Category: Julie’s Bits

SHARED: Facebook knows a ton about your health. Now they want to make money off it. – The Washington Post

I think this is pretty creepy. What do you think?

“Let’s say you like a Facebook page devoted to breast cancer survivors. It has been a useful forum for comparing treatment options with others who have dealt with similar health issues. There’s only one problem: Facebook has now categorized you as a patient, and you constantly receive precisely targeted ads about cancer services available near you. They are showing up on your computer screen at work, for all your co-workers to see, right when you’re up for a big promotion.

Many users experience a version of this scenario when they receive creepily personalized ads while browsing on Facebook. When those ads follow users onto sites outside Facebook, it feels like an invasion of privacy. But how do you regulate data privacy in an age of big-data black boxes?”

Read more here: Facebook knows a ton about your health. Now they want to make money off it. – The Washington Post

Finished Women’s 5K

It was a nice day to be outside and I had fun mostly walking the Women’s 5K on Saturday.

I’ve participated in this 5K many times over the years, but this is the first year my sister has joined me. My sister ran most of it, leaving me to bring up the rear, but next year, I hope to be in good enough shape to run it.

Last year, the 5k was held around Chastain Park, but this year, it was held around Grant Park. The Grant Park course was much easier than the Chastain Park course – not so many hills.

The race is put on by the Atlanta Track Club and at the end every woman is given a medal, a really nice Mizuno tee shirt and a long stemmed rose. I love all of the positive energy I feel when I am standing with all my sister runners & walkers. It’s really a great way to start off a Saturday morning.

Shared: CubeYou, a Cambridge-like app, collected data on millions from Facebook

I think this sort of behavior has been commonplace with the entities that gained legitimate access to Facebook’s user data. I think we’re going to find out that this privacy violation is much larger and much deeper than we ever imagined it to be.

Data analytics firm CubeYou uses personality quizzes and apps clearly labeled for “non-profit academic research” to aid marketers in finding customers.

Source: Facebook suspends another data analytics firm after CNBC discovers it was using tactics like Cambridge Analytica

Shared: Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit

I’ve known a lot of people that have been taking some kind of anti-anxiety or depression drug for years. I’ve wondered what the plan was to get them off of the medication…this article seems to indicate there is no plan. . . their continued dependency is by design . . . JD

“Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/health/antidepressants-withdrawal-prozac-cymbalta.html

Sighted the first hummingbird of the season at my feeder this morning!

The Hummingbirds have arrived!

Boiled up several batches of juice and hung out 3 more feeders. Spring has arrived!

If you want to prepare your feeder, all you need to do is boil up some sugar water….It’s 1 part sugar to 4 parts water.  I use some old Classico tomato sauce quart jars, which have 5 evenly spaced lines on the glass, so I fill up to the first line with sugar and then pour a little boiling water over it to melt the sugar.  Then I fill the remainder of the jar with tap water, stir it up and it’s ready for the feeder.