#summer research 2023

[chaotic-archaeologist]

Field Notes: the schlep from my university to Fredericksburg.

29.05.2023.

What can I say, an eight-hour drive is an eight-hour drive. On the upside, I make awesome progress on my current audiobook (The Strangest Forms by Gregory Ashe). Llelo is a trooper in the backseat, but he does occasionally try to get me to race the other cars. So far, I haven’t let him goad me into it.

The first stop I make is at the Vince Lombardi service station just outside of New York City, on the Jersey side. It’s new! It’s modern! They have a vending machine selling slices of cake from Carlo’s Bake Shop (you know, the one from Cake Boss). I’m tempted, but I’m also not paying nearly $7 for a slice of cake.

After the Vince Lombardy service station is the Alexander Hamilton service station, also in New Jersey (everything is legal in New Jersey). I don’t stop at this one, but a couple of hours later I pull into the Clara Barton service station. This one is markedly less splendid than the one dedicated to the football star. Go figure. There is a pack of feral cats living in the field next to the massive parking lot. Please god, I think to myself, if I ever do something like minister to the wounded on a battlefield, don’t let them name a service station after me.

I arrive in Fredericksburg with a sore tuchus and the need for a shower. Llelo celebrates stopping for the night by sclathing all over the hotel carpet.

[pandemic-info]

Long-Term Long Covid - by Eric Topol

Unfortunately, what was seen at 6 months largely continues out to 2 years. 

... [New paper at] Nature Medicine addresses what happened 2 years later to nearly 140,000 people who had Covid, compared with almost 6 million people non-infected controls.

... in the non-hospitalized group a substantial proportion— about 30%— of the 80 sequelae, including GI and neurologic, remained significantly elevated. 

... I’d like to point out the data analyzed in this study was enormous, as I tried to capture with one of the supplemental tables below, representative of many others. The authors took on many advanced analytic approaches with weighting, conditional modeling, and sensitivity analyses that I’m not going to review here.

... While this is the first comprehensive and systematic study of Covid at 2 years, it unfortunately is within a highly skewed population. The demographics of nearly 90% men, with a mean age 61 years, is far different than the prototypic person with Long Covid who is more apt to be female and age 30-39 years. Furthermore, to get 2 year follow-up it meant studying a population who had Covid early in the pandemic, before vaccines or the marked evolution of the virus with new variants, including Delta, which was more virulent that the ancestral or Alpha strains that preceded it. So please keep this in mind—the results are important but they may well not be representative of the real world, broader population, of Covid and Long Covid. That’s already a major hole in our knowledge base since there is no other report yet to systematically address a more representative population.

...

Summary

At two years after Covid, there’s a persistent and considerable burden of symptoms and multi-system organ involvement in an important subgroup of people. It’s also unpredictable who will be afflicted with protracted symptoms and new medical diagnoses. While there still is no validated treatment (the Big Miss, as recently reviewed), Long Covid marches on, not just over time for most of those already suffering, but also among newly infected or re-infected individuals — like we are seeing now with increase in cases in the United States and many other countries. The main emphasis here, beyond the enduring and very concerning symptoms and organ dysfunction, is that we are still in the dark. It will take many years to fully know the sequelae of Covid, be it from unforeseen, delayed adverse outcomes like what occurred many years after influenza or polio, or the secondary outcomes of organ systems that are clearly affected, or via promotion of autoimmune conditions or pro-inflammatory pathways, potentially exacerbating risk of atherosclerosis. We’re going to need many more years of careful follow-up to fully understand the ways and extent Covid has hurt us. Meanwhile, beyond the known strategies for prevention of infection, we must consider finding effective ways to treat people who suffer from Long Covid as an urgent and foremost priority.

[seekerwithsneakers]

hi besties, i am back home from the uni. LOLLL the workshop i am targetting has deadline day after tomorrow. Loll need to be done by tomorrow 5 pm cause need to send it to prof for review lolll plus scheduled a gre prctose test for tomorrow 6 pm lmaoo

hehehe def not losing my mind over this paper

[fiercynn]

on ao3's current fundraiser

apparently it’s time for ao3’s biannual donation drive, which means it’s time for me to remind you all, that regardless of how much you love ao3, you shouldn’t donate to them because they HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY AND NO IDEA WHAT TO DO WITH IT.

we’ve known for years that ao3 – or, more specifically, the organization for transformative works (@transformativeworks on tumblr), or otw, who runs ao3 and other fandom projects – has a lot of money in their “reserves” that they had no plans for. but in 2023, @manogirl and i did some research on this, and now, after looking at their more recent financial statements, i’ve determined that at the beginning of 2024, they had almost $2.8 MILLION US DOLLARS IN SURPLUS.

our full post last year goes over the principles of how we determined this, even though the numbers are for 2023, but the key points still stand (with the updated numbers):

when we say “surplus”, we are not including money that they estimate they need to spend in 2024 for their regular expenses. just the extra that they have no plan for

yes, nonprofits do need to keep some money in reserves for emergencies; typically, nonprofits registered in the u.s. tend to keep enough to cover between six months and two years of their regular operating expenses (meaning, the rough amount they need each month to keep their services going). $2.8 million USD is enough to keep otw running for almost FIVE YEARS WITHOUT NEW DONATIONS

they always overshoot their fundraisers: as i’m posting this, they’ve already raised $104,751.62 USD from their current donation drive, which is over double what they’ve asked for! on day two of the fundraiser!!

no, we are not trying to claim they are embezzling this money or that it is a scam. we believe they are just super incompetent with their money. case in point: that surplus that they have? only earned them $146 USD in interest in 2022, because only about $10,000 USD of their money invested in an interest-bearing account. that’s the interest they earn off of MILLIONS. at the very least they should be using this extra money to generate new revenue – which would also help with their long-term financial security – but they can’t even do that

no, they do not need this money to use if they are sued. you can read more about this in the full post, but essentially, they get most of their legal services donated, and they have not, themselves, said this money is for that purpose

i'm not going to go through my process for determining the updated 2024 numbers because i want to get this post out quickly, and otw actually had not updated the sources i needed to get these numbers until the last couple days (seriously, i've been checking), but you can easily recreate the process that @manogirl and i outlined last year with these documents:

otw’s 2022 audited financial statement, to determine how much money they had at the end of 2022

otw’s 2024 budget spreadsheet, to determine their net income in 2023 and how much they transferred to and from reserves at the beginning of 2024

otw’s 2022 form 990 (also available on propublica), which is a tax document, and shows how much interest they earned in 2022 (search “interest” and you’ll find it in several places)  

also, otw has not been accountable to answering questions about their surplus. typically, they hold a public meeting with their finance committee every year in september or october so people can ask questions directly to their treasurer and other committee members; as you can imagine, after doing this deep dive last summer, i was looking forward to getting some answers at that meeting!

but they cancelled that meeting in 2023, and instead asked people to write to the finance committee through their contact us form online. fun fact: i wrote a one-line message to the finance committee on may 11, 2023 through that form, when @manogirl and i were doing this research, asking them for clarification on how much they have in their reserves. i have still not received a response.

so yeah. please spend your money on people who actually need it, like on mutual aid requests! anyone who wants to share their mutual aid requests, please do so in the replies and i’ll share them out – i didn’t want to link directly to individual requests without permission in case this leads to anyone getting harassed, but i would love to share your requests. to start with, here's operation olive branch and their ongoing spreadsheet sharing palestinian folks who need money to escape genocide.

oh, and if you want to write to otw and tell them why you are not donating, i'm not sure it’ll get any results, but it can’t hurt lol. here's their contact us form – just don’t expect a response! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[its-poojagupta-shree]

Social media has become an integral part of our lives, and it has given women a powerful platform to express themselves, connect with others, and make a significant impact. With millions of women using social media daily, it's essential to stay updated on the latest trends that can help amplify their voices and inspire positive change. In this blog, we will explore the top five social media trends that women can't ignore, offering them the tools and insights to leverage these trends for personal and professional growth.

[lsbubastudio2]

"An Exhibition of Architectural Works" _ #LSBU _ 22 June - 03 July 2023

Location: LSBU Southwark campus - LSBU HUB _ Photos by: Spyros Kaprinis [22.06.2023]

"The #LSBU #Architecture End of Year Show celebrates the excellence of our students' work throughout the academic year. Here we showcase some of our most exciting projects, and celebrate the efforts that our students have made throughout their architectural education. On display will be illustrated products by students across our programmes. Come and get a glimpse of what our Architecture programmes have to offer. The work will also be displayed in the foyer of the Keyworth Centre at London South Bank University until Monday 3 July 2023."

We look forward to seeing you!

https://lnkd.in/eWz_rEu7

https://lnkd.in/ePaNyJTn

#London_South_Bank_University  #LSBU #Architecture #EndOfYearShow 2022-2023

[annakarinahumphreys]

Summer 2023 - A Research Odyssey

This summer I have to complete 2 separate research briefs to complete. One of the briefs will inform my final output for my degree and so requires me looking into areas of the animation industry that interest me so I can spend Year 3 focussing on what I want from my future career. The other brief is to research various topics to help with the invention and pitching of at least 3 ideas for an animated TV show.

[nasa]

Confirmed: Summer 2023 Hottest in NASA’s Record

All three months of summer 2023 broke records. July 2023 was the hottest month ever recorded, and the hottest July. June 2023 was the hottest June, and August 2023 was the hottest August.

NASA’s temperature record, GISTEMP, starts in 1880, when consistent, modern recordkeeping became possible. Our record uses millions of measurements of surface temperature from weather stations, ships and ocean buoys, and Antarctic research stations. Other agencies and organizations who keep similar global temperature records find the same pattern of long-term warming.

Global temperatures are rising from increased emissions of greenhouse gasses, like carbon dioxide and methane. Over the last 200 years, humans have raised atmospheric CO2 by nearly 50%, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels.

Drivers of climate change, both natural and human-caused, leave distinct fingerprints. Through observations and modeling, NASA researchers confirm that the current warming is the result of human activities, particularly increased greenhouse gas emissions.

[9jacompass]

EPFL Summer Fellowship in Switzerland 2023-Apply Now

EPFL Summer Fellowship in Switzerland 2023-Apply Now

EPFL Summer Fellowship –There are a number of fellowships and internship opportunities now open to international students at the Ecole Polytechnique federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland for the 2023 summer. Applicants may be bachelor or master’s candidates currently enrolled in computer  science and related courses. Participants of the fellowship will have the opportunity to learn new…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI’s productivity theater

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

When I took my kid to New Zealand with me on a book-tour, I was delighted to learn that grocery stores had special aisles where all the kids'-eye-level candy had been removed, to minimize nagging. What a great idea!

Related: countries around the world limit advertising to children, for two reasons:

1) Kids may not be stupid, but they are inexperienced, and that makes them gullible; and

2) Kids don't have money of their own, so their path to getting the stuff they see in ads is nagging their parents, which creates a natural constituency to support limits on kids' advertising (nagged parents).

There's something especially annoying about ads targeted at getting credulous people to coerce or torment other people on behalf of the advertiser. For example, AI companies spent millions targeting your boss in an effort to convince them that you can be replaced with a chatbot that absolutely, positively cannot do your job.

Your boss has no idea what your job entails, and is (not so) secretly convinced that you're a featherbedding parasite who only shows up for work because you fear the breadline, and not because your job is a) challenging, or b) rewarding:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

That makes them prime marks for chatbot-peddling AI pitchmen. Your boss would love to fire you and replace you with a chatbot. Chatbots don't unionize, they don't backtalk about stupid orders, and they don't experience any inconvenient moral injury when ordered to enshittify the product:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

Bosses are Bizarro-world Marxists. Like Marxists, your boss's worldview is organized around the principle that every dollar you take home in wages is a dollar that isn't available for executive bonuses, stock buybacks or dividends. That's why you boss is insatiably horny for firing you and replacing you with software. Software is cheaper, and it doesn't advocate for higher wages.

That makes your boss such an easy mark for AI pitchmen, which explains the vast gap between the valuation of AI companies and the utility of AI to the customers that buy those companies' products. As an investor, buying shares in AI might represent a bet the usefulness of AI – but for many of those investors, backing an AI company is actually a bet on your boss's credulity and contempt for you and your job.

But bosses' resemblance to toddlers doesn't end with their credulity. A toddler's path to getting that eye-height candy-bar goes through their exhausted parents. Your boss's path to realizing the productivity gains promised by an AI salesman runs through you.

A new research report from the Upwork Research Institute offers a look into the bizarre situation unfolding in workplaces where bosses have been conned into buying AI and now face the challenge of getting it to work as advertised:

https://www.upwork.com/research/ai-enhanced-work-models

The headline findings tell the whole story:

96% of bosses expect that AI will make their workers more productive;

85% of companies are either requiring or strongly encouraging workers to use AI;

49% of workers have no idea how AI is supposed to increase their productivity;

77% of workers say using AI decreases their productivity.

Working at an AI-equipped workplaces is like being the parent of a furious toddler who has bought a million Sea Monkey farms off the back page of a comic book, and is now destroying your life with demands that you figure out how to get the brine shrimp he ordered from a notorious Holocaust denier to wear little crowns like they do in the ad:

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2004/hitler-and-sea-monkeys

Bosses spend a lot of time thinking about your productivity. The "productivity paradox" shows a rapid, persistent decline in American worker productivity, starting in the 1970s and continuing to this day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox

The "paradox" refers to the growth of IT, which is sold as a productivity-increasing miracle. There are many theories to explain this paradox. One especially good theory came from the late David Graeber (rest in power), in his 2012 essay, "Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit":

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit

Graeber proposes that the growth of IT was part of a wider shift in research approaches. Research was once dominated by weirdos (e.g. Jack Parsons, Oppenheimer, etc) who operated with relatively little red tape. The rise of IT coincides with the rise of "managerialism," the McKinseyoid drive to monitor, quantify and – above all – discipline the workforce. IT made it easier to generate these records, which also made it normal to expect these records.

Before long, every employee – including the "creatives" whose ideas were credited with the productivity gains of the American century until the 70s – was spending a huge amount of time (sometimes the majority of their working days) filling in forms, documenting their work, and generally producing a legible account of their day's work. All this data gave rise to a ballooning class of managers, who colonized every kind of institution – not just corporations, but also universities and government agencies, which were structured to resemble corporations (down to referring to voters or students as "customers").

Even if you think all that record-keeping might be useful, there's no denying that the more time you spend documenting your work, the less time you have to do your work. The solution to this was inevitably more IT, sold as a way to make the record-keeping easier. But adding IT to a bureaucracy is like adding lanes to a highway: the easier it is to demand fine-grained record-keeping, the more record-keeping will be demanded of you.

But that's not all that IT did for the workplace. There are a couple areas in which IT absolutely increased the profitability of the companies that invested in it.

First, IT allowed corporations to outsource production to low-waged countries in the global south, usually places with worse labor protection, weaker environmental laws, and easily bribed regulators. It's really hard to produce things in factories thousands of miles away, or to oversee remote workers in another country. But IT makes it possible to annihilate distance, time zone gaps, and language barriers. Corporations that figured out how to use IT to fire workers at home and exploit workers and despoil the environment in distant lands thrived. Executives who oversaw these projects rose through the ranks. For example, Tim Cook became the CEO of Apple thanks to his successes in moving production out of the USA and into China.

https://archive.is/M17qq

Outsourcing provided a sugar high that compensated for declining productivity…for a while. But eventually, all the gains to be had from outsourcing were realized, and companies needed a new source of cheap gains. That's where "bossware" came in: the automation of workforce monitoring and discipline. Bossware made it possible to monitor workers at the finest-grained levels, measuring everything from keystrokes to eyeball movements.

What's more, the declining power of the American worker – a nice bonus of the project to fire huge numbers of workers and ship their jobs overseas, which made the remainder terrified of losing their jobs and thus willing to eat a rasher of shit and ask for seconds – meant that bossware could be used to tie wages to metrics. It's not just gig workers who don't score consistent five star ratings from app users whose pay gets docked – it's also creative workers whose Youtube and Tiktok wages are cut for violating rules that they aren't allowed to know, because that might help them break the rules without being detected and punished:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

Bossware dominates workplaces from public schools to hospitals, restaurants to call centers, and extends to your home and car, if you're working from home (AKA "living at work") or driving for Uber or Amazon:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/02/chickenized-by-arise/#arise

In providing a pretense for stealing wages, IT can increase profits, even as it reduces productivity:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

One way to think about how this works is through the automation-theory metaphor of a "centaur" and a "reverse centaur." In automation circles, a "centaur" is someone who is assisted by an automation tool – for example, when your boss uses AI to monitor your eyeballs in order to find excuses to steal your wages, they are a centaur, a human head atop a machine body that does all the hard work, far in excess of any human's capacity.

A "reverse centaur" is a worker who acts as an assistant to an automation system. The worker who is ridden by an AI that monitors their eyeballs, bathroom breaks, and keystrokes is a reverse centaur, being used (and eventually, used up) by a machine to perform the tasks that the machine can't perform unassisted:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But there's only so much work you can squeeze out of a human in this fashion before they are ruined for the job. Amazon's internal research reveals that the company has calculated that it ruins workers so quickly that it is in danger of using up every able-bodied worker in America:

https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-warehouses-hiring-shortage

Which explains the other major findings from the Upwork study:

81% of bosses have increased the demands they make on their workers over the past year; and

71% of workers are "burned out."

Bosses' answer to "AI making workers feel burned out" is the same as "IT-driven form-filling makes workers unproductive" – do more of the same, but go harder. Cisco has a new product that tries to detect when workers are about to snap after absorbing abuse from furious customers and then gives them a "Zen" moment in which they are showed a "soothing" photo of their family:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ai-bringing-zen-first-horizons-192010166.html

This is just the latest in a series of increasingly sweaty and cruel "workplace wellness" technologies that spy on workers and try to help them "manage their stress," all of which have the (totally predictable) effect of increasing workplace stress:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/15/wellness-taylorism/#sick-of-spying

The only person who wouldn't predict that being closely monitored by an AI that snitches on you to your boss would increase your stress levels is your boss. Unfortunately for you, AI pitchmen know this, too, and they're more than happy to sell your boss the reverse-centaur automation tool that makes you want to die, and then sell your boss another automation tool that is supposed to restore your will to live.

The "productivity paradox" is being resolved before our eyes. American per-worker productivity fell because it was more profitable to ship American jobs to regulatory free-fire zones and exploit the resulting precarity to abuse the workers left onshore. Workers who resented this arrangement were condemned for having a shitty "work ethic" – even as the number of hours worked by the average US worker rose by 13% between 1976 and 2016:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

AI is just a successor gimmick at the terminal end of 40 years of increasing profits by taking them out of workers' hides rather than improving efficiency. That arrangement didn't come out of nowhere: it was a direct result of a Reagan-era theory of corporate power called "consumer welfare." Under the "consumer welfare" approach to antitrust, monopolies were encouraged, provided that they used their market power to lower wages and screw suppliers, while lowering costs to consumers.

"Consumer welfare" supposed that we could somehow separate our identities as "workers" from our identities as "shoppers" – that our stagnating wages and worsening conditions ceased mattering to us when we clocked out at 5PM (or, you know, 9PM) and bought a $0.99 Meal Deal at McDonald's whose low, low price was only possible because it was cooked by someone sleeping in their car and collecting food-stamps.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/20/disneyland-workers-anaheim-california-authorize-strike

But we're reaching the end of the road for consumer welfare. Sure, your toddler-boss can be tricked into buying AI and firing half of your co-workers and demanding that the remainder use AI to do their jobs. But if AI can't do their jobs (it can't), no amount of demanding that you figure out how to make the Sea Monkeys act like they did in the comic-book ad is doing to make that work.

As screwing workers and suppliers produces fewer and fewer gains, companies are increasingly turning on their customers. It's not just that you're getting worse service from chatbots or the humans who are reverse-centaured into their workflow. You're also paying more for that, as algorithmic surveillance pricing uses automation to gouge you on prices in realtime:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

This is – in the memorable phrase of David Dayen and Lindsay Owens, the "age of recoupment," in which companies end their practice of splitting the gains from suppressing labor with their customers:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-03-age-of-recoupment/

It's a bet that the tolerance for monopolies made these companies too big to fail, and that means they're too big to jail, so they can cheat their customers as well as their workers.

AI may be a bet that your boss can be suckered into buying a chatbot that can't do your job, but investors are souring on that bet. Goldman Sachs, who once trumpeted AI as a multi-trillion dollar sector with unlimited growth, is now publishing reports describing how companies who buy AI can't figure out what to do with it:

https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/gs-research/gen-ai-too-much-spend-too-little-benefit/report.pdf

Fine, investment banks are supposed to be a little conservative. But VCs? They're the ones with all the appetite for risk, right? Well, maybe so, but Sequoia Capital, a top-tier Silicon Valley VC, is also publicly questioning whether anyone will make AI investments pay off:

https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/ais-600b-question/

I can't tell you how great it was to take my kid down a grocery checkout aisle from which all the eye-level candy had been removed. Alas, I can't figure out how we keep the nation's executive toddlers from being dazzled by shiny AI pitches that leave us stuck with the consequences of their impulse purchases.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/25/accountability-sinks/#work-harder-not-smarter

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[transmechanicus]

this is. probably a very personal question.

Is it worth it? Transitioning? In spite of it all?

Completely, utterly, and absolutely. I’m one of those ppl who knew i was trans since i was like 8. I found out when i was probably 13/14 what transgender meant, but recoiled from it because i could not imagine a world that would accept me or where i would be happy with the result. At 15 i met my first other trans person, and they became my friend and partner and the first person to ever know i was trans. Being around them, known by them, was such a colossal psychological relief and source of joy unlike anything i had known before. It made separating from them after graduation all the more excruciating to lose that one person i had trusted with that truth.

Sometime over the next two years i came out to my Mom, but nothing really changed, and i had more or less resolved to rot and die under the identity i had been born into. I let my undergrad studies chew me up, neglected all but the most necessary body maintenance, and spent every moment outside work or class buried in video games or books. At some point something snapped out of place, or perhaps back into place. I knew i didn’t want to die like this. I wanted something more for my life and my flesh than being a half dead servitor stocking yogurt. I wanted to transition, and however slowly, however long it took, that’s what i resolved to do.

It took a while. I had no real finances, no privacy, and little independence. I was coming from a white low-self-expression, high-control household. I “messed up” while base coating warhammer models one time and gave myself black nails. My dad berated me about it for days before trying to pin my hands down and sand the paint off (didn’t work, thank you automotive primer). When i was ~22 i got my ears pierced, basically the first permanent part of my transition, and i had never known as much joy as i did driving home knowing the pain was a step of permanent progress. Around this time 2019/2020 i started being out online, more vocal about being transgender as opposed to just having a relatively inexpressive fandom blog with no info beyond my name.

When i was 24, two years ago i came out to my dad, and a week later i left for grad school halfway across the country. I had an apartment all to myself, and my own source of income. I spent my spare change building up a wardrobe of new clothes that i actually liked. I got my first year of grad school done mostly without anything remarkable. Went to some queer events at my school. Found a partner. Got loved to bits for a while. Re-came out to my parents over the summer, and this time it stuck. Started HRT that fall, 2023. Came out to my classmates and coworkers and was rewarded with support and acceptance. Lost the partner. Devastated. Resolve to get even hotter and cooler. Smash out 3 piercings and a tattoo inside a week. Develop personal fashion sense. Attend research conference. Get better at makeup. Go to some concerts. Increase HRT. Tiddy Arc. Buy bra with a supportive bestie. Start weekly therapy. Increase HRT. Cosplay at a major convention. Schedule another tattoo. More HRT. Bra no longer optional. Present day. Tattoo on Wednesday. 90% of progress packed into the last year or so. Undeniably hotter, happier, and more self-expressive than anything in the last 24 years prior.

Transitioning is more than worth it, it brings me so much relief and joy every day no matter how shitty my day is otherwise, and while i have known doubt, i have never for an instant known regret.

There is still time🖤🏳️‍⚧️💕

[chaotic-archaeologist]

Field Notes: touring Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville battlefields, driving to my internship.

30.05.2023.

Battlefields are always strange. The land has been preserved; set aside; designated as hallowed ground. Often, they are beautiful, maintained with landscaping and paths while strip malls and highways encroach at the edges.

The air is sweet with the smell of freshly cut grass. Birds are singing. I am walking on a tidy gravel path that is bordered by a low stone wall. The scene couldn’t be more picturesque if it tried. It’s hard to believe that 160 years ago, thousands of Union soldiers flung themselves at this wall only to be slaughtered by the Confederates lined up behind it.

This is Marye’s Heights, and it’s where much of the memorialization efforts of Fredericksburg have been focused. Terraced rows of the dead line the hill overlooking the town (this is the Federal cemetery, the Confederate dead are buried elsewhere). Reading plaques about Lee and Jackson’s victory is a little disconcerting when there are Union ghosts looking over your shoulder. Maybe that’s the point.

In the town of Fredericksburg itself, I see my first Confederate flag bumper sticker. It’s small—not much larger than a deck of playing cards, but it’s there. At least it makes more sense here than the ones I’ve seen in Michigan.

For lunch, I go to Benny’s on a friend’s recommendation and get a slice of pizza larger than my head for around $6. Since the money from my stipend hasn’t been processed yet, it will do some double duty as part of my dinner (since my car is so full, it does the remainder of the journey riding in the passenger footwell, but don’t worry—it was in its own bag).

Visiting just Fredericksburg seems silly when there are so many other battlefields nearby. Only Chancellorsville has its own visitor center, which holds the interpretation for its eponymous battle as well as the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse. That’s a lot of death to pack into one building, but they do a decent job. When I ask the ranger working there, he tells me that they updated the visitor centers for the two battlefields back in 2014. (This was their first update since their opening in the 1960s. Yikes.)

This visitor center also has to compete with the little walking trail memorializing the fatal wounding of Stonewall Jackson. Various stone markers are scattered across the grounds like so many poisonous mushrooms.

Much like Fredericksburg, the Chancellorsville battlefield is beautiful. At the ranger’s advice, I spend most of my time at stops 3, 9, and 10 on the self-guided walking tour. Stops 9 and 10 are opposite placements of an artillery duel between the two armies. The earthworks (called lunettes, the sign informs me) from the Union position are still visible under neatly trimmed grass.

At stop 10, there is a meadow covering what used to be a field hospital (emphasis on field, not so much on hospital) where wounded Union prisoners were left to the elements for several days until doctors could arrive from Washington. Signs talk of the screams and the smell, but it’s almost impossible for me to conjure up a mental image of such suffering in such a lovely place. If I died a horrible death, would I want the area to smooth over the suffering with time? Yes. Yes, I think I would.

The interpretation at these two battlefields definitely skews Southern. The monuments are, by and large, Confederate. The plaques are about Confederate army movements. When the Union army is mentioned, it’s usually because Lee or Jackson are doing something to hapless Burnside and Hooker. One gets the impression that the blue exists as a foil for the grey.

These are Southern victories on Southern land, and credit where credit’s due, they’ve turned down the Lost Cause dial quite a bit. The fact that Lee came away from both confrontations victorious leads itself towards a narrative that matches his brilliance against the blunders of his Union counterparts, and I don’t feel like the parks have done enough to counter that. Slavery is talked about, but nowhere is it explicitly condemned. Ultimately, National Parks have to lean towards the middle ground while also making do with whatever funds they’re given. The ranger said that they were allotted something like one third of the budget they asked for in 2013, and that’s certainly a limiting factor. I’ll be paying close attention to how the signage compares to that at Gettysburg when I return there later this summer.

When 3 o’clock hits, I climb back in my car and hit the road. This part of the drive is where we get into the Blue Ridge mountains, which are beautiful but also come with reduced speed limits. There are still some cars that think we should be going 90, but as a Midwesterner used to the flatlands, I stick to the right hand lane and let them do their own thing.

It starts to mist as I near my final destination. Even though it’s not that hot outside, it’s so humid that I have to have the AC on. The mountains are steaming as I pull into town. And wow, the mountains really are blue, verging on purple. Country Roads isn’t playing on the radio, but it should be.

So my first year of grad school was bracketed by rain and Civil War battlefields (if my life were a movie, they would call that a cinematic parallel). What this internship has in store for me, I don’t really know. That—along with some grocery shopping—is a problem for Tomorrow Reid.

[reasonsforhope]

"Seven federal agencies are partnering to implement President Biden’s American Climate Corps, announcing this week they would work together to recruit 20,000 young Americans and fulfill the administration's vision for the new program. 

The goals spelled out in the memorandum of understanding include comprehensively tackling climate change, creating partnerships throughout various levels of government and the private sector, building a diverse corps and serving all American communities.

The agencies—which included the departments of Commerce, Interior, Agriculture, Labor and Energy, as well the Environmental Protection Agency and AmeriCorps—also vowed to ensure a “range of compensation and benefits” that open the positions up to a wider array of individuals and to create pathways to “high-quality employment.”  

Leaders from each of the seven agencies will form an executive committee for the Climate Corps, which Biden established in September, that will coordinate efforts with an accompanying working group. They will create the standards for ACC programs, set compensation guidelines and minimum terms of service, develop recruitment strategies, launch a centralized website and establish performance goals and objectives. The ACC groups will, beginning in January, hold listening sessions with potential applicants, labor unions, state and local governments, educational institutions and other stakeholders. 

The working group will also review all federal statutes and hiring authorities to remove any barriers to onboarding for the corps and standardize the practices across all participating agencies. Benefits for corps members will include housing, transportation, health care, child care, educational credit, scholarships and student loan forgiveness, stipends and non-financial services.

As part of the goal of the ACC, agencies will develop the corps so they can transition to “high-quality, family-sustaining careers with mobility potential” in the federal or other sectors. AmeriCorps CEO Michael Smith said the initiative would prepare young people for “good-paying union jobs.” 

Within three weeks of rolling out the ACC, EPA said more than 40,000 people—mostly in the 18-35 age range—expressed interest in joining the corps. The administration set an ambitious goal for getting the program underway, aiming to establish the corps’ first cohort in the summer of 2024. 

The corps members will work in roles related to ecosystem restoration and conservation, reforestation, waterway protection, recycling, energy conservation, clean energy deployment, disaster preparedness and recovery, fire resilience, resilient recreation infrastructure, research and outreach. The administration will look to ensure 40% of the climate-related investments flow to disadvantaged communities as part of its Justice40 initiative.  

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the MOU would allow the ACC to “work across the federal family” to push public projects focused on environmental justice and clean energy. 

“The Climate Corps represents a significant step forward in engaging and nurturing young leaders who are passionate about climate action, furthering our journey towards a sustainable and equitable future,” Regan said. 

The ACC’s executive committee will hold its first meeting within the next 30 days. It will draw support from a new climate hub within AmeriCorps, as well as any staffing the agency heads designate."

-via Government Executive, December 20, 2023

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This news comes with your regularly scheduled reminder that WE GOT THE AMERICAN CLIMATE CORPS ESTABLISHED LAST YEAR and basically no one know about/remembers it!!! Also if you want more info about the Climate Corps, inc. how to join, you can sign up to get updates here.

[opencommunion]

"The historical struggle against colonialism and imperialism ... is waged at the same time as a struggle over the historical and cultural record. One of the first targets, for example, of the Israeli Defense Forces when they entered the Lebanese capital of Beirut in the fall of 1982 was the PLO Research Center and its archives containing the documentary and cultural history of the Palestinian people. Similarly the United States police squadron which in August 1985 arrested in San Juan, Puerto Rico, eleven Puerto Rican independentistas on charges of bank robbery and violation of interstate commerce laws also entered the offices of the journal Pensamiento critico where they confiscated the journal's archival resources as well as its copier and typewriter. The struggle over the historical record is seen from all sides as no less crucial than the armed struggle."

Barbara Harlow, Resistance Literature (1987)

[beesmygod]

in an astounding twist of fate, im looking into what is actually going on with google adsense. they're in hot fucking water right now actually.

this summer, an enormous and scathing review by adalytics (an independent media research website) came out criticizing google for a myriad of things which could be politely summed up as "fraud". we're talking like. theye were taking money to serve ads on pages that got 0 views regularly. thats not what people pay for lol.

as a result google mysteriously issued some refunds (""credits"", because "refunds" sounds bad) but insists it was all normal. adexchanger has a summary of an adage.com article

Google vehemently denies the report’s findings and that the credits are in any way related. “Issuing credits to advertisers is not uncommon,” a Google spokesperson says, adding that “Adalytics used a flawed methodology to make wildly inaccurate claims about GVP.”

so over the last four or so months, google has been making core updates to its adsense network with, apparently, very little warning to the people using it. and everyone's numbers tanked. hard. oct 2023 appears to have been esp brutal. both the search engine journal and lily ray from amsive, apparently a huge name in marketing, released reports that are completely nuts. the lily ray one is esp detailed and has a timeline of updates

73% of overall respondents indicated that they have seen their Google Discover traffic drop to 0 during the past 3 months. Among websites that lost Discover traffic, the most common complaints were dramatic traffic declines; dropping to 0 impressions and clicks; extreme percentage decreases in clicks ranging from 50-99%, and massive losses in revenue from AdSense and other ad networks.

50 to 99%?! yeah that's a small sample size but that's a fucking hell of a swing and a trend.

according to the search engine journal google appears to be saying "well, we''ll see what we can do" the same way that you would say "let me look in the back" when you know full and well its not in the back. like this reads to me as "them's the breaks". which is uhh. i think a really big problem.

[sustainabilitythoughts]

The case against bug zappers

A recent Washington Post article discussed bug zappers, those electric bug killers that many use in their yards.  Advertisements say they kill mosquitos, but scientists say bug zappers work well on beneficial insects but not on mosquitos.  Colorado State University’s extension service says that no controlled scientific study has shown that these devices reduce mosquito biting rates outdoors.  Widespread use of these bug zappers may be hastening the decline of beneficial insect populations that feed a lot of other critters and pollinate plants. Instead of using a bug zapper, which uses electricity and kills beneficial insects, look for other ways to avoid mosquito bites.  This article is behind a paywall for many people, but here are some highlights. 

In one study, a single bug zapper killed 10,000 insects in one night, but only eight were mosquitos. 

In another study, of the 13,739 insects killed by one zapper over the summer, about half were harmless insects that feed aquatic creatures in lakes and streams.  Many of the others were insects that prey on mosquitos.  Only 31 insects were biting insects such as gnats or mosquitos. 

Long sleeves and pants will prevent bites in the covered areas.  Mosquitos can’t fly against a steady breeze, so a fan can keep mosquitoes away from an outdoor table or sitting area.  Use a bug repellent.  Do a little research on types of bug repellents – some are pretty effective, and some don’t live up to the claims on the bottle.  The US Environmental Protection Agency has a webpage that compares insect repellents. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/09/12/bug-zappers-mosquito-repellent/