I started this blog in 1996. Long before the term "blog" or "blogging" or "web log" had even been coined. I threw it away several times, and started over, most of the time due to either disk crashes, server moves, or incompatible CMS upgrades. Eventually I gave up. I didn't take it seriously. Then Facebook came along, and I put pithy, mostly idiotic, observations on there, hidden behind my wall of "friends".
Apparently, Facebook is now big enough to play in the big leagues and the consequences are becoming more and more apparent every day. There's been a lot of fallout since Edward Snowden came forward with new revelations about the NSA, which includes Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and others, handing over data. Unfortunately, we've seen a number of web sites and services disappear as a result.