How many times have you casually mentioned buying, say, new curtains to your spouse, then found yourself bombarded with ads for window treatments the next time you opened a new browser tab on your computer?

How many times has that kind of thing left you assuming that your phone, smart speaker, etc. are listening in on your conversations and adding relevant material to advertising databases?

Advertising platforms always deny it, and maybe — MAYBE — they’ve been technically honest in denying it. But there’s no doubt they track you in various ways, from browser history to phone location, and that they use the data they gather to target advertising at you.

If your phone notices you visited Home Depot or Lowe’s and your browser history shows you looking at gazebo plans, you’ll probably start seeing ads for tools and building materials shortly thereafter.

Now we have evidence of actual eavesdropping on your conversations.

Last year, Cox Media Group admitted — nay, promoted” — its “Active Listening” technology  in a since-deleted blog post: “Imagine … a world where no pre-purchase murmurs go unanalyzed, and the whispers of consumers become a tool for you to target, retarget, and conquer your local market.”

Last month, 404 Media reported (in a paywalled article) on a CMG “pitch deck” further promoting the technology and claiming major partnerships with Facebook, Google, and other major firms to deploy it. The unconvincing responses from those major firms range from outright denial to promised “investigations.”

If that technology really is just now rolling out for advertisers, my only question is why it took so long.

We know, courtesy of exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden, that the US government  possesses those kinds of capabilities — the NSA calls it “Google for Voice” — and has been using them on us for decades. Once the “private sector” knows a thing CAN be done, it figures out how to do that thing in profitable ways.

Here’s the part where most writers start bemoaning our loss of privacy and suggesting ways to get it back.

OK, fine … I bemoan our loss of privacy. Happy?

As for getting it back, nothing short of full global reversion to a pre-computer level of technology would suffice.

Am I happy that Bing knows I’m very interested in motorcycles at the moment and keeps showing me ads and stories about them?

Yes, kind of. It’s a little creepy, but also very useful.

Am I concerned that this level of data-gathering will produce terrible outcomes?

Absolutely.

Am I willing to cancel my Internet service, throw away my smart phone and Echo Dot, wear “facial recognition defeat” clothing everywhere I go, etc. just to keep Google from knowing I’m house-hunting?

Nope.

For better or worse, privacy is dead.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“In Florida,” former and possibly future US president Donald Trump writes on Truth Social, “like so many other States that have already given their approval, personal amounts of marijuana will be legalized for adults with Amendment 3. Whether people like it or not, this will happen through the approval of the Voters, so it should be done correctly.”

I signed a petition to put Amendment 3 on the ballot — in fact, I’ve been signing similar petitions on the subject for years — and intend to vote for it in November. I expect it to pass. I hope it passes.  I’m thankful to Trump for kinda sorta endorsing it.  But that kinda sorta endorsement really highlights two aspects of the issue for me.

The first aspect is Trump’s call for it to be done “correctly,” by which he means “prohibit the use of it in public spaces, so we do not smell marijuana everywhere we go.”

I suppose it’s possible that there’s something special about Palm Beach. I’ve never been there. I live near Gainesville, Florida, and when in town I already smell marijuana everywhere I go.

I’ve also sampled the scents of Tallahassee, Jacksonville, St. Augustine, Orlando, Tampa, and numerous smaller Florida urbs. In Florida, if you exit your personal vehicle in any area boasting a population density greater than Greenland’s, you’re likely to smell cannabis.

Which leads me to the second interesting aspect of Amendment 3:

It’s nice, but not really necessary. Floridians who want to use weed already use weed. They use weed in private. They use weed in public. They’ll continue to do so. They don’t need your approval or your permission.

Would it be NICE to just have the stuff fully legal, at least to the extent that those who use it don’t find themselves at (minimal, but real) risk of arrest for personal possession? Yes, it would.

Would the failure of Amendment 3 reduce marijuana use in Florida? No, it wouldn’t.

This shouldn’t surprise you. Marijuana is informally referred to as “weed” for a reason: It grows pretty much everywhere in the wild. It isn’t difficult to grow at home, either. Human beings have used it and valued it both medically and recreationally for as long human beings have existed.

State and federal governments have spent more than a century trying to eliminate Americans’ use of cannabis. More — lots more — Americans use it now than before the war on weed began. They’ll continue to do so. Period.

Whether you use the stuff or not, legalizing it makes your life better in many ways — for example, you don’t have to pay for as many cops or as many prison cells.

Don’t like the smell? Too bad. Get used to it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

According to an Agence France-Presse “fact check,” social media posts slamming Kamala Harris’s plan to tax “unrealized” capital gains are “mostly false” — not because they lie about the fundamental premise, but because the new tax would only hit “households with a net worth of at least $100 million, or an estimated 0.01 percent of taxpayers.”

The problems with Harris’s idea are multiple and fundamental, but let’s look at the “slippery slope” problem first.

In 1913, Congress passed the first modern federal income tax. It ranged from a whopping 1% on incomes exceeding $3,000  (about $95,000 per year in 2024 dollars), to as much as 7% on incomes of more than $500,000 (about $15 million today).

Nothing to worry about here, see? The upper middle class takes a tiny hit, the truly wealthy just a little more, no biggie!

Within decades, the income floors had fallen to capture most Americans, the rates had multiplied several times, and regular Americans started seeing taxes deducted directly from their weekly paychecks instead of just settling up with Uncle Sam once a year.

Today, you pay a minimum  of 10% — more than half again the rate once reserved for the “ultra-wealthy” —  and as much as 37%, tax on every dollar you earn beyond the $14,600 ($500 in 1913 dollars)  “standard deduction.”

Given that history, is it plausible to expect a tax on “unrealized capital gains” to forever exclude the prospective sale price of your home, the value of stock shares in your 401k, etc.?

No, it’s not plausible.

Nor is it rational to assume that because the prospective price of that home or the value of those stocks is higher today than when first purchased, it will remain so.

The only way to find out what something is really worth is to sell it — to “realize” the gain or loss. Prices change all the time. Once “blue chip” companies fall into bankruptcy. Once high-priced neighborhoods go out of fashion or fall into general disrepair.

People MAKE money in the stock and real estate markets, but they also LOSE money in those markets. Will they get tax refunds on the “unrealized” gains that they never “realize?” If so, when? And how expensive and intrusive will the bureaucracy required to sort all that out become?

The whole idea is, well, weird —  stupid and evil in pretty much every respect.

But no more stupid or evil than taxation as such.

Taxation is a continuing and coercive demand that you pay for “services” you may neither need or want, and may even actually oppose the existence of. It’s getting continuously mugged, from sales tax on the first package of gum you buy with your childhood allowance, to income and other taxes, right up until the day you die (and possibly beyond).

Unfortunately, the muggers also owe interest on the money they’ve borrowed, offering your future earnings as collateral. They’re getting desperate for cash, and your “unrealized capital gains” are the latest set of couch cushions they propose to hunt for change in.

It won’t “work,” but you’ll end up feeling the pain anyway.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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