Fiends

My bridge club has once again sent me multiple emails, telling me about a bridge game scheduled at a time too early in the day for me. They hold lots of games, and are eager for more people to play. Once a week, they have an evening game. But it's important to them that I hear about all of them. How else will they get more attendance at their 10 AM games?

My online pharmacy feels a need to send me 4 or 5 emails per package they send me. They also require proactive action once a year for each prescription, because they won't send a request for a refill prescription without asking me first.

After an attempt at cleanup, I currently have 45 threads in my INBOX, each containing one or more unread emails. This does not count unread emails auto-filed into other mailboxes, generally because I have strong reasons to believe they aren't actionable. It also doesn't count anything recognized as spam.

I routinely lose important emails among all the junk mail, even with an active spam filter and other filters for FYI and routine verbosity.

Meanwhile, when I delete the obligatory requests to respond to customer satisfaction surveys, I get sent reminders of this pending task I've already decided not to do. If I respond accurately - "now that you've punished me for using your service by demanding I respond to surveys, I won't use or recommend you ever again" it'll be misinterpreted as a complaint about whatever employee I dealt with, rather than a complaint about the demand that I contribute my precious time to their not-so-precious business interests.

Note to the senders of most of those 45 threads: I hope your afterlife involves wading through emails, full of repetitive rubbish of limited interest, to find the one and only email that - if read attentively - might relieve your ongoing agony, in the manner of Dante's afterlife for sellers of bogus medicine.

A few of your messages *are* the things I'm looking for. Most though are e.g. 5 separate threads to convey one piece of information I want, in the manner of my wretched online pharmacy. And that's with the outright spam already pruned.

susandennis recently posted about several technical things she's trying. She's much more bullish on digital tech than I am, and even enjoys shopping (!), but she's been a great source of pointers for me of things I might like.

Today's post included a for-pay ad-free, surveillance-free search engine called kagi. She says she's been hearing about it a lot; I on the other hand have been hiding under my rock, and only just noticed it. (I really should read Ars Technica more frequently.)

After thanking Susan for bringing it to my attention, I just spent some time looking at it, finding myself on the fence about trying it. This Ars Technica article from Aug 5, 2025 says much of what I might have said myself, only better.

( Read more... )

I'd appreciate other people's comments.

The latest newsletter from YLE ended with the dreaded "Continue reading this post for free in the Substack app". I.e. they've gone blatantly freemium. Presumably if asked they'd say they need more subscribers to support all the "value add" that isn't part of their original fact-focussed take on public health in the US, then with emphasis on Covid. They "need" funding for more videos I don't watch, and heavens knows what all else.

They also included their take on gun violence, a subject they insist is part of public health epidemiology. Its inclusion was acceptable to some readers, wanted by some, and rejected by others, to the point that YLE provided an option for subscribers (paid and unpaid) to opt out of receiving such posts. I did so, but nonetheless received today's mixed post.

I have high standards for YLE, formed by their behaviour during the years of the covid lockdowns. Their current behaviour isn't even bad by the standards of substack posters, or modern businesses in general, let alone by the standards of politicians.

But I'm disappointed to see them reverting to the mean/possibly joining the race to the bottom.

And I wonder how much money is being taken home by the YLE principals, and how that compares both with other jobs available to young doctors and with my own best earning years.

To be fair - this was a quite meaty post, before the freemium bit, which seems to be about registering for a paid-subscriber-only live webinar on fall vaccines. (Live webinars are another "value add" I don't want; people who want them are welcome to pay for them.) YLE has a long way down to go before they reach parity with Paul Krugman, and much as I often complain about him, he's good compared to others from whom I've long ago unsubscribed.