deep state and the fake news media and the corrupt news media.”
He also gave Americans advice about how to fight back, including making their support of Trump clear to their elected representatives and senators and posting Breitbart News articles on social media. If the public rallies to Trump’s side, Miller said, the American people can yet again defeat the globalist forces who want to perpetrate more destructive policies upon them—and the “fate” of the country itself lies in the hands of the people.
“Everyone has it in their power to make a difference, whether it’s writing to lawmakers, whether it’s posting important Breitbart articles on social media, whether it’s showing up and attending events with people who are supportive of the president and showing your own encouragement, or whether it’s talking to your friends and neighbors and just making sure they’re all engaged and informed,” Miller said. “But all of these things cumulatively multiplied by thousands and thousands and thousands of people is going to make an extraordinary difference. So it’s in your hands, to each and every one of your listeners, the fate of the future of the country.”
Originally published at https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/10/07/stephen-miller-warns-america-do-not-be-bystander-history-fate-future-country-hands/
August 28th, 2018
Social media companies like FakeBook, Twitter, Google, InstaGram, etc. have become the modern day information equivalents of the first power and public service utilities.
Instead of water molecules, gas, sewer, or electrons (electricity) entering and exiting your home to keep your life running, today’s digital social media companies transmit photons and ones and zeros to your laptop and handheld device. The net result for the end user is that all these things are all one and the same utility service, and they serve the same function.
Just like the power company, say PPL, and the gas company, and the water company cannot discriminate against users of their services, so the same applies to the digital information companies above.
For example, you do not come home at night, flick the light switch on your wall, and remain in darkness because you got a call earlier in the day from PPL saying “Sorry, Jane, we have turned off your electricity, because we have determined that your political views are contrary to our arbitrary and vague terms of service and our company’s values.”
PPL and other utilities must provide their services and products equally to all who pay for them.
It is time to hold digital utility service providers to the same exact standard. No discrimination against users.
Presently, Google so obviously fakes its search results to favor political candidates and campaigns the owners of Google favor. Google’s politicization of search results on every subject and person is egregious.
Like Google, FakeBook also obviously discriminates against conservatives, engaging in shadowbanning and hiding messages its liberal owners do not want the public to see. Worse, Fakebook has made a lucrative business charging its users for advertising, but the person who pays for that service never knows just how far their investment went, because FakeBook deliberately withholds information about its actual efforts. It is a blind item, exactly the opposite of what it should be: Open and transparent.
Twitter’s legendary war against non-liberals is the most public form of censorship. As illiberal as this censorship is, liberals still cheer.
These companies and the many other liberal book-burners in the digital media business have declared war on ideas and people they simply disagree with. It is time to end this assault on the First Amendment rights of American citizens who have entrusted these companies to abide by universal free speech standards.
It is time to regulate these companies like the public utilities they have become, to prevent them from illegally discriminating against people who merely disagree with their owners.
Treat us all the same legally.
December 24th, 2013
If the Internet and related social media are supposed to increase democracy and free speech, consider that YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter all repeatedly demonstrate a shared political agenda by censoring and obliterating political, social, and religious views contrary to those held by the owners of these media giants.
Twitter blocked tweets that include istandwithphil.com, an online support effort for the Duck Dynasty guy railroaded by anti-Christian bigots. Never mind that istandwithphil.com says only that a person stands with Phil, and supports his right to free speech without being punished. Nothing too volatile there. Unless you are opposed to what Phil stands for: Traditional Christianity, traditional Judaism, the Bible.
Facebook is notorious for instantly eradicating Facebook pages of conservative commentators, reporters, and politicians. Arab reporter Abu Toameh reports unseemly facts about the Palestinian Authority that the mainstream media does not want people to know. Violence and corruption as political tools, crushing of dissent, etc., all not of interest to Facebook’s owner, so – Bing – the pages disappear.
YouTube is once again blocking Palestinian Media Watch from airing the English translation of an official Palestinian Authority video in Arabic. YouTube claims that this video foments violence and prejudice. But YouTube is allowing the actual official PA video to stay up on its YouTube channel…as if promoting violence and racism is OK in Arabic, but it’s not OK when it is translated into English so Westerners can see for themselves how evil the PA is.
And don’t get started on the political assignations of Google, infamous for their constant manipulation of facts, data, and news, which Google’s owners purposefully skew in order to bury facts they do not like and to promote ideas they support.
Which is to say, first, do not trust social media sources to champion or protect your free speech rights. Social media sources like YouTube, Twitter, Google, and Facebook are largely owned and run by political Leftists who take every opportunity to crush dissent and hide information not supportive of their political views or their favored politicians (Obama). The sooner you recognize that, the more effective you will be.
Second, don’t just complain about this obvious favoritism and manipulation; do something about it. What can citizens with ideas different than the owners of social media firms do? Start their own channels, their own websites, their own information feeds. For that matter, citizens can start their own TV shows (support Glenn Beck’s TV show), start their own theatre companies, their own humor shows (wouldn’t it be fun to watch real actors parody SNL actors Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin?), or their own faux news shows (an alternative to Jon Stewart). Heck, you can hand out your own printed newsletter in your neighborhood, and take to task whatever propaganda has been lately emitted by your local news establishment.
The point is, citizens do not have to take this manipulation lying down. It is just one more facet in the war for America. Recognize the battlefield you are on, and fight to win.
