Don’t Post About Crimes

And then I got to wrap up today leading a bunch of volunteers to try and pull public records for each of the DHS detention centers from local agencies so they can be available on MuckRock for activists, journalists, researchers. I really am so lucky this is my job.

I’m so glad, thank you so much!

Today at Noon PT I'll be excited to share the organizing tactics that are helping rural communities, typically underresourced for lawsuits or ballot measures, to push back on license plate reader surveillance. Looking forward to it!

Recalling a fascinating, if not circular, discussion I had with someone who could not understand why it's not a good argument for veganism that, "animals eat more in calories than you get from them."
Be vegan if you like, but that is true of plants too. No life form is metabolically efficient.

"Why do you need that." Because I've had back surgery and it would be great if my old lady shopping trolley drove itself like a roomba, minus the weird lidar privacy problems.

One day I will have my dream of a totally offline (and so hopefully private, please 🥲) personal cargo bot that trails me around with a proximity beacon like a little pack mule carrying my groceries. Then it will truly be the future.

Mom, people here are still defining their activism by what they do or don't consume. Come pick me up!

You may be tempted to roll your eyes and say that this was obvious, but there is a substantive difference between pointing out there is a slippery slope and having solid evidence that Ring's CEO is planning to expand Search Party beyond lost pets. Kudos to 404 Media.

The Department of Energy promised Yakama Nation $32 million for solar. It’s nearly impossible to access. - High Country News Held up by a series of bureaucratic hurdles, the funding could expire before the government lets the tribal nation touch a dime.

"[Yakama Power] cannot access [a $32M grant from DoE and $100M loan from Ag] without first obtaining a “power purchase agreement" ... it can’t get a purchase agreement until its project connects to the grid, which is owned by Bonneville, an arm of the Energy Department." www.hcn.org/articles/the...

The Department of Energy promised Yakama Nation $32 million for solar. It’s nearly impossible to access. - High Country News Held up by a series of bureaucratic hurdles, the funding could expire before the government lets the tribal nation touch a dime.

The multi-jurisdictional nightmare that is trying to build renewable energy, particularly transmission, is exemplified in this story. Even when the right siting and partnerships can be worked out, the circular mess of bureaucratic dependencies remains: www.hcn.org/articles/the...

My formerly feral cat, who cannot really be picked up or held, managed to make it all the way through her vet visit with 1ml gabapentin and the vet techs absolutely loading her with churu.
Like a proper party girl, she managed to make it all the way home before puking all over herself.

Transmission lines must go from where the energy is generated to where people use it. There is no way around this, literally.
And yet it is both environmental orgs and the fossil fuel lobby fighting tooth and nail to get every renewable energy and transmission project canceled. Not moved, canceled.

In the US, our geographically large country lets us dissociate from how things that support our lives come to be. We broadly don’t know how food is grown or processed, where our packages get sorted, where trash goes when we throw it “away.” We want electricity to magically come out of the wall.

I too am excited about renewable energy, but America is going to have to do something about the “curmudgeon’s veto” and how it’s made esp transmission construction into a clusterquack.
We are literally never going to reach decarbonization goals if people always scream “put it somewhere else!”

I hear the left needs a technology to get excited about. May I suggest Magnetic Resonance Imaging:

Technology is a form of human cognition and expression.
As such it holds no inherent moral value. People do both great and horrendous things with their capacity to think and speak, and how that shows up with tech is no different.

this is one of those things that everyone knew and assumed to be true, but it's good to have the hard evidence. Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff also emailed staff after Charlie Kirk murder to suggest another new Ring feature could have been used to help catch his killer. Both emails in article

Leaked Email Suggests Ring Plans to Expand ‘Search Party’ Surveillance Beyond Dogs Ring's CEO told staff the feature is “first for finding dogs,” indicating a plan to expand.

Scoop: Ring's CEO told staff Search Party is not going to be just for dogs, according to a leaked email I obtained. Said it is "first for finding dogs" before suggesting it would be expanded to be used for crime:

www.404media.co/leaked-email...

It’s important to be critical of AI and where it is applied, who financially benefits, who owns it.
But as someone who spent an entire terrible job just booking conference rooms all day every day, please spare me the, “Why can’t you just do your own calendar?” takes. Not everything is for you!

I’m sure it’s different in bigger offices or other industries. Titles are weird!

Yes, it’s what in other offices you might call a secretary or admin, responsible for the office as a physical space. Answers the phone, handles vendor bills like utilities and janitorial, paperwork and filing, calendars etc.

Office manager in my office always meant the person who managed the facility, not people. When I held that title I was always bottom of the food chain/lowest paid person etc.

This is true, but I feel like that has been a thing since the word processor was invented. I’d work on IFTTT schemes for weeks and then something would break because of an update and send it all to hell.

There is no inherent moral value in deciding certain people need to keep doing technological housework without automation.
Some of you sound like my old boss who declared it was more important for me to burn up hours typing each letter than use a mail merge. An admin’s time is still valuable.

I spent the first half of my career as an executive assistant & office manager. The applications for language-directed automation in admin work are incredibly clear.
Often when people declare a tool “useless” it’s often because they don’t appreciate the person currently overloaded by these tasks.

Just as many people’s kind of half-baked takes on labor come from never having a wage service or retail job, a lot of takes on technology automation are clearly informed by never having an administrative job in their life. Go buy your office manager a coffee and repent.

Ready to send out a stack of postcards advertising my free public meetings newsletter to my small town neighbors. Count down to when someone says in an accusatory manner, as they always do, “Who is paying for this???”
It is I, the shadowy benefactor of $50 of printing and $100 of postage.

A hand holding a variety of carved horn hair forks that look like plants, fish, cats, birds, shrimp

Increasing the concentration of carved horn hair forks and sticks around my house so when I inevitably lose them, I’ll run into another one discarded on a counter or table or in my bed in short order.