Blogging Changes: This notice started popping up when I've opened my blog posting page. For those of you with an email subscription - blogger says there are 1,342 FeedBurner subscribers - after July 2021 you won't get your emails of new posts. Here's the notice:
FollowByEmail widget (Feedburner) is going away
You are receiving this information because your blog uses the FollowByEmail widget (Feedburner).Recently, the Feedburner team released a system update announcement , that the email subscription service will be discontinued in July 2021.
After July 2021, your feed will still continue to work, but the automated emails to your subscribers will no longer be supported. If you’d like to continue sending emails, you can download your subscriber contacts. Learn how
I'm still trying to figure out how to move the email subscribers to a different automated email system. Although it sounds like they are being helpful - "Learn how" for example - the links aren't really very intuitive.
So, this is an alert. I'm not concerned yet. I have a couple of months to figure it out. I'll let you know more later.
Should We Get Out Of Afghanistan? This is not something I've delved into deeply. They're my thoughts based on generally following the news plus reading more deeply on various other world events, including the Vietnam war. Below are links to what others are arguing. I didn't read those until after I wrote my own thoughts out.
Arguments for getting out:
1. We've been there 20 years and it's our longest war so far and staying longer doesn't promise conditions will improve
2. First the British, then the Russians got bogged down in Afghanistan. Both, particularly Russia, are geographically much closer but eventually saw their wars in Afghanistan as unwindable. We should recognize that there are some things we simply can't do.
3. Like Vietnam, we are supporting a corrupt government against a dedicated local army. Much of the corruption is created by the billions of dollars in aid and equipment the US sends to Afghanistan.
4. Voice of America reports some 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghan war. (I'm assuming the site is actually Voice of America, but I'm not sure.) So our presence hasn't been terrific for the Afghan people anyway.
4. There are humanitarian horror zones in a number of countries around the world - Burma, Yemen, for example - but we aren't arguing to intervene there.
5. There are other security issues that will be compromised because of our military commitment in Afghanistan.
Arguments for staying:
1. Terrible things are likely to happen when we leave.
2. The status of women in Afghanistan will be worsened by our departure.
Sunk costs refer to the money (or other resources) one has already spent on a particularly project. Psychologically, once we started something, we want to finish it, to regain those loses. It's a bad reason to stay. Yes, terrible things are likely to happen when we leave, but terrible things have happened regularly to the Afghan people throughout the time we've been there. And the costs to the US in dollars and in the mental and physical health of the soldiers who have been there is staggering.
Sometimes you have to take the least bad option. For the US, that seems to be leaving Afghanistan. For the women of Afghanistan, it's not looking rosy.
On Kim Jung Il's Threat In Response to Biden
There was a short news blurb in the Anchorage Daily News today:
"North Korea on Sunday warned that the United States will face 'a very grave situation' and alleged that President Joe Biden 'made a big blunder' in his recent speech by calling the North a security threat."
Actually, it seems like North Korea confirmed Biden's assessment of the threat.
One alternative to Feedburner is called follow.it, details at follow.it. I have no connection and have not used it. After reading your post, I just wondered about alternatives to feedburner. follow.it turned up in the search. There is a free version for websites offering notifications and rss, also two tiers of paid versions. Services for readers also, who want to track sites not offering notifications or rss. I appreciate notifications via email or rss and want to continue following whatdoino.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Steve. I've just checked Follow.it and will look more into it. I also found that MailChimp offers this service too. Follow It seems to have the advantage that readers can use it to set up their own notifications independent of the blogger.
ReplyDeleteI was trying to figure out which of the two Steve Johnsons I know had written this comment. Turns out neither of them, but your profile suggests I should get to know #3. Maybe we can connect sometime this summer.