#tucson library

[wingsoffirenews]

Here's more things Tui said at the Tucson Library Event!

Book 16's protagonist will not be Bumblebee or Swordtail, but she wants to write about them again at some point.

Tui can't say what continent Arc 4 will take place in, but it's a place we haven't seen yet.

Tui can't say much about what's going on with the TV series but hopes there'll be some real news on it within the next 6 months.

Tui says she can't make promises about Darkstalker returning, but she says the series isn't done with Peacemaker and he'll have dreams that confuse him and his friends.

Tui has implied Kinkajou could get her own book in the future, as when she thought about it she wondered how else she could save the world.

Tui says we won't get a villian POV ever, as she doesn't want kids idolizing them and acting like them. But she's interested in writing a POV for a character that's complicated but not a full villian.

[levoiddreamer]

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."

-George Bernard Shaw

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI’s “human in the loop” isn’t

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

AI's ability to make – or assist with – important decisions is fraught: on the one hand, AI can often classify things very well, at a speed and scale that outstrips the ability of any reasonably resourced group of humans. On the other hand, AI is sometimes very wrong, in ways that can be terribly harmful.

Bureaucracies and the AI pitchmen who hope to sell them algorithms are very excited about the cost-savings they could realize if algorithms could be turned loose on thorny, labor-intensive processes. Some of these are relatively low-stakes and make for an easy call: Brewster Kahle recently told me about the Internet Archive's project to scan a ton of journals on microfiche they bought as a library discard. It's pretty easy to have a high-res scanner auto-detect the positions of each page on the fiche and to run the text through OCR, but a human would still need to go through all those pages, marking the first and last page of each journal and identifying the table of contents and indexing it to the scanned pages. This is something AI apparently does very well, and instead of scrolling through endless pages, the Archive's human operator now just checks whether the first/last/index pages the AI identified are the right ones. A project that could have taken years is being tackled with never-seen swiftness.

The operator checking those fiche indices is something AI people like to call a "human in the loop" – a human operator who assesses each judgment made by the AI and overrides it should the AI have made a mistake. "Humans in the loop" present a tantalizing solution to algorithmic misfires, bias, and unexpected errors, and so "we'll put a human in the loop" is the cure-all response to any objection to putting an imperfect AI in charge of a high-stakes application.

But it's not just AIs that are imperfect. Humans are wildly imperfect, and one thing they turn out to be very bad at is supervising AIs. In a 2022 paper for Computer Law & Security Review, the mathematician and public policy expert Ben Green investigates the empirical limits on human oversight of algorithms:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3921216

Green situates public sector algorithms as the latest salvo in an age-old battle in public enforcement. Bureaucracies have two conflicting, irreconcilable imperatives: on the one hand, they want to be fair, and treat everyone the same. On the other hand, they want to exercise discretion, and take account of individual circumstances when administering justice. There's no way to do both of these things at the same time, obviously.

But algorithmic decision tools, overseen by humans, seem to hold out the possibility of doing the impossible and having both objective fairness and subjective discretion. Because it is grounded in computable mathematics, an algorithm is said to be "objective": given two equivalent reports of a parent who may be neglectful, the algorithm will make the same recommendation as to whether to take their children away. But because those recommendations are then reviewed by a human in the loop, there's a chance to take account of special circumstances that the algorithm missed. Finally, a cake that can be both had, and eaten!

For the paper, Green reviewed a long list of policies – local, national, and supra-national – for putting humans in the loop and found several common ways of mandating human oversight of AI.

First, policies specify that algorithms must have human oversight. Many jurisdictions set out long lists of decisions that must be reviewed by human beings, banning "fire and forget" systems that chug along in the background, blithely making consequential decisions without anyone ever reviewing them.

Second, policies specify that humans can exercise discretion when they override the AI. They aren't just there to catch instances in which the AI misinterprets a rule, but rather to apply human judgment to the rules' applications.

Next, policies require human oversight to be "meaningful" – to be more than a rubber stamp. For high-stakes decisions, a human has to do a thorough review of the AI's inputs and output before greenlighting it.

Finally, policies specify that humans can override the AI. This is key: we've all encountered instances in which "computer says no" and the hapless person operating the computer just shrugs their shoulders apologetically. Nothing I can do, sorry!

All of this sounds good, but unfortunately, it doesn't work. The question of how humans in the loop actually behave has been thoroughly studied, published in peer-reviewed, reputable journals, and replicated by other researchers. The measures for using humans to prevent algorithmic harms represent theories, and those theories are testable, and they have been tested, and they are wrong.

For example, people (including experts) are highly susceptible to "automation bias." They defer to automated systems, even when those systems produce outputs that conflict with their own expert experience and knowledge. A study of London cops found that they "overwhelmingly overestimated the credibility" of facial recognition and assessed its accuracy at 300% better than its actual performance.

Experts who are put in charge of overseeing an automated system get out of practice, because they no longer engage in the routine steps that lead up to the conclusion. Presented with conclusions, rather than problems to solve, experts lose the facility and familiarity with how all the factors that need to be weighed to produce a conclusion fit together. Far from being the easiest step of coming to a decision, reviewing the final step of that decision without doing the underlying work can be much harder to do reliably.

Worse: when algorithms are made "transparent" by presenting their chain of reasoning to expert reviewers, those reviewers become more deferential to the algorithm's conclusion, not less – after all, now the expert has to review not just one final conclusion, but several sub-conclusions.

Even worse: when humans do exercise discretion to override an algorithm, it's often to inject the very bias that the algorithm is there to prevent. Sure, the algorithm might give the same recommendation about two similar parents who are facing having their children taken away, but the judge who reviews the recommendations is more likely to override it for a white parent than for a Black one.

Humans in the loop experience "a diminished sense of control, responsibility, and moral agency." That means that they feel less able to override an algorithm – and they feel less morally culpable when they sit by and let the algorithm do its thing.

All of these effects are persistent even when people know about them, are trained to avoid them, and are given explicit instructions to do so. Remember, the whole reason to introduce AI is because of human imperfection. Designing an AI to correct human imperfection that only works when its human overseer is perfect produces predictably bad outcomes.

As Green writes, putting an AI in charge of a high-stakes decision, and using humans in the loop to prevent its harms, produces a "perverse effect": "alleviating scrutiny of government algorithms without actually addressing the underlying concerns." The human in the loop creates "a false sense of security" that sees algorithms deployed for high-stakes domains, and it shifts the responsibility for algorithmic failures to the human, creating what Dan Davies calls an "accountability sink":

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

The human in the loop is a false promise, a "salve that enables governments to obtain the benefits of algorithms without incurring the associated harms."

So why are we still talking about how AI is going to replace government and corporate bureaucracies, making decisions at machine speed, overseen by humans in the loop?

Well, what if the accountability sink is a feature and not a bug. What if governments, under enormous pressure to cut costs, figure out how to also cut corners, at the expense of people with very little social capital, and blame it all on human operators? The operators become, in the phrase of Madeleine Clare Elish, "moral crumple zones":

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

As Green writes:

The emphasis on human oversight as a protective mechanism allows governments and vendors to have it both ways: they can promote an algorithm by proclaiming how its capabilities exceed those of humans, while simultaneously defending the algorithm and those responsible for it from scrutiny by pointing to the security (supposedly) provided by human oversight.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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/2024/10/30/a-neck-in-a-noose/#is-also-a-human-in-the-loop

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

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

[archivaltrigger]

“Because the US government was not acting on mass shootings, we directly attacked a trait Americans are most known for: their pride in their country. Change the Ref created the Shamecards, a postcard collection designed to demand gun law reform from Congress. Subverting the traditional greeting cards that depict each city’s landmarks, ours show what cities are becoming known for.”

shamecards.org

There is 54 cards total representing:

Annapolis — Maryland: Capital Gazette Shooting

Atlanta — Georgia: Day Trading Firm Shootings

Benton — Kentucky: Marshall County High School Shooting

Bethel — Alaska: Regional High School Shooting

Binghamton — New York: Binghamton Shooting

Blacksburg — Virginia: Virginia Tech Massacre

Camden – New Jersey: Walk of Death Massacre

Charleston — South Carolina: Charleston Church Shooting

Charlotte — North Carolina: 2019 University Shooting

Cheyenne — Wyoming: Senior Home Shooting

Chicago — Illinois: Medical Center Shooting

Clovis — New Mexico: Clovis Library Shooting

Columbine — Colorado: Columbine

Dayton — Ohio: Dayton Shooting

Edmond — Oklahoma: Post Office Shooting

El Paso — Texas: El Paso Shooting

Ennis — Montana: Madison County Shooting

Essex Junction — Vermont: Essex Elementary School Shooting

Geneva — Alabama: Geneva County Massacre.

Grand Forks — North Dakota: Grand Forks Shooting

Hesston — Kansas: Hesston Shooting

Honolulu — Hawaii: First Hawaiian Mass Shooting

Huntington — West Virginia: New Year's Eve Shooting

Indianapolis — Indiana: Hamilton Avenue Murders

Iowa City — Iowa: University Shooting

Jonesboro — Arkansas: Middle School Massacre

Kalamazoo — Michigan: Kalamazoo Shooting

Lafayette — Louisana: Lafayette Shooting

Las Vegas — Nevada: Las Vegas Strip Shooting

Madison — Maine: Madison Rampage

Meridian — Mississippi: Meridian Company Shooting

Moscow — Idaho: Moscow Rampage

Nashville — Tennessee: Nashville Waffle House shooting

Newtown — Connecticut: Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting

Omaha — Nebraska: Westroads Mall shooting

Orlando — Florida: Pulse Nightclub Shooting

Parkland — Florida: Parkland School Shooting

Pelham — New Hampshire: Wedding Shooting

Pittsburgh — Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting

Prices Corner — Delaware: Delaware Shooting

Red Lake — Minnesota: Indian Reservation Shooting

Roseburg — Oregon: Umpqua Community Collage Shooting

Salt Lake City — Utah: Salt Lake City Mall Shooting

San Diego — California: San Ysidro Massacre

Santa Fe — Texas: Santa Fe School Shooting

Schofield — Wisconsin: Marathon County Shooting

Seattle — Washington: Capitol Hill Massacre

Sisseton — South Dakota: Sisseton Massacre

St. Louis — Missouri: Power Plant Shooting

Sutherland Springs — Texas: Sutherland Springs Church Shooting

Tucson — Arizona: Tocson Shooting

Wakefield — Massachusetts: Tech Company Massacre

Washington — D.C.: Navy Yard Shooting

Westerly — Rhode Island: Assisted-Living Complex Rampage

[richarlotte]

The Collegiate 10.

Everyone I know talks about the glow up that happens when you leave your hometown and get to your college campus. I thought people were exaggerating until I left my home state, got to my campus, and was swiftly blown away by what I’ve come to know as the Collegiate 10. These girls are prettier than pretty; they’re downright stunning. They’re in my lectures, I see them on sorority row, I bump into them at the gym, and I see groups of them walking around the library. It’s not a matter of race because this beauty transcends skin color; it’s a diverse beauty that has so many different components that I don’t even know where to begin when it comes to describing it.

Arizona has the ASU Effect and the Tucson 10, Michigan and Indiana have the classic Jewish American Princess, Atlanta has the Atlanta Baddie, and the SEC is a different beast of its own. I think that the Collegiate 10 is most obvious at major public institutions. I was at UCLA the other day and was shocked by the sheer number of drop-dead gorgeous women I saw wandering around. Each campus also has a unique twist on the look, and I’m of the opinion that each of the different colleges within a university also has their own versions of the effect. I know that the communications and journalism girls I’ve met who are gorgeous are a completely different type of beautiful than the STEM and Pre-Med girls I’ve gotten to know.

I wouldn’t call this a natural beauty at all; I think it’s been manufactured by noticing your surroundings and taking the time to make yourself fit in. Campus Rec is filled with people every time I visit, we have a Sephora on campus that’s always packed, people go out of their way to eat better, and it seems like everyone is doing what they can to make living in apartments and dorms with shared showers worthwhile. This beauty comes from a need to be the best, to be one of the women that people look at and envy. You see it on sorority row before rush starts; you see your friends catch an idea of what will make them popular and start to change, and most people who really want something start to make the necessary moves to get that thing, even if it involves drastically changing their lifestyle & mindset.

Richarlotte x

[doorstoplord]

I want to gush about something that’s exciting but it also feels kinda gauche and inappropriate so I’ll put it under the cut

I’m inheriting my grandparents car.

My grandparents had to pass for this to happen, and I do wish I had grandma and grandpa more than I want this car. But I’m glad that this car is happening. I also want to be aware that inheriting something like a nice used car is a sign of extreme privilege and I don’t want to take that lightly.

I want to explain the reasons for excitement in contrast with my current car. And I want to differentiate them by name.

My current car is named Gladys. She’s also a small SUV. My new car will be named Henry, after what my grandpa called his cane in his later years. I didn’t want to outright name it after my grandparents, but i still wanted to honor their memory through the car, and I think that this is a good way to do that.

I will first describe Gladys. Gladys is a 2011 Hyundai Tucson. I have had her for 6 years. I got her after someone totaled the car I bought from my dad a week after I got it. I WAS NOT IN that car, and I think the fact I couldn’t name that car was a bad omen. All my other cars were named swiftly except the one that got totaled. But from this situation, I got Gladys.

Gladys came to me right before the pandemic hit. A few things happened with the pandemic, namely that I had to move back in with my parents because of being furloughed from my job at the time. My relationship with my parents was and is not the best and I find that constant interaction with them dims my mental health. So I needed to get out and get out often, but with the pandemic at its height It wasn’t like I could go to a cafe or a library. But I could go out in my car to a park or something. Simultaneously I was interested in vanlife and camping content at the time, and while I knew I couldn’t get a van or a camper any time soon, I knew that Gladys was an SUV which offered more space than the sedan I had previously.

Over the years, Gladys became a safe haven for me. If I needed to get out, go on a vacation, spend time with Jax, Gladys facilitated that in a rather inexpensive and accessible way. I could set up in the back. I could cook, I could draw, I could watch movies, I could hang out, I could sleep, I could read, and I could safely hang out with Jax all in the back of Gladys. Gladys has been a constant source of comfort.

But Gladys is not a strong car. Hyundai’s made at the time Gladys was made are prone to theft due to the way they’re built. The AC gave out after a year or so of use, which was necessary because my room at my parents house was inordinately hot and I used Gladys to escape that. An issue arose with the timing belt and the mechanic said that there was so much that COULD be wrong with Gladys that it wasn’t worth it to try and fix her, and that she could no longer handle interstate travel severely limiting my options. I still love Gladys. I still take her to the park. I went camping with her last year taking the backroads to get to a park only about an hour or so away.

But Gladys is dying. Gladys is on her last legs.

Enter Henry. Henry is a newer Ford small SUV and that’s all I’ll say, but it’s a similar size and build to Gladys while being a newer model, nicer features, and because my grandparents didn’t travel so much in their later years, it has incredibly low mileage. It also has a higher towing capacity than Gladys did, which allows me to look at buying a small camper trailer down the line. I must confess to browsing Facebook marketplace for teardrop and popup campers daily.

I do want to set up Henry like I set up Gladys. I want Henry to continue the safety and escape that Gladys has so generously offered me. My mom describes my grandparents taking her and her siblings camping in a little pop up every summer all over the United States, and I’d like to think my grandparents would be thrilled about me using their car to continue adventuring and getting out.

I’m so hoping that this is good. I’m so hoping for positivity and safety and comfort. I’m so excited.

Thanks for reading this rant.

I get to get Henry today! Finally!

[copperbadge]

Radio Free Monday

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!

Ways to Give:

Anon linked to a fundraiser for Davy, a fellow employee at Old Tucson amusement park, who was recently struck by a car while on his bike; he was already low-resourced, and was living in a homeless shelter with his wife and son at the time of the accident. One of the other staff at the park has started a gofundme to help support the family during his long recovery and hopefully get them a stable place to stay; you can read more and support the fundraiser here.

chibifukurou linked to a fundraiser for a fandom friend, Chroma, to get her back home so she can get help with health issues and housing. She's been stranded out of state with severe Long Covid, without access to a support network or adequate care; they're trying to get funds together to get her transportation and a month at an extended-stay hotel while she gets her feet under her. You can read more and support the fundraiser here.

Help For Free:

songspinner9 is running a Donor's Choose fundraiser for Teacher Appreciation Week, to get funds to stock her library with books that represent her students' communities and for art supplies to help her middle-school students express themselves in creative language arts and history projects. You can read more and vote for the fundraiser here!

News to Know:

soc_puppet linked to summerofthe69, an annual smut fest that is returning for 2024! You can vote here on what this year's themes should be; you need to have a Dreamwidth account to vote, but anyone is welcome to promote their favorites in the comments to the post.

Recurring Needs:

loversdoom is a college student from the Philippines, studying away from her family, and her parents are unexpectedly unable to support her education; she is dealing with a number of expenses and is now looking at costly medical procedures as well. You can read more and reblog here or give to the fundraiser here.

onedollopofsourcream is raising funds to help with food, transportation, medication for their family, and other expenses after a string of financial issues; you can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.

rilee16 is raising funds to get out of an abusive home situation where their roommate has been aggressive and stealing from them; with irregular work hours and a tax debt due on top of chronic illness issues, they also need funds to repair their phone, which is dying, and cover utility bills. You can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can post items for my attention at the Radio Free Monday submissions form. If you're new to fundraising, you may want to check out my guide to fundraising here.

[bignaz8]

ARIZONA INTERESTING FACTS:

1. Arizona has 3,928 mountain peaks and summits, more mountains than any one of the other Mountain States (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming).

2. All New England, plus the state of Pennsylvania would fit inside Arizona.

3. Arizona became the 48th state and last of the contiguous states on February 14, 1912, Valentine’s Day.

4. Arizona's disparate climate can yield both the highest temperature across the nation and the lowest temperature across the nation in the same day.

5. There are more wilderness areas in Arizona than in the entire Midwest. Arizona alone has 90 wilderness areas, while the Midwest has 50.

6. Arizona has 26 peaks that are more than 10,000 feet in elevation.

7. Arizona has the largest contiguous stand of Ponderosa pines in the world stretching from near Flagstaff along the Mogollon Rim to the White Mountains region.

8. Yuma, Arizona is the country's highest producer of winter vegetables, especially lettuce.

9. Arizona is the 6th largest state in the nation, covering 113,909 square miles.

10. Out of all the states in the U.S., Arizona has the largest percentage of its land designated as Indian lands.

11. The Five C's of Arizona's economy are: Cattle, Copper, Citrus, Cotton, and Climate.

12. More copper is mined in Arizona than all the other states combined The Morenci Mine is the largest copper producer in all of North America.

13. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, two of the most prominent movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, were married on March 18, 1939, in Kingman, Arizona.

14. Covering 18,608 sq. miles, Coconino County is the second largest county by land area in the 48 contiguous United States.(San Bernardino County in California is the largest).

15. The world's largest solar telescope is located at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Sells, Arizona.

16. Bisbee, Arizona is known as the Queen of the Copper Mines because during its mining heyday it produced nearly 25 percent of the world's copper. It was the largest city in the Southwest between Saint Louis and San Francisco.

17. Billy the Kid killed his first man, Windy Cahill, in Bonita, Arizona.

18. Arizona grows enough cotton each year to make more than one pair of jeans for every person in the United States.

19. Famous labor leader and activist Cesar Chavez was born in Yuma.

20. In 1912, President William Howard Taft was ready to make Arizona a state on February 12, but it was Lincoln's birthday.

The next day, the 13th, was considered bad luck so they waited until the following day. That's how Arizona became known as the Valentine State.

21. When England's famous London Bridge was replaced in the 1960s, the original was purchased, dismantled, shipped stone by stone and reconstructed in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where it still stands today.

22. Mount Lemmon, Tucson, in the Santa Catalina Mountains, is the southernmost ski resort in the United States.

23. Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch in Picacho, Arizona is the largest privately-owned ostrich ranch in the world outside South Africa.

24. If you cut down a protected species of cactus in Arizona, you could spend more than a year in prison.

25. The world's largest to-scale collection of miniature airplane models is housed at the library at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.

26. The only place in the country where mail is delivered by mule is the village of Supai, located at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

27. Located on Arizona's western border, Parker Dam is the deepest dam in the world at 320 feet.

28. South Mountain Park/Preserve in Phoenix is the largest municipal park in the country.

29. Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, located about 55 miles west of Phoenix, generates more electricity than any other U.S. power plant.

30. Oraibi, a Hopi village located in Navajo County, Arizona, dates back to before A.D. 1200 and is reputed to be the oldest continuously inhabited community in America.

31. Built by Del Webb in 1960, Sun City, Arizona was the first 55-plus active adult retirement community in the country.

32. Petrified wood is the official state fossil. The Petrified Forest in northeastern Arizona contains America's largest deposits of petrified wood.

33. Many of the founders of San Francisco in 1776 were Spanish colonists from Tubac, Arizona.

34. Phoenix originated in 1866 as a hay camp to supply military post Camp McDowell.

35. Rainfall averages for Arizona range from less than three inches in the deserts to more than 30 inches per year in the mountains.

36. Rising to a height of 12,643 feet, Humphreys Peak north of Flagstaff is the state's highest mountain.

37. Roadrunners are not just in cartoons! In Arizona, you'll see them running up to 17-mph away from their enemies.

38. The Saguaro cactus is the largest cactus found in the U.S. It can grow as high as a five-story building and is native to the Sonoran Desert, which stretches across southern Arizona.

39. Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, grew up on a large family ranch near Duncan, Arizona.

40. The best-preserved meteor crater in the world is located near Winslow, Arizona.

41. The average state elevation is 4,000 feet.

42. The Navajo Nation spans 27,000 square miles across the states of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, but its capital is seated in Window Rock, Arizona.

43. The amount of copper utilized to make the copper dome atop Arizona's Capitol building is equivalent to the amount used in 4.8 million pennies.

44. Near Yuma, the Colorado River's elevation dips to 70 feet above sea level, making it the lowest point in the state.

45. The geographic center of Arizona is 55 miles southeast of Prescott near the community of Mayer.

46. You could pile four 1,300-foot skyscrapers on top of each other and they still would not reach the rim of the Grand Canyon.

47. The hottest temperature recorded in Arizona was 128 degrees at Lake Havasu City on June 29, 1994.

48. The coldest temperature recorded in Arizona was 40 degrees below zero at Hawley Lake on January 7, 1971.

49. A saguaro cactus can store up to nine tons of water.

50. The state of Massachusetts could fit inside Maricopa County (9,922 sq. miles).

51. The westernmost battle of the Civil War was fought at Picacho Pass on April 15, 1862 near Picacho Peak in Pinal County.

52. There are 11.2 million acres of National Forest in Arizona, and one-fourth of the state forested.

53. Wyatt Earp was neither the town marshal nor the sheriff in Tombstone at the time of the shoot-out at the O..K. Corral. His brother Virgil was the town marshal.

54. On June 6, 1936, the first barrel of tequila produced in the United States rolled off the production line in Nogales, Arizona.

55. The Sonoran Desert is the most biologically diverse desert in North America.

56. Bisbee is the Nation's Southernmost mile-high city.

57. The two largest man-made lakes in the U.S. are Lake Mead and Lake Powell, both located in Arizona.

58. The longest remaining intact section of Route 66 can be found in Arizona and runs from Seligman to Topock, a total of 157 unbroken miles.

59. The 13 stripes on the Arizona flag represent the 13 original colonies of the United States.

60. The negotiations for Geronimo's final surrender took place in Skeleton Canyon, near present day Douglas, Arizona, in 1886.

61. Prescott, Arizona is home to the world's oldest rodeo, and Payson, Arizona is home to the world's oldest continuous rodeo, both of which date back to the 1880's.

62. Kartchner Caverns, near Benson, Arizona, is a massive limestone cave with 13,000 feet of passages, two rooms as long as football fields, and one of the world's longest soda straw stalactites: measuring 21 feet 3 inches.

63. You can carry a loaded firearm on your person, no permit required.

64. Arizona has one of the lowest crime rates in the U.S.A.

[wingsoffirenews]

Tui has posted a last round of gifted art on Instagram!

[garadinervi]

May Swenson family correspondence and memorabilia, 1913-1996, Special Collections and Archives Division, Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University, Logan, UT [Archives West]

(image: May Swenson, 1965 in Tucson, AZ. Wild About Utah. © L. H. Clark. Courtesy Utah State University Press)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Come see me on tour!

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/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#bezzle-tour

My next novel is The Bezzle, a high-tech ice-cold revenge thriller starring Marty Hench, a two-fisted forensic accountant, as he takes on the sleaziest scams of the first two decades of the 2000s, from hamburger-themed Ponzis to the unbelievably sleazy and evil prison-tech industry:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

I'm taking Marty on the road! I'll be visiting eighteen cities between now and June, and I hope you'll come out and say hello, visit a beloved local bookseller, and maybe get a book (or two)!

21 Feb: Weller Bookworks, Salt Lake City, 1830h: https://www.wellerbookworks.com/event/store-cory-doctorow-feb-21-630-pm

22 Feb: Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego, 19h: https://www.mystgalaxy.com/22224Doctorow

24 Feb: Vroman's, Pasadena, 17h, with Adam Conover (!!) https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Cory-Doctorow-discusses-The-Bezzle

26 Feb: Third Place Books, Seattle, 19h, with Neal Stephenson (!!!) https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/event/cory-doctorow

27 Feb: Powell's, Portland, 19h: https://www.powells.com/book/the-bezzle-martin-hench-2-9781250865878/1-2

29 Feb: Changing Hands, Phoenix, 1830h: https://www.changinghands.com/event/february2024/cory-doctorow

9-10 Mar: Tucson Festival of the Book: https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/?action=display_author&id=15669

13 Mar: San Francisco Public Library: https://sfpl.org/events/2024/03/13/author-cory-doctrow-bezzle

22 Mar: Toronto: Wendy Michener Memorial Lecture: https://events.yorku.ca/events/wendy-michener-memorial-lecture2024/

24 Mar: NYC: Word Books (with Laura Poitras): https://shop.wordbookstores.com/event/word-presents-cory-doctorow

29-31 Mar: Wondercon Anaheim: https://www.comic-con.org/wc/

11 Apr: Harvard Berkman-Klein Center (with Randall Munroe) https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/enshittification

12 Apr: RISD Debates in AI, Providence, details coming soon!

17 Apr: Anderson's Books, Chicago, 19h: https://www.andersonsbookshop.com/event/cory-doctorow-1

19-21 Apr: Torino Biennale Tecnologia https://www.turismotorino.org/en/experiences/events/biennale-tecnologia

2 May, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Winnipeg https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-tickets-798820071337

5-11 May: Tartu Prima Vista Literary Festival https://tartu2024.ee/en/kirjandusfestival/

6-9 Jun: Media Ecology Association keynote, Amherst, NY https://media-ecology.org/convention

Calgary and Vancouver – details coming soon!

[ickaimp]

Don’t currently have wifi or phone data, sneaking some from the local library to show off fossils from the Tucson Gem and Mineral show.

[thoughtportal]

There are multiple pathways from Anne Carson’s poetry to Ross Gay’s prose. One need only listen, the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson reminds us, and follow the trail of audience participation, decolonization, and ants.

In August 2024 the center announced the complete transcription of Voca, the audiovisual archive of its poetry recordings, including its longtime reading and lecture series, which began in 1962. The result is more than twelve thousand captioned media files of poets reading—and talking about—their poetry, making the archive’s intellectual content accessible to users with disabilities, visible to search engines, and available for linguistic computational analyses, library director Sarah Kortemeier says. The transcriptions date back to the center’s earliest recordings, in 1963, and amount to some six million words, spoken in at least twenty-five languages, including Japanese, classical and modern Greek, Bosnian, Swedish, Arabic, Diné Bizaad, and O’odham. A reading by Ada Limón held in 2024. (Credit: Tyler Meier) 

This enormous undertaking was made possible by a 2021 Mellon Foundation Public Knowledge grant of $135,000, which allowed Voca to hire professional transcribers to create the initial text documents. (Artificial intelligence was only of limited help in creating transcriptions, Kortemeier found: Large language models “are trained to predict the most likely word in a sequence based on thousands of other texts,” she says. “But when we write poems, we’re frequently looking for the most surprising next word, not the most likely one!”) Over three years, the center’s library staff and graduate student interns proofread, revised, and uploaded the transcriptions—with input from the center’s staff and community on some non-English language entries. The center also collaborated with web developers at the University of Arizona’s College of Humanities to redesign the Voca site to enable captions, as well as new features like playlists and lesson plans.

A unique aspect of the archive is that it captures poets talking extemporaneously about their work. This spontaneous reflection is another reason the universal design of captioning is so important, Kortemeier says. “An author’s commentary can provide a crucial on-ramp for access to the poem, an open invitation to experience the artwork with the artist.”

While Voca’s digital cataloging system already flagged recordings of early drafts, captioning helped identify “real wild cards—poems that subsequently got chopped up into multiple published pieces, say, or poems that retained only a couple of lines from the first draft in their final published versions.”

A reader might begin exploring Voca with a 2001 reading by Anne Carson, in which the poet coaches her audience through an interactive performance of several of her “short talks.” Carson’s words light up on-screen as she promises their first assignment is easy; at her signal, all they have to do is call out a single word, deciduous, in a questioning tone. “Okay,” she warns them with mock sternness, “remember your line.” (They nail it.)

Entries in the Voca archive are accompanied by keyword tags generated by library staff (and, in some older examples, by members of the public), creating a site-wide taxonomy of literary ideas. Carson’s reading is tagged: classics, audience participation, franz kafka, john keats, beauty, innovative, painter, artists. Clicking on “audience participation” offers a spate of other recordings, including a 2014 reading by Craig Santos Perez. Introducing the event, Poetry Center executive director Tyler Meier thanks the audience for braving local storms. Then Perez himself explains that the weather has cost him one of the props for his series of poems on colonization and American food: When the center warned him his flight might be canceled, he ate his can of corned beef. One doesn’t need the audio to know there is laughter in the room.

Clicking on decolonization, one of Perez’s keywords, will send a reader to Sawako Nakayasu discussing source texts for her “micro-translations,” including Adam Pendleton’s “Black Dada” and Ron Silliman’s “Ketjak.” Such references are easily missed in a live event or audio recording; the transcripts, which have been uploaded as plain-text files, can be scrolled through or searched to verify a word. The text format also offers a treasure trove of material for digital humanities scholars. Kortemeier hopes for the creation of a Voca concordance (an alphabetized index of key terms and their usage), which would allow for the study of the frequency with which poets use certain words across the archive’s six decades—just one avenue of research made possible by Voca’s transcription.

Nakayasu’s irresistible keyword ants delivers a Voca visitor to Ross Gay, reading poems from his insect-friendly Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (2015) as well as “essayettes” from a work-in-progress.

Gay’s reading, on the eve of Donald Trump’s first presidential inauguration, is accompanied by a Q&A in which the poet describes the inspiration he finds in human interactions. Walking to an Ethiopian restaurant earlier that day, Gay recalls, he saw a man in roller skates—“half purple and half pink”—skating over something written on the sidewalk: Repent. Fear God. The skater, Gay delightedly observed, was slowly erasing the text as he rolled across it. “That person,” Gay promises, “is going to show up in something I write.”

Two years later, he did. The pink-and-purple skater and the message over which he rolls appear in The Book of Delights (Algonquin Books, 2019), the book those budding essayettes would become. The Voca transcript makes it simple to compare the two texts—Gay’s off-the-cuff story and its eventual manifestation in print—side by side. In the published version, the pink of the skates is refined (“a color I want to call fuchsia but I think that’s wrong. Magenta?”) and the pavement text is now “REPENT OR BURN,” but the anecdote is largely unchanged. Then the essayette swerves, in its final line, into new territory. As he watches the skater erode the text, the poet recognizes himself as part of the tableau—and active in it. “And, too,” Gay concludes, “the slight erosion was I, admiring him steadfast like this, all the herons in my chest whacking unrepentantly into the sky.”

Reading along exemplifies what’s precious about Voca’s transcription project: In following the text’s development, in listening to writers discuss their own work and discovering their lines of intersection—from Carson to Perez to Nakayasu to Gay—more readers can chart a poet’s imagination taking flight.     

Evangeline Riddiford Graham is the senior editor of Public Seminar and host of the poetry podcast Multi-Verse.

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 12.13

Holidays

Acadian Remembrance Day (Canada)

Anesthesia Technicians Day (Turkey)

Bicycle Built For Two Day

Blame Someone Else Day

Clip-On Tie Day

Count the "La's" in "Deck the Halls" Day

Ella Josephine Baker Day

General Trias Foundation Day (Philippines)

International ACAB Day

Jane Addams Day

Jum ir-Repubblika (Malta)

Local Charities Day (UK)

Loki Day

Martial Law Victims Remembrance Day (Poland)

Nanking Massacre Memorial Day (China)

National Bring Your Brother-in-Law to Work Day

National Day (Saint Lucia)

National Day of the Horse [also 2nd Saturday]

National Guard Day (US)

National Violin Day

National Give a Wine Club Day

New Calendar Day

Nusantara Day (Indonesia)

Peace Day (Korea)

Pick a Pathologist Pal Day

Reed Plant Day (French Republic)

Republic Day (Malta)

Sailor’s Day (Brazil)

Santa Lucia Day (Sweden, Scandinavia)

Skip Day

Swiftie Day

Unreturned Library Book Day

World Violins Day

Yuletide Lad #2 arrives (Giljagaur or Gully Gawk; Iceland)

Food & Drink Celebrations

Ice Cream and Violins Day

National Cocoa Day

National Cream Cheese Frosting Day

National Ice Cream Day

National Popcorn String Day

Saffron Bun Day (Sweden)

World Raclette Day

Independence & Related Days

Malta (Republic Declared; 1974)

Vendsyssel (Declared; 2018) [unrecognized]

2nd Friday in December

Comfort Food Friday [Every Friday]

Five For Friday [Every Friday]

Flashback Friday [Every Friday]

Friday Finds [Every Friday]

Friday the Firkenteenth (Grey Lodge, Pennsylvania)

Fry Day (Pastafarian; Fritism) [Every Friday]

National Salesperson Day [2nd Friday]

Official Lost and Found Day [2nd Friday]

Purple Friday (Netherlands) [2nd Friday]

TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) [Every Friday]

World Brandy Day [2nd Friday]

Weekly Holidays beginning December 13 (2nd Full Week of December)

None Known

Festivals Beginning December 13, 2024

Candy Cane Hunt (Lenexa, Kansas)

Christmas on the River (Savannah, Georgia) [thru 12.14]

Country Christmas Festival (Tylertown, Mississippi) [thru 12.14]

4th Avenue Winter Street Fair (Tucson, Arizona) [thru 12.15]

International Film Festival of Kerala (Thiruvananthapuram, India) [thru 12.20]

Night of the Proms (Hamburg, Germany) [thru 12.14]

Saint Kitts and Nevis National Carnival [Sugar Mas] (Basseterre, Saint Kitts and Nevis) [thru 2.2.2025]

Woodstock Winter Wassail Weekend (Woodstock, Vermont) [thru 12.15]

Feast Days

Antiochus of Sulcis (Christian; Saint)

Antoni Tàpies (Artology)

Aubert of Cambrai (Christian; Saint)

Comp-U-Coffee 2000 (Muppetism)

Emily Carr (Artology)

Emma Bull (Writerism)

Euler (Positivist; Saint)

Eustratius and His Companions (Christian; Martyrs)

Feast of the Light-Bringer (Old Swedish Goddess of Light)

Franz von Lenbach (Artology)

Heinrich Heine (Writerism)

Herman of Alaska (American Orthodox Church)

Ides of December (Ancient Rome)

James Wright (Writerism)

John Marinoni (Christian; Blessed)

John Wayne Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Judoc (a.k.a. Joyce; Christian; Saint)

Kenelm, King (Christian; Saint)

Kenneth Patchen (Writerism)

Larry Storch Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Leonard Weisgard (Artology)

Losoong (a.k.a. Namsoong; Sikkim, India)

Luciadagen (a.k.a. Little Yule; Scandinavia)

Lucia’s Day (Pagan) [Sweden]

Lucy (Christian; Saint) [Writers]

Monkey Appreciation Day (Pastafarian)

Odile of Alsace (Christian; Saint)

Othilia (a.k.a. Odilia; Christian; Saint & Virgin)

The Sementivaem (Ancient Rome)

Tellus (Ancient Rome, with table spread for Ceres)

Thorn Cutting Ceremony Day (Glastonbury, England; Celtic)

Unreturned Library Books Sale (Imps; Shamanism)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Prime Number Day: 347 [69 of 72]

Taian (大安 Japan) [Lucky all day.]

Unlucky Day (EU, US) [Friday the 13th] (2 of 2 for 2024)

Unlucky Day (Canada, Germany, Ireland, UK, US) [Friday the 13th]

Premieres

Accordion Joe (Betty Boop Cartoon; 1930)

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Slingshot (Web Series; 2016)

Alice’s Brown Derby (Ub Iwerks Disney Cartoon; 1926)

American Hustle (Film; 2013)

An American in Paris, by George Gershwin (Tone Poem; 1928)

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (Disney Film; 1971)

Beyoncé, by Beyoncé (Album; 2013)

Bugsy (Film; 1991)

Calling Dr. Woodpecker (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1963)

A Chorus Line (Film; 1985)

Clue (Film; 1985)

Dark Star, performed by the Grateful Dead (Song; 1967)

Driving Miss Daisy (Film; 1989)

Emily of New Moon, by L.M. Montgomery (Novel; 1923)

Fool Coverage (WB LT Cartoon; 1952)

Foxy Lady, recorded by Jimi Hendrix (Song; 1966)

The Getaway (Film; 1972)

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Film; 2013) [Hobbit #3]

Jerry Maguire (Film; 1996)

The Jewel of the Nile (Film; 1985)

Jumanji: The Next Level (Film; 2019)

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (Animated Film; 2024)

Maid in Manhattan (Film; 2002)

Mars Attacks! (Film; 1996)

A Miser Brothers’ Christmas (Animated TV Special; 2008)

Monitored Noose or The Carbon Copy-Cats (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 6; 1959)

My Name is Nobody (Film; 1973)

Popeye Presents Eugene, the Jeep (Fleischer Popeye Cartoon; 1940)

The Poseidon Adventure (Film; 1972)

Rakuen Tsuiho: Expelled from Paradise (Anime Film; 2014)

Richard III (Film; 1955)

Saving Mr. Banks (Film; 2013)

Scooby-Doo! Pirates ahoy! (WB Animated Film; 2005)

The Scorched Moose (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S1, Ep. 5; 1959)

Sense and Sensibility (Film; 1996)

6 Underground (Film; 2019)

The Snow Man (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1940)

Star Trek: Nemesis (Film; 2002)

Summertime (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1931)

Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, by Gustav Mahler (Symphony; 1895)

Symphony of Psalms, by Igor Stravinsky (Choral Symphony; 1930)

’Tis the Season to Be Smurfy (Hanna-Barbera Animated TV Special; 1987)

Tristessa, by Jack Kerouac (Novel; 1960)

Uncut Gems (Film; 2019)

Wild and Woody! (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1948)

Wind (Pixar Cartoon; 2019)

Ye Olde Toy Shop (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1935)

Today’s Name Days

Jodok, Lucia, Odilia (Austria)

Jasna, Lucija, Otilija, Svjetlana (Croatia)

Lucie (Czech Republic)

Lucia (Denmark)

Ele, Ere, Hele, Loviise, Lucia, Luise, Viise (Estonia)

Seija (Finland)

Jocelyn, Lucie (France)

Jodok, Johanna, Lucia, Ottilia (Germany)

Aris, Efstratios, Ioubenalios, Evstratios, Loukia, Lucy, Stratos (Greece)

Luca, Otilia (Hungary)

Antioco, Lucia (Italy)

Lūcija, Veldze (Latvia)

Eiviltė, Kastautas, Kastytis, Liucija, Otilija (Lithuania)

Lucia, Lydia (Norway)

Łucja, Lucja, Otylia, Włodzisława (Poland)

Dosoftei (Romania)

Lucia (Slovakia)

Lucía, Otilia (Spain)

Lucia (Sweden)

Louise, Lucia, Lukia (Ukraine)

Cinderella, Cindy, Cynth, Cynthia (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 348 of 2024; 18 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 5 of Week 50 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Ngetal (Reed) [Day 20 of 28]

Chinese: Month 11 (Bing-Zi), Day 13 (Xin-Hai)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]

Hebrew: 12 Kislev 5785

Islamic: 11 Jumada II 1446

J Cal: 18 Black; Foursday [18 of 30]

Julian: 30 November 2024

Moon: 96%: Waxing Gibbous

Positivist: 12 Bichat (13th Month) [Daniel Bernouilli / D'Alembert]

Runic Half Month: Jara (Year) [Day 7 of 15]

Season: Autumn or Fall (Day 82 of 90)

Week: 2nd Full Week of December

Zodiac: Sagittarius (Day 22 of 30)

[aylacavebear]

Stockroom Antics - Chapter 2

Maria had changed jobs numerous times over the last five years, more to keep herself safe than anything else. Her mother had told her she was a fairy but she thought it was just her mom being weird. Honestly, though, she had no other way of explaining what had happened to her that stormy day before she'd gone into a coma for two weeks.

Please don't take my work. I'll post warnings for each chapter. Will probably be 18+ I haven't decided yet!

Word Count: 2163

Pairing eventually Dean Winchester x OC

Warnings: None that I noticed

A/N: This one's written a little differently than my last one. Let me know what you think. It's the first time I've tried this type of writing. Chapters will alternate viewpoints as well. I also looked into an actual area so this one could feel more realistic.

----------------------------------------- Stockroom Antics Chapter 2

“Dude, I think I found something,” Sam said, staring at his laptop at one of the library tables.

Dean came over and sat across from him, “What’d you find?” he asked, watching his younger brother.

Sam is silent for a moment, reading over something, “Weird weather patterns in Southern Arizona,” he replied, still reading.

Dean thinks for a moment, then leans back in his chair, “Weren’t we in that area about six months ago?” he asks, thinking back.

This time Sam looked up at him, “Yeah but it was more like four months ago,” he replied, a bit of teasing at his brother's memory.

Dean rolled his eyes, “Whatever. Don’t they have weird weather anyway?” he asked.

“Not like this. Tempts went down into the twenties this week. That’s normal for the higher elevations, but not near Tucson. Don’t you remember the snow they got last year, three different times,” Sam explained.

“What is going on down there and why is it like it’s a demon hotspot over the last five years?” Dean questions.

“Not sure. Maybe we missed something,” Sam suggests, “It wouldn’t hurt to check it out before it gets that bad again.”

They’d been to Tucson, more the small town just north of it, Marana, almost fifteen times in the last five years due to demonic activity. Sometimes it was just one, at others, there were up to five. The brothers still hadn’t figured out why the demons were so interested in that particular area though. They had questioned witnesses, and local authorities, and even tortured the few demons they had managed to capture. The demons didn’t give up anything though. They all chose death over what would have happened had they squealed.

Dean rubbed his face with his hand before he stood up, “Looks like a road trip. We leave in twenty,” he told his brother. Sam nodded and then closed his laptop.

The Winchester brothers lived in a bunker, built by the Men of Letters in the fifties. It was their home, their sanctuary, and it held more information than either of them could read in one lifetime. Most hunters never worked the same town twice. It was one of the unwritten rules of hunting. However, this case was one they had gotten invested in.

It had started five years ago. There was a monsoon but it ended up being a massive storm. Marana had even gotten an F0 tornado, yeah, that’s a thing. It didn’t do much damage but the storm had also affected areas of Tucson. It made the boys finding any sort of epicenter almost impossible. They spent most of their time driving around and looking at the damage, which was widespread. There was a single demon in the area, out in Avra Valley. It wasn’t the actual name of the area, but it was what the locals called it. The small gas station, a place called Speedway, was where they had found it. The demon had been around the back of the store when the brothers grabbed him, taking him somewhere to question him. Well, more like torturing the information out of him, but the demon didn’t give them anything.

These things went through both the brother’s minds as they drove from Lebanon Kansas to Marana Arizona. There were several hotels in a cluster off a road called Cortaro, which was where they had stayed before. It would take them about a day to get there and would end up sharing the drive time so the other could sleep. There were also numerous other businesses off that same road, places they’d been before and questioned people.

“Agents Frehley and Criss. Nice to see you two again,” the male clerk behind the hotel desk told them, “How long will you be staying?”

“We’ll pay for two weeks, at least. We’ve got a lot of digging to do,” Agent Frehley, Sam, told him.

Both of them were in their suits, to sell it again. They weren’t surprised that the man had recognized them. Once they got settled into their room, which had easy access to the parking lot, they decided to head out and start asking questions. There were too many places to take on in one day so the two split up, covering more ground. Sam took the businesses on the side with the hotels while Dean headed across the street to the larger businesses.

The place hadn’t changed since they had been there four months prior. Dean started with the largest business, a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Questioning the employees took the better part of the day, especially when shifts ended and others began, giving him a whole new set of employees to question. By the time he was done, it was almost five in the evening. Since there wasn’t a bar nearby, he bought a couple of bottles of whiskey and a twenty-four-pack of beer before he began the short walk back to the hotel.

As he stopped at the light, he noticed a truck. It looked somewhat familiar but at the moment, he couldn’t place where he’d seen it. The woman driving didn’t look familiar at all either but he found her kinda hot. She was smiling, comfortably sitting behind the wheel of that large truck. When the light turned green, he began through the crosswalk as the woman drove through and across the street, disappearing down the road behind the businesses. 

“Find anything?” Dean asked his brother as he set the alcohol down on the counter in their room.

Sam sighed, exhausted, “Nothing. Everyone said this happens every so many years, the cold snap.”

Dean chuckled, “If only they knew why.” He then handed his brother a beer while he poured himself a whiskey.

The brothers had brought the case files from the last fifteen or twenty times they’d been to the area. Tonight though, they just wanted a decent night's sleep after the drive and the dead-end interviews they’d had that day. The two took turns showering before having a few more drinks and turning in for the night, deciding to get an early start the following morning.

When morning did come, it was cold again, the thermostat for outside reading twenty-six at seven in the morning. Dean groaned as he saw that. Neither of them was looking forward to being out in this chill. It wasn’t like where it snowed. That cold was tolerable. The cold here though, was bone-chilling, sinking right through your skin, into your muscles, and it felt as though it was trying to freeze your bones. They both knew their suits weren’t going to keep them warm enough but had to keep up appearances, at least for now.

Sam continued on his side of the road while Dean went back across the street. He hit the store next to Wal-Mart and sighed at another dead-end. Then he hit the smaller businesses in the plaza. He grabbed himself another cup of hot coffee before he headed across the street around one. Dean decided to hit the biggest store there first, a Ross. He put on his professional smile as he headed inside, then up to the cashier.

“Agent Criss, FBI. May I speak with your manager please?” he asked the woman, who wasn’t bad looking, so smiling came easy for Dean.

The cashier spoke into the headset she was wearing asking Tay to come to the front of the store while Dean stood there and surveyed the place. There weren’t many customers, probably less than fifteen at the moment. Some with kids, some without. He remembered being here, questioning the employees four months ago, finding nothing then. He was pulled out of his thoughts when a woman approached him.

“Agent Criss. Nice to see you again, I think,” Tay told him, smiling.

He smirked down at her. She was attractive, nicely built, well proportioned with black wavey hair just past her shoulders, dark skin, and very kissable lips, “Didn’t think you’d remember me,” he replies.

She chuckled, “It’s not like we get a lot of FBI in here, especially one as good-looking as you,” she teased him. She was married but still complimented him, “What can I help you with?”

Dean’s smirk only grew but he decided to keep it professional, at least for now, “I just need to talk to your employees.”

“Alright. Do you want to use the office again? Or… can you do that while they’re on the floor?” Tay asked him, wondering if she’d have to supervise moving people around.

“Na. I think they can keep working. They’re just routine questions,” he replies.

“Well, if you need anything, just have one of the cashiers call for me. I have to help with unloading the truck we just got,” she tells him before heading to the back stockroom.

The employee roaster consisted of mostly women, which Dean found interesting. He started with the cashier since she didn’t have any customers, asking if she felt cold patches in the store, saw flickering lights, or smelled sulfur. She answered no to all of those so he headed further into the store.

When he got past the clothing racks he stopped though, watching something rather interesting happening with what looked like four employees. All he could do was attempt to keep from laughing at the antics taking place. One woman was holding a phone, seeming to be filming the other three. Another woman, tiny in frame was laying on a small sitting sofa, posing like a royal woman or something completely opposite that. Then there was the woman and the young man at either end of the small sofa, carrying it as if they were her servants.

“And here we have the amazing Sarah, modeling just how comfortable this beauty is as her servants obediently carry her through the store. Not only is it lightweight, but will give you the feeling of royalty, even if you don’t have servants to carry you around on it,” the woman holding the phone said in an almost infomercial tone.

The two carrying it were doing their best to keep straight faces, as was the woman lying on the thing. Dean couldn’t contain the small bit of laughter as he watched them. They had almost made it to where the other larger store items belonged on the floor before the four erupted in laughter.

“That will do servants,” Sarah said as royally as she could, before the two set her down, now laughing so hard they could barely stand. Now all four of them were laughing. 

He cleared his throat as he approached them, watching as they attempted to look professional. The one holding the camera quickly saved the video and passed it to Sarah, who turned it off and pocketed it. 

“Excuse me. I just have a few questions, if you’re not too busy,” Dean told them, barely able to keep from chuckling at them. They looked like kids who’d been caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

“We’re not gonna get fired for that, are we?” The male asked him.

Dean laughed a little, “I’m not here about your antics, if that’s what you're asking,” he replied. The four of them let out a sigh of relief at that, relaxing a little. “Have any of you felt any cold spots, seen lights flickering, or smelled any sulfur?” he asked them.

The girl, whom Dean learned by her nametag, that was holding the phone was Kendel, the one on the sofa was Sarah, the other Maria, and the male was Angel. All of them said no to his questions. It was the way Maria had said no, as well as her demeanor change, even if it was slight, that caught his attention. Not a single person out of all the times they’d been to the area had even flinched oddly at their questions. 

He fixed his gaze on her, a knowing in his eyes, “You sure?” he asked again, raising an eyebrow.

She smiled a bit, more like smirked, “Yup,” she popped the ‘p’, “Things are pretty plain around here, unless its monsoon season. That’s about the only time we get flickering lights, but that’s just a power thing, due to the electricity in the air.”

“Uh-huh,” was all he said, deciding he wanted to keep more of an eye on her, perhaps even follow her. He’d been reading people his whole life, and he knew she was hiding something, he just wasn’t sure what. It was a gut feeling he couldn’t ignore, as they hadn’t steered him wrong in the past.

The four of them headed back to the stockroom, and Dean questioned the other employees, no luck with any of them. Then he called his brother, “You busy?” he asked as he headed out of the store.

“Just finished here, why?” Sam replied.

“Meet me back at the hotel. I think I have a lead. It’s weak, but it’s something,” Dean explained, walking quickly.

----------------------------------------- Chapter 3

Link to the series Master List

[beardedmrbean]

Derek Chauvin has returned to prison after the former Minneapolis police officer was stabbed 22 times by a fellow inmate, his attorney said.

Chauvin, who was convicted in the 2020 murder of George Floyd, was allegedly stabbed with an “improvised knife” on Nov. 24 while in the law library at Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona, by inmate John Turscak, 52, according to a criminal complaint. 

Chauvin’s attorney Gregory M. Erickson, said in a statement Sunday that he spoke with Chauvin’s family Saturday and “they confirmed that this medical condition has improved to the extent that he has been removed from the trauma care facility at a local Tucson hospital and returned to prison custody for his follow up care.”

“His family is very concerned about the facility’s capacity to protect Derek from further harm. They remain unassured that any changes have been made to the faulty procedures that allowed Derek’s attack to occur in the first place,” Erickson added.

Turscak has been charged with attempted murder, assault with intent to commit murder, assault with a dangerous weapon and assault resulting in serious bodily injury in connection with the stabbing, according to federal prosecutors. Attorney information for Turscak was not available Monday.

He told federal prosecutors he chose that day to attack Chauvin, the day after Thanksgiving commonly known as “Black Friday,” to symbolize the Black Lives Matter movement and the “Black Hand” symbol of the Mexican Mafia.

Turscak also told corrections officers that he would have killed Chauvin had they not responded to the attack so quickly, according to the criminal complaint.

"Derek’s family did receive confirmation from Derek himself that the facts contained in the charging document are accurate; the attack was made in the law library, where the perpetrator attacked Derek from behind with an improvised knife," Erickson said.

The attorney echoed Chauvin’s family's safety concerns about the prison, saying when he tried to get information regarding “changes in the prison’s procedures”, he was told to make a Freedom of Information Act request. 

"It remains a mystery how the perpetrator was able to obtain and possess dangerous materials [that were able to be formed into an improvised knife], and how a guard was unable to reach and apprehend the perpetrator until Derek had been stabbed twenty-two times," Erickson said. "Why was Derek allowed into the law library without a guard in close enough proximity to stop a possible attack? His family continues to wonder."

"We will continue to try to ascertain what additional measures are being made to protect Derek and will pursue any avenues available under the law to ensure his continued safety," he added.

Chauvin is serving a 22 1/2-year sentence for kneeling on Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes while Floyd said he couldn’t breathe and went limp. The former officer is simultaneously serving a 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights and a 22 1/2-year state sentence for second-degree murder.