Hi, I'm Troy McClure, you might remember me from such international best sellers as The Rogue Scholar. Nah. I'm bullshitting you guys. On both points.

I did want to drop in and give you guys some feedback on the publishing landscape. Lately, I got a new phone number and so I needed to change it on Amazon. Amazon, for "my protection," uses something I am going to call "dementia 3A" to verify an account. First, you have to get a code to your email. Fine. THEN, you have to have the three digit code from an expired credit card you had like ten years ago. What? You don't have that? Well, you will need to contact support, and support will "Deny your existence/or that you have an account". The solution for that is to call support again, and hope you can argue for your existence against India tech support "You don't exist" author atheists. You can read a little footnote about that on my site if you are masochistic. My solution was to submit a request to the BBB to maybe perhaps have Amazon use any other card with the three digit number from the last say, four years--or just ask which one on file I have the digits for. No can do, so far. I did get a helpful email unofficially suggesting that I ought to contact support, though. Not thinking I'm gonna do that.

My site, you will probably notice, now comes to you via Rpub. This is because Gitlab, for whatever reason, musta really needed the space/money from my one page html file that lists places you can support me or read the book for free. "Why don't you use Netlify?" I hear you ask. Because it uses Gitlab to verify the account. Funny thing, you can't do that when Gitlab axes your account. Probably, Gitlab has some new terms of service that says "We at CERN have research grants that cannot allow any content for anyone else seeking something like a grant that we don't like. Therefore, while we open a portal to hell for free on the University dime, we have been forced to delete your Gitlab repo since it is a moral outrage/doesn't summon the antichirst/is against our terms of service."

This all puts me in mind of what the Bible terms the "Powers of the air". Either of the above two things could be a tech stack not working all that well, or cutbacks. However, since there is literally no one to hold accountable, then there is no one to blame. Result? You have to figure it out, or else your work is censored or in the case of Amazon sold, but you cannot realize any fruits from the sale because your credit card from ten years ago is "cutting edge security". It's a subtle "industrial complex" that just happens to be running like a toddler with too much sugar with reasoning skills that are worse. It again forcefully argues for a decentralized internet.

On that point, I tried to link my website to an IPFS version, but the domain refused to redirect on each count, and I got some warning about how the gateway has been reported for "fishing". This is a new development to me, but I haven't used IPFS in a few years in any serious way. (This was due to having an internet service provider with usage caps in part). In short, the domain name system of the regular internet and the decentralized internet are still not working well together after 4-6 years of Web 3. Stacker news does a good job of trying to combine these technologies, but it is still using a domain name or an onion address. I'm not convinced these are the best ways to circumvent the problems that show up here. Indeed, if one is dealing with some "Luciferic power of the air", the tech stack is prone to being heavily influenced by that. (I'm looking at you, Silicon Valley/Burning Man Freaks). The solution to that will only be decentralization, and weirdly and contradictory-ly getting away from things like security certs that come from a given authority. (How do you know that authority isn't part of the system, man?)

Anyway, I thought this community would be especially interested in these experiences. If not, vote with the absence of sats! You might find yourself, however, suddenly interested in these kinds of problems some day.