Here’s what is still accurate from the May 5 article: Meta pulls information like a black hole pulls in light.
The settings I suggested in May to manage or disconnect future activity are gone like a browser tab you forgot to bookmark. Meta has updated its policy.
Now Meta offers one setting: “Activity from other businesses” and they will use it to personalize your feed and AI responses. Of course, they promise no new data is being collected. They’ll just use what they already have.
Here’s what you can do, if you want:
🔒 Open your Facebook account (be sure you're logged in) and click on your photo in the upper right-hand corner. (I'm using a browser window. You may have to adjust if you're trying this in the phone app.)
🔒 Choose Settings & Privacy from the dropdown menu. Then Settings.
🔒 Go to Accounts Center.
🔒 Select Your Information and Permissions > Activity from other businesses. (Note: The previous "Your Activity Off Meta Technologies" option is being phased out.)
🔒 Here you can review and clear previous activity if desired, and toggle Activity from other businesses off to limit future use of this data for ads, your Feed, and AI responses.
Because Meta is still rolling out this new policy, you may not see the new settings yet. US customers should all be updated by July.
Business can still report your online web visits to Meta. This setting just tells Meta not to act on the information and, of course, Meta won’t because it values our privacy. Indeed. Our shopping information is very valuable to Meta.
As a friend said recently, “This is the price of free.”
We’d traveled an hour and a half for a tasty lunch with our cousin. Going straight home was not an option.
My sister and I had made this trip, and you’re probably thinking we folded in some shopping afterward.
Not exactly.
“Could we go to this estate sale?” she asked, pointing to a tiny map on her phone.
It was only thirty minutes away. Not on our way home, but, hey, the sun was shining and we’d just finished this great meal and conversation with our cousin. Why not?
That question gets me into trouble a lot.
But away we went.
“What are you looking for?”
“An anvil.”
I never expected rare pottery or collector figurines. But an anvil?
As we drove (I put her behind the wheel of my car), I wondered what an anvil would do to the trunk. Would it punch through the floor of the trunk and bounce behind us on the highway like an escaped rabbit?
“Can we even lift an anvil?” I asked.
Minor details. She shrugged. “Somebody will help us.”
The anvil had sold a half hour before we got there. She was sad. I was suddenly grateful for the extended conversation about future travel plans with our cousin.
So my sister went on the hunt for other treasures. She’s an artist. She sees things differently.
And we stumbled onto a room, books cascading from wall to wall. All free.
I didn’t need to go further. I started plucking books and stacking them. I am a writer and a reader. This was close to a perfect afternoon.
My sister started searching through the piles of books, too. She’s an artist who doesn’t do much pleasure reading, so I guessed she must have taken up a new hobby.
We left with as many books as we could pile from fingertips to bottom of chin.
“Wow, you must have found some interesting books,” I said.
“Yep,” she said. “I need some nice-looking books for the decor in my Airbnb.”
If I ever start a story with the line “My sister and I…”, buckle up. We have some strange adventures. For example, last weekend my sister and I went shopping for an anvil and came home with two armloads of old books. That story is coming in a future newsletter.
But let’s jump into this story.
My sister and I were on a road trip, driving close to the edge of the Earth. We hadn’t seen a house for 5 miles. We hadn’t even seen a cow for 5 miles. The only living things in sight were two antelopes racing across a far hill.
Not to worry. We weren’t bored; we were talking. Then I looked down at the speedometer. I was driving 80 mph.
“Oh, man,” I said and immediately lifted. Lifted is a racing term I learned from my husband. I don’t race. Except maybe when driving at the edge of the Earth.
As I lifted, we flew past a crossroad with a state patrolman sitting at the stop sign.
He pulled me over. He walked up to my window. “Do you know why I stopped you?”
“I was going too fast,” I said, and he nodded. “How fast did you catch me at?” I wondered if I had managed to slow down at all before he clocked me.
“Eighty.”
“Yeah,” I said.
He took the usual stack of paperwork back to his car. When he handed it back to me, he leaned down and looked into the car. I don’t think my sister waved at him, but, knowing her, she might have. Then he said, “Use your cruise control after this.”
He walked back to his car and pulled away. No ticket. No warning ticket.
My sister and I both took a deep breath as he drove over the next hill.
I owe that nameless patrolman big time.
And that’s why I have given my sister permission to nag me about the cruise control.
Meet Ryven Ashcroft who fixes gas masks in a world where the air can kill you. Today, he gets a break. His biggest problem is a chess-playing drone.
*****
The chess set looked like it had escaped the teeth of a wood chipper. Barely.
Outside, the toxic Murk swirled yellow against the windows.
Ryven sat beside a small table and scratched his head. “Which bottle cap is my queen?” If he was going to play, he planned to win.
“The green one,” Edl said, not looking up from his remote.
“There are three green ones.”
Edl had to look. “Gyro oil. Hang on. Jinks isn’t ready.” A small drone that resembled a spider hovered over the chess pieces.
Jinks has opinions about chess. Not all of them are legal.
Ryven ignored him and slid the oil cap to a cracked square in the center of the board. Had he just moved a knight? Or a pawn? “Your turn.”
“Jinks’ turn, you mean.” Edl slid his thumb over the remote and then squeezed his eyes to focus on the chess board.
“Well, make your move,” Ryven said.
“He’s thinking.”
They both watched Jinks dip down and knock over a skinny can of seal compound. The can clattered onto the floor and rolled under a chair.
“What kind of play was that?”
“E7,” Edl said.
“In whose world?” Ryven grabbed a coolant lid and set it on a square. “That is E7.”
“Vintage rules. Jinks uses modern rules.” Edl slid his thumb on the remote again. Jinks beeped and then hovered again. It darted to the board and grabbed a fork.
“Is that your rook?” Ryven said. “What mastermind takes his own piece?” Switching from vintage rules to modern ones took some concentration that he didn’t intend to give.
Edl leaned close to Jinks. “Drop it.” The fork clattered onto the board, scattering pieces like a mini explosion.
They both stared at the cleared board.
Then Edl raised his free hand in the air. “Good job, Jinks! Check mate!”
******
Jinks is just getting warmed up. So is Ryven. Sign up here.
The last time I counted, I got 46,812 newsletters in my inbox in a month. You think I’m exaggerating, huh?
You’re right, of course. It’s 36,812 newsletters.
A new one flew into my inbox last week and the writer of this one was too fast with the SEND button. Because the last section looked like this:
You know about lorem ipsum, I’m sure.
The placeholder for future text.
Website and publication designers love it. So do newsletter editors.
I always assumed that it was Latin for “put your text right here when you get a chance.”
Either that, or someone tossed a Latin dictionary into a food processor.
I’d guess the author of the newsletter in question didn’t read my assumed Latin prompt (“Put your text right here…”) because they hadn’t pasted in their own text. Or maybe they pasted in Latin because their people did read Latin?
Except me.
First, I laughed at the newsletter’s scrambled Latin. Then I got curious. (This is one of my fatal flaws.)
What if I offered this lorem ipsum text to Google Translate?
I pasted in the Latin text and Google spit out….the same Latin text.
Google can’t read Latin either?
But as I scrolled through Google’s non-translation, I found that Google had made a last-gasp effort to interpret the final bit.
Here’s what Google Translate came up with:
I now have another reason to read all the way to the end of all newsletters: you never know what disease basketball is about experience.
And I have compassion for the little Google bot who might have been expressing the agony of being forced to translate Latin gibberish. It really might be in a lot of pain.
(Yes, I know lorem ipsum is one of Cicero’s works tossed in a food processor and then spit out as nonsensical dummy text. Just work with me here. Facts do not hold my imagination back.)
Orville came to town when I was a first grader, which was where the whole Colorado mystery thing started for me.
Orville was a UFO that appeared most every night for a month or so. Or maybe it was a bright light that would crown a hill when someone was driving home at night. Or maybe it was a story the high school boys made up. I heard fresh stories every morning at school, and I hung on every description. My imagination was on fire.
Nobody seemed to know, and I sure didn’t, the truth about Orville. I was only six, and I opted for a UFO. That was much more exciting. Who chooses reasonable when you’re six?
Not The Data
Advance to my ninth-grade year, when I had to do a science project. With that beloved Orville story embossed in my brain, I opted for a UFO-focused display. It was all about the story for me. Definitely not the data.
I hauled my younger brother out to a nearby field where he flung garbage cans and old footballs in the air while I took photos with a shaky hand. Sure enough, those photos resembled UFOs. I even made a cardboard saucer spray painted silver with Christmas lights flashing inside. To impress the judges.
Don’t ask what my hypothesis was, except maybe to see if UFO photos could be duplicated. We had fun throwing things in the air, though.
None of this dazzled the judges. I was thinking blue ribbon. Champion. That sort of thing. I think the judges were looking for data and premise. Science stuff. So no blue ribbon for me.
The Next Puzzle
Fast forward. Now I’m out of college and curious about a new Colorado mystery. A whole spate of cattle mutilations were reported across the state. Once again, the puzzle deepened. Aliens stealing cow parts? Cults staging rituals? The FBI investigated – and blamed the deaths on common predators. Colorado ranchers differed.
You might think of Colorado as a state of rugged ski slopes or mountains thick with evergreen trees and elk. But I think it’s also known as an enigma. I say this as a Colorado native.
The oddities just keep coming.
A New Question Mark
A mysterious monolith popped up like a mushroom in northern Colorado last summer. A tall, rectangular, metal mushroom. I know mushrooms aren’t exactly metallic, but don’t get all analytical on me now. Remember, I’m the storyteller.
The landowner, who also owns the Howling Cow Cafe near the monument, doesn’t know who or what is behind this appearance.
She didn’t even to ask people about it. Just let the mystery continue. How she did that is another riddle to me. My questions would have been springing like popcorn.
Apparently, a similar monolith showed up near Las Vegas earlier this summer. Imagine finding a connection between Las Vegas and northern Colorado. Vegas, where high rollers match wits with glittering casinos. Northern Colorado, where cows and deer roam the grassland. The differences are minuscule.
Some of the Colorado locals say the metal mushroom reminds them of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which spawns more ideas for me. Is this thing the alien? Or is it the space ship that delivered out aliens the size of ants or grasshoppers?
We did have an abundance of grasshoppers in northern Colorado this summer … But I digress.
An Unsolved Mystery
The Howling Cow Cafe first scored on sales of drinks like Beam Me Up, Crop Circle, and Radio Waves. Their monthly ice cream flavor was named Cow Abductions.
But after an onslaught of lookie-loos, the landowner sent out a forklift team to haul off the monolith. It’s now said to be in safe storage until the creator claims it.
Maybe I need to write something more. I mean, between Orville, flying garbage cans, dead cattle, and monoliths, I’m ideally equipped.
So, what’s your theory? Your ideas will absolutely, totally, never-ever show up in any story I write. Unless I change my mind.
Download Escape, a YA dystopian story from the setting of Beyond the Last Breath. Check out other free resources here. You'll also join my group of newsletter friends to receive the latest news, updates, and resources. You can unsubscribe at any time.
