Leo Burnett

If I had 60 hrs to spare I’d like to dig into every tech purchase made by local govs with covid relief money and how the recurring software costs for these purchases are about to hit for the first time and only go up from here on out. Surprise!

It’s particularly maddening because Maine Med owns more real estate than every other tax exempt property combined. Yet something tells me they aren’t on this list.

The decisions will likely be reversed but shows just how much power is exercised by unelected city staff on the daily. A little more blatant than the usual “we have no power/ let the lawyers decide and water down or delay every voter approved measure”

The magic of the thoroughly undemocratic city gov system: unelected staff make political choices with zero awareness of the political cost. Someone in the assessors office should be fired. Will they?

add another fluff piece/ zero coverage on the issues to the list, @collinswatch.bsky.social

When you've given up trying to empathize or be kind to people, dogs will still love you. Even if your soul is dead inside and you're responsible for the deaths of millions, your dog will still love you. Maybe that's why.

I’m glad to see people protesting Discord forcing IDs for age verification, but what I need everyone to understand is that there’s immense bipartisan pressure to make the entire internet like this, and they are likely going to succeed unless something drastic happens

A pastor searched for a missing congregant. He found a car with the keys on the floor Evaristo Kalonji, an asylum seeker from Angola who has no criminal record, vanished from South Portland. He turned up in one detention center, then another.

www.pressherald.com/2026/01/28/a...

ICE agents shatter window, leave 1-month-old baby, mother in car after Portland arrest Video shows federal immigration agents leaving behind an infant and broken glass after detaining a Guinean immigrant with no known criminal history.

Video shows ICE leaving behind an infant and broken glass after arresting a man with no criminal history.
“There was a car seat in the back... There were broken glass shards all over it... There was just this tiny peanut of a baby. He was crying.”
My latest: www.pressherald.com/2026/01/28/i...

We are observers, not protestors. We show up to document and film the atrocities ICE is committing. Using 5 year olds as bait. Kidnapping senior citizens. Breaking down doors without warrants. Murdering poets and nurses. Media has all of that information because *observers* were there to document it

Once you understand that you're dealing with murderous liars, you stop entertaining what they say as possibly credible and legitimate. The fight against them is about stopping them from terrorizing and killing by any means, not winning debates about your reality versus theirs.

ICE agents are driving around on our neighborhood roads, speeding up to 90mph, smashing windows, abducting people - and most of the coverage and statements from our politicians insinuates that this would be fine if it's for "criminals"

We are witnessing in #PortlandME the full scale assault and abduction of our neighbors and unsurprisingly the press coverage is three steps behind. Of course the feds are lying when they say they are rounding up criminals.

Of course they are lying when they say they are here illegally.

"How to Report ICE" #Maine edition is up! Print, cut, fold and distribute to help keep our neighbors safe!

drive.google.com/file/d/1SYez...

"ICE violence is enabled by ICE surveillance, often with help from local police and city-run surveillance systems. If local leaders want to protect their residents from ICE's gestapo tactics, one of the most immediate things they can do is roll back and limit surveillance"

Consistent ongoing theme that almost any regulation with the purpose of "protecting kids" or "ensuring safety" online for children or s*x workers is a backdoor for authoritarian surveillance.

I watched most of the Kennebec county dems gubernatorial forum and King was the only candidate to give a mealy non-answer to the direct question on tribal sovereignty. Everyone else gave a loud, direct YES to supporting sovereignty on day 1.

I hate these charts so much because they imply chatgpt is comparable to the internet or phones

You could create the same graphic for full screen pop-up advertising on websites and make them look like ultra-rapid technology adoption when really they were just baked unavoidably into the internet

Opposition to AI is a political force. Maine’s leaders should catch up. • Maine Morning Star A plan to build an AI data center in Lewiston’s Bates Mill complex was set to get the green light by the city council last week. The city arranged a tax break for the relatively unknown company develo...

But I didn’t link the post initially, which is here: mainemorningstar.com/2025/12/22/o...

I wrote a piece in the @mainemorningstar.com on data centers and the AI debate in Maine- and why political leaders should catch on to the growing pushback to big tech #mepolitics

Calling it a fancy spellcheck instead of AI is both a great mockery and it’s descriptive and actually helpful in explaining what large language models actually ARE which are prediction machines and not at all intelligent

Creating an AI video of a bland corporate politician would be very easy. But generating an AI video of an eccentric kind of off-the-wall and deeply endearing person would be much harder. Even more reason to be skeptical of overly polished politicians.

The art and the messages that will resonate are deeply and unmistakably human. Robots and large language models could never be as creative, flawed and funny as a real person. Do more of the real person stuff and make it impossible to impersonate you

Political emails and texts were complete slop BEFORE AI even existed. These practices set the stage for what we see today, where few people trust any political message.

The antidote to that isn't to get better at AI and compete on the same playing field: it's to be radically genuine, open & honest

There are some pretty scary political applications of AI, especially with video. But as someone who has worked in the churn n' burn political biz, I think AI's largest impact won't be in the realm of persuasion but rather in further eroding the legitimacy of the entire process

Are they actually being proactive? No. But some mckinsey consultant probably gave them the idea that actually proactively protecting against damage to their lines and equipment is expensive. Telling customers they are "aware" that outages might occur is pretty cheap. Brilllliant

I've noticed a new trend where the for-profit utility companies (spectruminternet, CMP electricity) are starting to send customer emails that make it seem like they are being proactive and responsive, like "we're letting you know that we're monitoring the storm"

Joseph Weizenbaum wrote that, "The myth of technological and political and social inevitability is a powerful tranquilizer of the conscience," and one thing I'm thankful for today is everybody working together to fight the myths of inevitability.

And even in the actual "news" sections, the headline is "Dems are angry at Angus, in an unexpected and new development" as though it's just whiny partisans who are pissed their healthcare premiums are doubling.