…same as the old phone. When I woke up a week ago Friday, my phone didn’t. I believed that it had been well charged when we (my phone and I) had gone to sleep but I plugged it in just in case. A few hours on the charger failed to restore any signs of life, and it was now time to go pick up my groceries.

Shortly after the Coronavirus pandemic hit, Kroger started waiving the five dollars they had been charging for their “Click List” service and I, who had sworn I would never buy groceries online, started to use it. An order I had placed a couple of days before was scheduled for pickup that morning. The normal drill is to pull into a numbered spot and share that information either by calling a posted number or using the Kroger phone app. I could do neither. I felt like one of King Arthur’s knights in a modern Connecticut. I walked up to the fellow loading groceries into the car in the neighboring slot and asked if he would let the appropriate people know I was there. He did and it worked out just fine.

After dropping the groceries at home, I headed to my go-to electronics repair spot, UbreakIfix. They checked what they could without disassembly but found no specific problem. A more complete diagnostic, which would require opening the phone, could be completed by the next day and would be free but wasn’t likely to turn up a cost-effective fix. The phone was about 4 1/2 years old and the battery had been replaced once. The screen was showing some pretty serious burn-in from too much solitaire and Sudoku. A new battery, which was the least expensive but also the least likely issue, would be about a hundred bucks. I had spent some of the morning looking over available replacements with my laptop and opted to forego further testing and move on to a new phone.

The dead phone was a first-generation Google Pixel which I was quite happy with. Its sudden demise aside, it had given me few problems, and its capabilities seemed to meet or exceed my needs. I concentrated on Pixel but did look at a few other brands. iPhone was not among them even though I frequently hear the products praised. I believe that this particular old dog is capable of learning new tricks but there are some tricks I’m just not interested in learning. Integration with other products I use was also a major consideration. I did consider some Samsung and LG models because Samsung seems to get a lot of attention and because I once had an LG phone I was happy with, but nothing about them enticed me to leave my Google Pixel comfort zone. I did not consider changing carriers. I moved to Verizon about six years ago when Cincinnati Bell exited the mobile phone business, and have generally been satisfied.

There are really just three Pixels currently being offered by Verizon. The Pixel 4 is technically still available but it is fading fast. My legitimate choices, in order of price, were the 4a, the 4a 5G UW, and the 5. The Pixel 4a 5G UW adds, as some may have figured out, 5G communication and an ultra-wide camera to the 4a. It also adds about an ounce of weight and nearly a half-inch of height. I believe the UW model is a Verizon exclusive. The Pixel 5 fits in between the two 4as in size and weight. It includes 5G and the ultra-wide camera as well as wireless charging, a bigger battery, and an aluminum water-resistant body. Of all the features just named, only wireless charging and water resistance seemed even slightly desirable and none seemed worth paying for. I opted for the Pixel 4a at about half the price of the 5 and about two-thirds the price of the 4a 5G UW.

The ease of the switch, once the purchase was completed, was amazingly easy. With the old phone completely dead, I anticipated hours or days reinstalling apps. Instead, the phone asked if I wanted to use the day-old backup, and a yes answer resulted in every app and most configurations that existed on the old phone being installed on the new one. User IDs and passwords excepted. This was, I believe, a function of my Google account and may have benefited significantly by going from and to a Google phone.

Another very much appreciated surprise was the degree to which the operation of the new matched the operation of the old. I was initially perplexed by the absence of the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, and thought I was going to be stuck with fumbling my way around with unfamiliar “swipes”. It turns out that’s what happens when navigation by “gestures” is enabled and setting that off (which was apparently set on from the factory) put me back in familiar territory.

I encountered the only thing I might call a real problem when I tried sending the first text message. Rather than sending the text, the phone displayed a “Waiting for connection” message. I thrashed a bit then took a look at some troubleshooting advice. It began with a very logical suggestion to always first check for updates. I did and found that, while the 4a ships with Android 10, a free update to Android 11 is available. Following installation of the update, the pending text message was successfully sent. I don’t believe that text messages were really broken in Android 10 so the update may or may not be what “fixed” the message problem but it was fixed nonetheless. And everything else seems to be working, too. Waking up with a dead phone was certainly not a happy moment but barely a day later I had a phone that looked and operated just like the old one except that it had more memory, a faster processor, a higher resolution camera, an unblemished screen, and probably some goodness I don’t even know about.

Plus there was one more surprise. The physical similarity of the Pixel 4a to my Pixel 1 was even greater than I first thought. Their dimensions matched exactly so that the protective case I had on the older phone fit the new phone perfectly and the cutouts even matched with the single exception of the camera. I had already ordered a real 4a case before I discovered this or I probably would have done a little snipping and saved myself a few bucks. 

I confess to seriously considering making major changes to this article this year. The easily guessable reason is that, while I still care less about how than if, I care a whole lot about how. However, I published the first version of this article because of the abysmally low rate of election participation in the United States, and I still see that as a central issue. The article mentions several major step inputs to potential voter numbers including the largest of them all when non-males were permitted to vote exactly 100 years ago.

So I’ve made no changes in what this post says, but I have changed when it says it. This post normally appears on the Sunday immediately preceding election day. Early voting, both by mail and in person, was already on the rise but the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a dramatic jump to be predicted this year. In many states, including Ohio, voting has already begun and the observed numbers reinforce that prediction greatly. An increase in the rate of participation is also predicted, with some saying that the percentage of eligible voters casting ballots this year could be the highest since 1908. I doubt my little post has anything to do with that, but, just in case, I’m doing my nudging a little earlier this year.

We fought a war to get this country going then gave every land-owning white male above the age of twenty-one the right to vote. A little more than fourscore years later, we fought a war with ourselves that cleared the way for non-whites to vote. Several decades of loud, disruptive, and sometimes dangerous behavior brought the granting of that same right to non-males a half-century later, and another half-century saw the voting age lowered to eighteen after a decade or so of protests and demonstrations.

Of course, putting something in a constitution does not automatically make it a practice throughout the land and I am painfully aware that resistance followed each of those changes and that efforts to make voting extremely difficult for “the other side” are ongoing today. I don’t want to ignore partisan obstructions and system flaws but neither do I want to get hung up on them. I meant my first paragraph to be a reminder that a hell of a lot of effort, property, and lives have gone into providing an opportunity to vote to a hell of a lot of people. Far too many of those opportunities go unused.

A Wikipedia article I have referenced in years past has been updated and a table showing voter turnout in a number of countries for the period 1960-1995 has been removed. Sadly, the point being made by the inclusion of that table, that the United States trails most of the world’s democracies in voter turnout, continues to be supported by more recent statistics such as those cited in a Pew Research article. We may be getting slightly better, however. 2018 turnout set a record for midterm elections as reported in this Vox article. Let us hope that continues. I noticed something in the Pew Research article that I simply hadn’t realized previously. The United States has the greatest difference between the percentage of voting-age population (VAP) actually voting and registered voters actually voting. In many countries, there is no difference at all since to be a citizen is to be allowed to vote. In other countries, the difference is trivial. In the U.S. presidential election of 2016, it was a whopping 31.1% (86.8-55.7). I found that startling. I think that means only 64.1% of the VAP is registered which rather clearly shows the importance of voter registration efforts.

I first posted the core of this article in 2014. In the original title, I claimed to not care how anyone votes. That was never entirely true, of course. I have my favorite candidates and issues. I’ll be disappointed in anyone who votes differently than I do but not nearly as disappointed as I’ll be in anyone who doesn’t vote at all. I’m reminded of parents working on getting their kids to clean their plates with lines like, “There are hungry children in China who would love to have your green beans.” I’m not sure what the demand for leftover beans is in Beijing these days but I’m pretty sure some folks there would like to have our access to ballots and voting booths.

Back in December, I was unfriended on Facebook for what I believe to be the first time. I can now add being blocked to my list of Facebook experiences. On the occasion of the unfriending, I noted it in a Facebook post, and my first thought was to do the same for the blocking, but I decided to do a blog post instead. For one thing, I did not have a post planned for this week, and for another, I thought something longer than what comfortably fits in a Facebook post was appropriate. It also lets me include a few more details about both the December unfriending that surprised me and the recent blocking that didn’t.

As I said in that December post, I am conflict-averse. I don’t go out of my way to stir up trouble or to seek it out. Very few (possibly none) of my own posts are overtly political and I don’t even respond to all that many which are. I do occasionally hit the “Like” button on posts I agree with and find especially clever or insightful. I think I may have tapped “Angry” on a post or two I didn’t agree with, and I know I’ve punched in “Haha” on some posts linked to satire that I’m pretty sure the poster did not recognize as such. Those are enough, I would guess, that, even though I haven’t shouted out my political position, anyone who cared and was paying attention could make a tolerably good guess.

I almost never get any more aggressive than providing links to items debunking claims I know to be false. This is what got me unfriended and blocked. The fellow who unfriended me is someone I’ve met in real life and with whom I share some interests. Our politics probably don’t align perfectly, but they lean in the same direction. The end of our cyber-friendship began when he posted a meme comprised of a picture of Donald Trump with a quote that started with, “If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country.” It was something I’d seen before and which I knew was a fabrication. I commented with a link (possibly this one) providing some evidence of that. In very short order, the comment was deleted, and I was unfriended within the next few hours.

I was very surprised and thrashed around for a while looking for other explanations but eventually decided that I had actually been cut loose because of that comment. Part of my surprise was due to the meme being one I’d probably welcome if it were true. But misinformation doesn’t become truth by being palatable.

This was hardly the only time I’ve posted corrections to items I might have wished were true, though I’ll admit to there being even more times I’ve offered corrections to posts I was very happy weren’t true. A common response is simply silence, but reactions range from thanking me and deleting the post to disparaging my sources and attempting to justify the post. If I respond at all to people denigrating fact-checking sites such as Snopes or Politifact, it is to encourage them to be as selective in the sources they do believe as in the sources they won’t believe. I accept that some fact-checking sites can be perceived as having a bias, but it makes no sense to me to automatically dismiss a statement that offers some supporting evidence in favor of a meme that offers none. At the extreme, and I’ve only seen this a couple of times, people have claimed that something must be true purely because a disliked fact-checking site says it is false.

Rarely does the defense of a post I’ve responded to involve evidence. It’s almost always along the lines of “Well, it could be true.” or “But, that’s what they want to do.” I really find that disheartening as it’s saying that it doesn’t matter if something is true or not, as long as it’s for “my side”. In my mind, defending your position with falsehoods does more harm than good. Those attempted defenses aren’t quite as disheartening as being unfriended or blocked, though. Taking those steps seems to be saying that, not only don’t I care about this particular bit of truth but I don’t want to hear about any others, either.

This week’s blocking wasn’t much of a surprise at all. The blocker regularly posts multiple pro-Trump memes and comments, brimming with misspellings, and errors in grammar and punctuation, every day. The majority are simply rah rah opinions, but once in a great while, he posts something that makes a claim of fact. Once in a greater while, I’ll offer a correction.

Once was in May of last year when he posted a somewhat popular meme about the repeal of a 1952 law that prevented Muslims from holding political office. It is debunked here, which I linked to in a comment. At that time, I didn’t even know that anyone other than the originator and Mark Z could delete a comment so, when it disappeared, I assumed I hadn’t posted it properly and tried again. It disappeared again. That day I learned that the owner of a post can delete comments, then grinned, and moved on.

On Tuesday, I happened to catch a post of his with a quite old meme claiming that ABC had banned the wearing of US flag pins. I recognized it instantly and spent a few seconds to pass along this link that debunks it. It wasn’t long until both my comment and the post disappeared, and I eventually figured out I’d been blocked. On Wednesday I learned that blocking is kind of like unfriending-plus, then grinned and moved on.

I’ll admit that the guy was kind of fun to watch and in some odd way, I might even miss his strings of commas and other “creative” bits of punctuation now and then. But in my heart, I know this breakup was for the best. I’ve never unfriended or blocked anyone, but during the leadup to the 2016 election, I did temporarily stop following some people. I suspect I’ll have to do that again in the next few months. Unless, of course, some more trash takes itself out.