Lisa Mecham

Lisa Mecham Field Notes I call these missives: Field Notes It's a way to keep up-to-date on my work, stay connected as one human being to another human being, and share all the wacky, weird stuff I love about the world.

I'm cutting way back on experiencing life through social media so don't look for me here. If you want to stay up on my work, sign up for my Field Notes: fieldnotes.lisamecham.com/subscribe

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“I had a yearning. It was a yearning for life, and I equated life with the life of an artist, a life of freedom, generosity, a life with other people who had the same interests in making beautiful things together. I thought that was everything in the world.”

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LA Fires | IN PERSON Volunteer Opps

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES IN LOS ANGELES:

If you’re looking to get involved with volunteer efforts in LA, please check out this list provided by Mutual Aid LA:

Nooooo 😔

i salute liz for listening to the podcast so the rest of us don’t have to 🫡

every single one of these guys is an incel loser who thought that being rich would make them popular and well-liked and when it didn't happen they lost their minds even further

How to delete Facebook, Instagram, and Threads In the wake of Meta’s decision to remove its third-party fact-checking system and loosen content moderation policies, Google searches on how to delete Facebook, Instagram, and Threads have been on the rise. People who are angry with the decision accuse…

How to delete Facebook, Instagram, and Threads

Colm Tóibín · In LA A new fire started in Hollywood. It might have looked as though we were now surrounded on three sides by fires, but it...

This, by Colm Tóibín, is stunning. It includes a guest appearance by Gary Indiana's library.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Eaton Fire Devastates Historic Altadena, Displacing Black Families and Destroying Legacies While celebrity losses grab headlines, the Eaton Fire has destroyed nearly 1,000 structures in Altadena, displacing Black families who’ve shaped the community for generations. Here's a brief history o...

The mental picture a lot of people have of fire threatened "interface zones" is of mansions on hills, but the map of the Eaton Fire is a terrifying proxy for the map of northeast Los Angeles' Black enclaves

Just saw a no-longer relevant evacuation notice on instagram from five hours ago and remembered — that’s right, due to hyper-monetization every major social network no longer shows you life-saving breaking news as it happens.

They turned it over to an algorithm that finally noticed “he likes fire.”

the LA fires inspire a lot of thoughts, one being how absolutely baby-brained some people are to think that journalists with personal blogs can replace the resources, teamwork, and coordination of actual newspapers

L.A. news choppers are better able to survey the damage today vs. yesterday. KABC is flying over parts of the Palisades right now. Block after block is gone. abc7.com/watch/live/

Watch Duty - Wildfire Maps & Alerts Watch Duty, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, alerts you of nearby wildfires and firefighting efforts in real-time.

Pretty amazing that nonprofit Watch Duty -- which says it has 150 volunteers working around the clock to track wildfires -- has become the most trusted source of information on LA fires. Operated by retired/volunteer firefighters, dispatchers, and reporters. Real people.

www.watchduty.org

God bless and protect California in the years ahead

Mother Nature, yes, but also the decimation of local news, chipping away at confidence in government, no single hub to coordinate and share timely information—all of this is contributing to the chaos happening in LA right now.

it genuinely sucks that basically nothing on the internet works well anymore. search? barely works. social media? filled with garbage engagement-bait designed to game the algorithm. news websites? pages that refresh at random or so covered in video ads that it’s impossible to read stories

But in its panicked retreat from the system it spent years building, Meta may now be putting billions of users at risk. Just because Meta deleted that line about hateful speech causing offline violence doesn't mean it isn't true. And now the company has all but declared open season on immigrants, transgender people and whatever other targets that Trump and his allies find useful in their fascist project. "I can't tell you how much harm comes from non-illegal but harmful content," a longtime former trust and safety employee at the company told me. The classifiers that the company is now switching off meaningfully reduced the spread of hate movements on Meta's platforms, they said. "This is not the climate change debate, or pro-life vs. pro-choice. This is degrading, horrible content that leads to violence and that has the intent to harm other people."

I talked to 10 current and former Meta employees about the company's surrender to the right on speech issues. All were upset. One person called the changes "a precursor to genocide" www.platformer.news/meta-fact-ch...

Features Editor, New York Magazine New York (US Only)

Great job alert

❤️

More Kidman
(less wigs on Kidman)

It’s Sunday, so let’s share the good word:

If churches want to play politics, they can pay taxes like the rest of us. God doesn’t need a tax break, but millionaire pastors sure seem to love one.

People Are The New Brands | No Mercy / No Malice Scott’s away this week on a safari. I’m not sure what a Prof G safari looks like, but it likely involves tented camps with fine china, Zacapa, and remote NAD treatments. In his absence, I’m keeping th...

"America has fallen out of love with brands and in love with people."
www.profgalloway.com/people-are-t...

ugh, The Brutalist 🙄

Since being here, I’ve had about 10 human followers and the rest seem to be bots masquerading as Crypto Fitness Wellness Religious Bros 👀

This incredible story is just another of the reasons I donate to @propublica.org. Grateful for their commitment to journalism.

beautiful

"If I get too comfortable, there go the ideas."
- Pippa Garner