Hey Google: Quit stalking me

Google is stalking me. It’s pissing me off.

Of course I’ve only got myself to blame. Sick of Firefox crashing and for some reason unable to download a post-WWII version of Explorer, I’m now using Google Chrome both at home and at work. The world’s premier search engine is not only privy to my every search (it always ways), it can now serve me ads based on information collated from every click in my browser, my Gmail account and my Blogger account that hosts this blog.

As a result, I click through the Venezuelan newspapers online and I’m assaulted by ads for products that, for example, I recently looked at on Amazon. This strikes me as an odd way to seduce a person’s consumer loyalty, more akin to creepy stalking than the casual flirtation that might lead me toward new consumer habits.

Tomás Argüelles, a Dad for all time

“Papá Tomás is not my Dad,” Isa told me a few months after we started dating. Despite the obvious potential for confusion created by that moniker, Tomás, she explained, was in fact her uncle. It turned out he wasn’t really her uncle either, he was one of the many relatives that had over the years been brought into the fold of her family in a uniquely charming Venezuelan fashion.