The Disentanglement Podcast

In which we discuss two new additions to our digital device collection that we think actually help in the disentanglement process.

In which we discuss the state, not of not being addicted to something you consume that compromises your resilience in the world, but the state of failing to consume something you need that to be resilient. Trust us, it makes more sense when you hear us talk about it.

In which we explore the common use of "addiction" to describe damaging entanglements with digital media and devices, in conversation with these books: Haidt, The Anxious Generation Alter, Irresistible Lembke, Dopamine Nation Courtwright, The Age of Addiction

In which we detail our efforts to extract ourselves from certain Google systems, chiefly free email, calendar, drive, and the Chrome browser, replacing them with a Protonmail family account and the Brave browser.

In which Mister André explains how he bought a Google Pixel for the precise purpose of deGoogling it, and what he has learned about smartphone use generally from the annoyances of going outside the privacy-sucking mainstream.

In which we discuss one of our favorite recent reads, The Revenge of Analog by David Sax, as depicting a positive alternative to many of the toxic digital entanglements of our time.

In which André and Sara, still pretending to be their very-bad-spy-alter-egos, tell you why you haven't heard from them in about 10 months, what they've been up to, and what to look forward to on Season 2 of the Disentanglement Podcast.

In which Ms. Sara tells you why she and Mr. André are taking a temporary hiatus from the podcast but will be back in the fall of 2023, and how to occupy yourselves in the meanwhile!

In which we review our backups for digital data, which are more and less subject to privacy violation, and the difference between storage, backup, and archives. Actually, this is way more interesting and useful than that description makes it sound. Ad copy is not our forte.

In which we discuss our overabundance of credit cards, what we did about it, and how to extract actual monetary value from their extraction of your data.

In which we realize with horror that for all our efforts to cover our privacy tracks, using free budgeting/accounting software essentially makes us an open book to surveillance capitalists looking to extract metadata, and we chart some ways to disentangle ourselves from all that.

In which we veer from tech and social criticism to the philosophical question of whether the internet will be its own undoing, and whether costlessness is so much in violation of the very structure of the universe that it must by definition fail.

In which we discuss three baby steps we've taken recently to disentangle ourselves: deleting Amazon wish lists and buying elsewhere, deleting old social media posts and letting the accounts sit dormant, and creating a separate email account and identity for e-newsletters.

In which we discuss why you might want to chop down the monster of online sales and then some practical ways of going about doing it.

In which we discuss how the rapacious depradations of Big Tech (among other things) causes Westerners to diss capitalism morally, the various meanings of the word, why communism should not be considered the logical alternative to the worst of Big Tech capitalism, and some more fruitful ways of thinking about a free market and a free government in the cyber era.

In which one of us talks through his first efforts to disentangle himself from various Google systems and it wasn't really as hard as he expected. The other of us is cheered and encouraged by this, and you should be, too.

In which one of us goes off on the economic and human costs of sucking up to AI like it is better than it is, which requires making humans look worse than they are, and the other responds somewhat more reasonably but basically agrees. Also, we tell you that you are marvelous.

In which we encourage... no, exhort... no, beg you to use a password manager to generate unique and hard-to-crack passwords, but also where you can store email aliases and fake answers to security questions, since all that stuff is probably on the public record by now anyway.

In which we sketch out our path from lots of email addresses/accounts to just one and back again, and why it might help to have multiple email identities for privacy and security reasons.

In which we discuss the visit one of us took to Sweden, an aspiring cashless society, and what the implications might be for privacy and security. Not to mention a functional economy.