#wilmington island

[brandneaux]

[xbabyjah]

Kitchen Pantry

[earlycuntsets]

mcr shows on youtube pt. 1 (2002 - 2005)

-> pt. 2 (2005 - 2007)

-> pt. 3 (2007 - 2011)

-> pt. 4 (2011 - 2023)

02/16/2002 american legion garfield nj – sarah lewitinn

03/01/2002 loop lounge passaic nj – ATØMIC JĒY

06/14/2002 club krome south amboy nj – spaceyrayrun

06/29/2002 harmony grange hall no. 12 wilmington de us – spaceyraygun

07/05/2002 american legion – camp merritt post 21 cresskill nj usa – spaceyraygun

07/19/2002 loop lounge passaic park nj – spaceyraygun

08/03/2002 rexplex elizabeth nj – spaceyraygun

08/16/2002 maxwell’s hoboken nj – george koroneos

08/17/2002 alissas basement kinnelon nj – spaceyraygun

09/14/2002 electric factory philadelphia pa – spaceyraygun

12/02/2002 fireside bowl chicago il – brad nolan video on plentyoflegs

12/18/2002 trocadero theater philadelphia pa – spaceyraygun

12/23/2002 factory 324 roanoake va – panterathrashfan13

1/11/2003 fireside bowl chicago il – brad nolan videography

02/20/2003 mississippi nights st louis mo – brad nolan videography

02/21/2003 beaumont club kansas city mo – brad nolan videography

02/28/2003 boonton elks lodge boonton nj – user: random stuff

03/23/2003 club krome south amboy nj – douglas carl

05/14/2003 north star bar philadelphia pa – deadhoarse

05/23/2003 imusicast oakland ca – skyline studios – oakland

06/08/2003 bloomfield avenue cafe montclair nj – spaceyraygun

06/26/2003 the knitting factory nyc ny – luxlillian

07/26/2003 the chameleon club lancaster pa – spaceyraygun

08/18/2003 9:30 club washington dc – TEPMIHATOP_HvH

08/19/2003 trocadero theater philadelphia pa – spaceyraygun

10/23/2003 downtime nyc ny – spaceyraygun

10/31/2003 south amboy nj halloween show – user: MCR stuff and things

11/14/2003 university of connecticut-stamford stamford ct – user: random stuff

12/14/2003 irving plaza nyc ny – spaceyraygun

05/17/2004 des moines iowa house of bricks – 515 archive

06/02/2004 manchester university manchester uk – TEMIHATOP-HvH

06/08/2004 vintage vinyl fords nj – spaceyraygun

06/09/2004 newbury comics shrewsbury ma us – punkstermann

06/10/2004 north star bar philadelphia pa – spaceyraygun

08/08/2004 summer sonic festival tokyo japan – dusted out on route guano

11/08/2004 hard rock live orlando fl – ryanninja

11/13/2004 unknown venue orange ca – TEPMIHATOP_HvH

12/12/2004 universal amphitheatre universal city ca – andrea amador

01/17/2005 trl nyc ny – patty8239

02/03/2005 la boule noire paris – the academy is my beautiful romance

03/04/2005 arrow hall mississauga ontario ca – the academy is my beautiful romance

03/05/2005 john labatt centre london ontario ca – the academy is my beautiful romance

03/29/2005 arco arena sacramento ca – moranestes

05/21/2005 kroq weenie roast irvine ca – the academy is my beautiful romance

05/27/2005 wxdx summer kick off chevrolet amphitheater pittsburgh pa – neeeeonafterglow

06/06/2005 le trabendo paris france – the academy is my beautiful romance

06/10/2005 download festival donington park castle donington uk (interview) – TEPMIHATOP_HvH

06/25/2005 warped tour reliant park houston tx – ibanez27

06/27/2005 hard rock live orlando fl – ATØMIC JĒY

07/02/2005 32/20 warped tour pier san francisco ca – the academy is my beautiful romance

07/12/2005 warped tour thunderbird stadium vancouver ca – kristi haubrick

07/30/2005 warped tour molson park barrie ontanio ca – loveorsympathy

07/31/2005 warped tour silverdome pontiac mi – nightrain5565

08/01/2005 warped tour post gazette pavilion burgettstown pa – price family homestead

08/05/2005 warped tour vinoy park st. petersburg fl – rogo117

08/10/2005 warped tour nissan pavilion bristol va – the academy is my beautiful romance

08/11/2005 warped tour ford pavilion montage mountain scranton pa – the academy is my beautiful romance

08/12/2005 warped tour tweeter center camden nj – katemcilwaine

08/13/2005 warped tour randall’s island park randalls island nyc ny – the academy is my beautiful romance

08/14/2005 raceway park englishtown nj – readydeady

08/23/2005 the underworld london england – leila vardar

08/31/2005 melkweg the max amsterdam netherlands – user: random stuff

09/01/2005 abart zurich switzerland – mychemrock1

09/03/2005 idroscalo segrate italy – nacho en tour

09/15/2005 promowest pavilion columbus west ohio – andreaflowers

09/17/2005 eastern michigan university convocation center ypsilanti mi – amanda

09/27.2005 mesa amphitheatre mesa arizona – mark zeta

10/02/2005 event center arena san jose ca – jason is lost in japan

10/08/2005 gwinnett center duluth ga – living with ghosts

10/10/2005 revolution live ft lauderdale fl – natnizzle

10/14/2005 tweeter center camden nj – decoemergency

-> pt. 2 (2005 - 2007)

-> pt. 3 (2007 - 2011)

-> pt. 4 (2011 - 2023)

[gh0stsp1d3r]

ℳ𝒶𝓎𝒷𝒶𝓃𝓀𝓈 𝓈𝒾𝓈𝓉ℯ𝓇

Chapter 6- just like your father

Series masterlist

Warnings- once again not too much rafe): I’m trying to get more rafe in the next parts, the readers drunk the whole time basically lol

“Now a live update from the sheriffs department.”

“Yeah, after six weeks, the five teens that had been missing from Kildare county have returned, been reunited with their families.” Rafe went closer to the tv, sitting down and staring out. “We’re still waiting for details about their journey. But I’m sure they have quite a tale to tell.”

“We also got word that the father of one of the teens, John B Routledge, who’s been presumed dead for a year now, has also returned live and well. Wonders never cease. Right now, we’re just trying to get those kids settled back into school, with their families. They’ve been through a lot.”

“The teens were down in Kildare island with two other Kildare teens, Sarah Cameron and Y/N Maybank.” The sheriff spoke.

Rafes eyes widened at the mention of you and his sister.

“Sarah’s the daughter of disgraced real estate magnate, Ward Cameron, who confessed to the murder of Peterkin two months ago. y/n is the daughter of Luke Maybank, who is also presumed missing after escaping prison.”

Rafe watched as both of your pictures were put on screen, he recognized yours to be one of you you posted to your instagram, you at the beach. He was in the background, he noticed upon looking closer. Then, a picture of your brother, you and your dad.

You looked at the tv screen, scoffing at the picture they put up when they said your dad’s name. A picture of you, JJ and your dad. It was JJ’s first day of school, you remember that day as if it was your own first day of school.

You gripped the can harder, heavily sighing and leaning back in the chair. Yeah, you’d need more than one drink today.

“When I was there, Rafe was talking about how the cross was his. Not- not Ward’s.” You told them all, hiccuping after and covering your mouth.

“Are you- are you seriously drunk right now?” Pope asked, all of them noticing the way you slurred your words.

“Fuck off. I’m an adult. Can do whatever I want.” You said with a childish giggle.

“It’s like 10 am in the morning.”

“Yo!” Kiara sapped her fingers. “Can we please get back on the topic?”

“Right. And he’s coming into Wilmington tonight at eight. It’s being shipped by train from like… R.. Ra… Raleigh I think? I dunno.”

“You get any other information?” Pope asked.

“Uh, y/n got the cargo number.” Kiara spoke, picking up the paper.

“Okay, well, that’s a start.”

“I mean, they’re definitely fencing that shit off as we speak. So we should probably get a move on.” JJ said, watching you down the rest of the can, and grab a 4th one next to you from your spot on the floor.

“Sarah, you hear from John B?”

“No, I mean, he’s probably off somewhere with his dad. But the problem is they have the Twinkie.”

“Our transportation.”

“I have a car, you know? It’s a hunk of shit, but it works.” You shrugged.

All of them raised their eyebrows at that. “It’s back at Ricky’s. I should probably go talk to him anyways.”

They all were hesitant, you could tell.

“I’m- I’m your only fuckin’ option, so, my car or nothing.”

“She’s right.” JJ told them, already hopping on his bike.

“Ricky?” You shouted when you opened the door. He wasn’t home, you sighed, taking the keys off the counter and stumbling back outside.

“He not home?” JJ asked, furrowing his eyebrows.

“Nope.” You told him, locking the door. You go into the car, trying to get it started. But it never turns on, you groan in annoyance, fumbling with the keys, and trying again.

“Goddamnit!” You laughed, slamming your fist onto the dashboard and going out.

“It’s… not working.”

“Not working? What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know! It’s not fucking starting.” You shrugged.

JJ threw his hands up in defeat.

“Alright. That’s okay. We can.. try my dads.” Pope said.

“And I’ll try to see if my parents will.” Kiara spoke.

You ended up going with JJ and Kiara to her parents.

“Jesus, Cleo was not wrong. It does look like the White House.” You mumbled when you entered. You drunkenly stumbled up the steps, JJ rolling his eyes and eventually just helping you up once you almost fell.

“We just found out it’s… it’s gonna be in Wilmington tonight.”

“Okay, and the cross is Popes family-“

“Popes family heirloom.” Kiara finished.

“Shit, this house is nice. Think we could just…?” You told JJ, grabbing an expensive bracelet sitting on the counter and pocketing it.

An idea popped into his head when you did that. If they don’t wanna give them the keys, he can take them.

“He’s alive!” Kiara argued. “JJ.” She turned, the cutlery clanking as he put it away guiltily, getting caught messing with it.

“Do rich people really need to use like… fancy everything? Like fancy plates? Is that necessary?” You mumbled, mostly to yourself as you took another sip.

“A little help?”

He put his hand up, counting off his fingers.

“Wards alive in the Carribean. He’s living off the loot he stole from us, and, uh, yeah, he’s flying across to Wilmington.”

“I was-“ you covered your mouth when you hiccuped again. “With them during the whole thingie. Basically I fell into the water…” you imitated water splashing with your hands.

“And it was like ‘ahhh! Now I’m stuck with my ex boyfriend who’s also crazy on an island, ahh!’ And then we went to some vacation home he has, and I saw Ward and he was like ‘sup, y/n. I’m alive.’ And that’s what happened.” You nodded to yourself, all of them staring at you dumbfounded.

“Give me a break, man.” Kiara’s dad spoke.

“Yeah, you’re right. What do I know? Just saw it with my own two eyes.” You shrugged, rolling your eyes and taking another sip from the bottle. “So did Kiara and JJ but, whatever.”

“I’m skeptical, okay? I am skeptical, y/n as in I think it’s all bullshit. And I think you’ve been led astray, Kiara. And you, JJ, Y/N- let’s get this out in the open.”

“Just take it down a bit-“ her mom tried.

“No. Let me tell you something, you need to understand that I do get it.”

“Sure you do.” You and JJ said in unison, you both laughing at that.

“Do you hear me?”

“Sure. Sure.”

“I like you, guys, and I bet you’re fricking fun to hang with, and to ditch school with, go down to the break, and.. drink beer,” he directed that last sentence to you, eyeing the can in your hand.

“because I was once just like you both. I didn’t think that anything mattered, thought I could make up any bullshit story and these stupid kooks would believe it. But then I learned about hard work.”

“Yeah, well, hard work doesn’t get you shit if you’re like us. I mean- shit, compared to me, you have no clue what hard work is like.” You spat, pointing to yourself. He was getting to close to JJ for your comfort.

He narrowed his eyes at you. “And about what really mattered. All I care about, all that I care about is my daughter. That’s it. And all I know is that she was a lot better off before she met you and your friends.” He said, this sentence directed to JJ.

“Dad, I was never better off!” Kiara argued, you looked at JJ, shaking your head when you saw his reaction. You were gonna kill this guy.

“I was miserable.”

“Miserable? No, no. No!” He shouted, turning to you and JJ.

“No, these pogues have ruined my daughter’s life.” He shouted in your face, you stood in front of JJ, trying your best to protect him.

“Didn’t mean any disrespect, Mr. Carrera.” You told him, turning to usher JJ out.

“Y’all have a good day.” JJ spoke, both of you heading to the door.

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing?” Kiara asked.

“Protecting my daughter.”

“Can we please-“

“Wait a second. Everybody says it, they are liars and thief’s!” Her dad shouted.

You and JJ stopped in your tracks.

“They’re just like their father! I mean, one of them is already drunk off their ass!”

The two words neither of you wanted to hear.

You looked at JJ, who held back tears at the words. You held your own back, throwing the rest of the can, looking at it pour onto the hardwood floor.

You grabbed the keys from the tray, you looked around again, shrugging before grabbing a jacket on the coat hanger, as well as some shoes.

“Wanna talk shit, you’re gonna get bit, right?” You mumbled to yourself, shrugging and following JJ down the steps.

“Is she.. talking with Topper?” Pope asked, all of them turning to you and Topper at the bar.

“He didn’t want me to say anything, but he’s a fucking mess.” Topper said with a laugh, you laughed with him.

“Yeah, well, he was an asshole. So…” you said, taking the shot you ordered.

“Believe me, I know.” He told you,

“Hey, Jayj.”

“What?”

“I bet you Topper has a way to transport the cross.” Pope spoke.

“Actually, Popes right. He does have a rig.”

“No.” Sarah argued.

“Yes.”

“Yes, come on.”

“No, absolutely not.”

“What are we talking about?” You asked them, coming up behind them suddenly.

“Sarah, you already got him whipped anyway, right? So why don’t you just take one for the team?”

“What would John B say?” She said.

“I think John B will completely understand. Think about the circumstances, it’s about treasure.”

“We can handle John B. Just talk to him.”

“Why do I feel like I’m gonna regret this?” Topper spoke, all of you happy when you saw her hug him.

You ended up falling asleep on the boat. Your eyes shut as they all came up with plans.

You can’t even escape him in your dreams. Because when you fell asleep, a fond memory of the two of you popped up in your mind.

“Shit, slow down.” He laughed, grabbing onto your hand as you ran down, pushing past people and making your way down straight to the floor.

“Can’t believe I let you drag me into this shit.” He said with a laugh when the band came on stage and cheers erupted.

He watched you while you paid close attention to the band. And when your guys song came on, he was told to sing with you, he hesitated but eventually did.

“Got the music in you, baby. Tell me why. You've been locked in here forever. And you just can't say goodbye. Your lips, my lips. Apocalypse.”

You both sung to each other, you staring at him with the most love and adoration he’s ever seen, and him staring at you with the most love anyone’s ever seen him have.

You both leaned in, but before your lips connected…

You woke up, quickly sitting up and groaning, wiping the sleep from your eyes.

“Jesus. Think I drunk too much earlier. I’m going crazy.” You told them, all of them turning to look at you now.

Taglist

@cassie0sstuff @rafesgiirl @fals3-g0d @tiaamberxx @callsignwidow @saintnourah

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 22, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 23, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris has continued to rack up endorsements and delegates since President Biden’s surprise announcement yesterday that he would not accept the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. As of tonight, Harris has the support of at least 2,471 delegates, more than the 1,976 she will need to secure the nomination.

Endorsements have also continued to mount, with the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Victory Fund, and the Latino Victory Fund all endorsing her. 

Labor unions have also backed her: the AFL-CIO, which represents 12.5 million workers, endorsed Harris. So did the Service Employees International Union, with 2 million workers, as well as the United Steelworkers, which represents 850,000 metal workers and miners, and the Communications Workers of America. Other unions endorsing Harris include the American Federation of Teachers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. 

Money continues to roll in. Since Biden’s announcement, Harris and the Democrats have raised about $250 million in donations and pledges. More than 888,000 were from small-dollar donors. Volunteers are also joining the Harris campaign, which said that more than 28,000 people have signed up to work on the campaign in the day since Biden passed the torch. Today, Beyoncé gave Harris permission to use her song “Freedom” as a campaign song, and TikTok users have jumped on the Harris trend.

Harris is keeping some of the key infrastructure of Biden’s campaign. She has announced that Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez-Rodriguez and Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon will remain in their positions. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer announced today that she, too, will stay on as co-chair for Harris’s campaign as she was for Biden’s.

Harris spoke today at campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, smoothing the transition from Biden’s campaign to her own. “I know it’s been a rollercoaster and we’re all filled with so many mixed emotions about this,” Harris said. “We love Joe and Jill. We really do. They truly are like family.” Biden called in to the meeting from Delaware, where he is isolating as he recovers from Covid, to thank the staff. “I know it’s hard, because you’ve poured your heart and soul into me, to help us win this thing,” Biden told them, but added: “The name changed at the top of the ticket. The mission hasn’t changed at all.” Biden told Harris: “I’m watching you kid, I love you. You’re the best, kid.”

Harris went on to indicate that she will be taking the fight for the presidency aggressively to Trump, highlighting his criminal behavior. “Before I was elected as Vice President, before I was elected as United States Senator,” she said today, “I was the elected Attorney General, as I've mentioned, to California, and before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump's type.”

She was clear, though, that the fight is not just about Trump; it is about “two different versions of what we see as the future of our country…. Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. To a time before many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights. But we believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.” She promised to continue the work of building the middle class, protect abortion rights, enact commonsense gun safety legislation, and protect voting rights. She contrasted the Democrats’ vision of “a country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law” with the Republicans’: “a country of chaos, fear, and hate.”

Biden’s announcement and Harris’s rapid consolidation of support and money appear to have blindsided the Trump-Vance campaign. MAGA Republicans have responded with scattershot arguments that suggest they had not thought through a scenario in which Biden would step down, an omission so astonishing it perhaps suggests they could not imagine a presumptive nominee voluntarily giving up power. 

Without a coherent strategy, MAGA Republicans today have been all over the map, suggesting among other things that Biden’s voluntarily stepping down from his presumptive nomination is a “coup” and that Harris is a “D[iversity] E[quity and] I[nclusion] hire.” 

For a party that is offering voters a popular set of policies, the opposing party’s nominee shouldn’t matter all that much, but Trump policies and the Trump campaign’s Project 2025 are both so unpopular that operatives intended to run not on policy but by firing up their base against Biden himself. In The Atlantic yesterday, journalist Tim Alberta explained that the entire Trump campaign apparatus was focused on Biden and that putting extremist Ohio senator J.D. Vance on the ticket “was something of a luxury meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter.”

Now the energy appears to have shifted. As Anne Applebaum wrote today in The Atlantic, operatives staged the Republican National Convention of just last week to project strength and power, and Trump’s rambling and incoherent performance there seemed “deranged, sinister, and frightening.” Now, Applebaum wrote, “it just looks deranged,” as Biden’s decision to step away from power contrasts powerfully with Trump’s desperate attempts to cling to power with the Big Lie while he calls up his threadbare descriptions of national carnage.

The change Applebaum identified dovetailed neatly with a new political action committee started by conservative lawyer George Conway to highlight Trump’s “mental unfitness for office.” Frustrated by the apparent unwillingness of the press to cover Trump’s mental health while it focused on President Biden’s, Conway formed the “Anti-Psychopath PAC” to highlight Trump’s mental state. “The failure to treat Trump’s behavior as pathological has led the media and the country, perversely, to treat it as normal,” Conway told The Independent, and said that Project 2025 should be seen as an extension of Trump’s malignant narcissism “because basically he wants to turn the government into a mechanism for retribution.”

A post on Trump’s social media feed tonight suggested that Trump recognizes that being the oldest candidate ever nominated for the presidency is a campaign issue. The post said that “Lyin’ Kamala Harris…has absolutely terrible pole [sic] numbers against a fine and brilliant young man named DONALD J. TRUMP! Be careful what you wish for, Democrats???”

Today, Trump’s vice presidential pick Vance gave his first campaign speech at his former high school in Middletown, Ohio. There, dressed in a blue suit with a red tie that echoed Trump’s signature look, Vance spoke of his history in the town and promised that he and Trump are “ready to save America.” But his lack of experience on the campaign trail showed in his delivery, and the Fox News Channel, which was covering the speech, cut away from it while he was speaking. 

Media outlets gave more attention to the Ohio state senator who preceded Vance, George Lang, who began a chant of “fight, fight, fight” and told the audience: "I believe wholeheartedly Donald Trump and Butler County's JD Vance are the last chance to save our country politically. I'm afraid if we lose this one, it's going to take a civil war to save the country, and it will be saved." He later posted on social media that he regretted his “divisive remarks.” 

Later in the day, Vance spoke in Radford, Virginia, where he said that “[h]istory will remember Joe Biden as not just a quitter, which he is, but as one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States of America.” He continued: “Kamala Harris is a million times worse and everybody knows it. She signed up for every single one of Joe Biden’s failures, and she lied about his mental capacity to serve as president.”

Josh Dawsey and Michael Scherer of the Washington Post reported today on a different kind of jockeying in the 2024 presidential race. Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has recently been in talks with Trump about dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump in exchange for a position in a Trump administration. Kennedy, who opposes vaccines, is interested in a portfolio that covers health and medical issues.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[lonestarbattleship]

Vought OS2U Kingfisher salvaged and fully restored and ready to be put on display aboard Battleship North Carolina memorial at Wilmington, North Carolina. "The plane was dedicated on June 25, 1971. Salvaged from Mount Buxton, Calvert Island, British Columbia, in the spring of 1964, after having been there since it crashed there on August 20, 1942. The OS2U was rebuilt by the members of the Vought Aeronautics' quarter century club."

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command: NH 73763

[lonestarflight]

"Ensign Mac. J. Roebuck standing by his wrecked 'Kingfisher' about August 1942. He was piloting the plane when it crashed on Mount Buxton, Calvert Island, British Columbia, on 20 August 1942, and later assisted in the salvaging of it's instruments and engine. The plane's airframe was recovered by a Royal Canadian air force salvage team in 1964. After being reconstructed by the Vought Aeronautics' quarter century club, the OS2U was placed on display aboard the USS NORTH CAROLINA (BB-55) memorial at Wilmington, North Carolina, and was dedicated on 25 June 1971."

Date: late August 1942

Naval History and Heritage Command: NH 73760

[reality-detective]

TOP 100 US RIOTED CITIES!

I'm sure if anything goes down from all the people who have crossed over our borders, the Military will have everything under control swiftly. You may want to avoid these cities if anything goes down, and for your safety, please stay away from the military if you see them. This list was pulled and organized from a NY Times recent article listing the top 100 prior-rioted cities, for quick reference. They are 👇

(THOSE WITH * ARE TOP 25 CITIES JUST ISSUED BY THE WHITE HOUSE ON 2/9/24):

Alabama

Huntsville

Mobile

Alaska

Arizona

* Phoenix

Arkansas

Bentonville

Conway

Little Rock

California

Beverly Hills

Fontana

La Mesa

* Los Angeles

* Oakland

Sacramento

* San Diego

* San Francisco

San Jose

San Luis Obispo

Santa Ana

Santa Rosa

Vallejo

Walnut Creek

Colorado

Colorado Springs

* Denver

Connecticut

Delaware

Florida

Fort Lauderdale

Jacksonville

Lakeland

* Miami

Orlando

West Palm Beach

Georgia

* Atlanta

Athens

Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Aurora

Bloomington

Rockford

Indiana

Fort Wayne

Hammond

Indianapolis

Lafayette

Iowa

Des Moines

Iowa City

Waterloo

Kansas

Wichita

Kentucky

Louisville

Louisiana

* New Orleans

Maine

Maryland

Massachusetts

* Boston

Michigan

* Detroit

Grand Rapids

Kalamazoo

Lansing

Minnesota

Duluth

Minneapolis

* St. Paul

Mississippi

Missouri

Ferguson

Kansas City

St. Louis

Montana

Nebraska

Lincoln

Omaha

Nevada

Las Vegas

Reno

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New Mexico

Albuquerque

New York

Albany

* Buffalo

* New York City

North Carolina

Ashville

Charlotte

Raleigh

Wilmington

North Dakota

Fargo

Ohio

Cincinnati

Cleveland

Columbus

Dayton

Springfield

Toledo

Oklahoma

Oklahoma City

Tulsa

Oregon

Eugene

Portland

Salem

Pennsylvania

Erie

* Philadelphia

Pittsburgh

Rhode Island

Providence

South Carolina

Charleston

Columbia

South Dakota

Sioux Falls

Tennessee

Chattanooga

Murfreesboro

Nashville

Texas

* Arlington

Austin

* Dallas

* El Paso

Fort Worth

* Houston

Lewisville

* San Antonio

Utah

* Salt Lake City

Vermont

Virginia

Fredericksburg

Richmond

Virginia Beach

Washington

Bellevue

* Seattle

Spokane

West Virginia

Wisconsin

Green Bay

Madison

Milwaukee

Wyoming

[hometoursandotherstuff]

1857 Italianate in Wilmington, North Carolina is known as the "Parsley House," but affectionately called "The White House." (Since it's gray, I'm guessing it refers to the interior that they redid completely in white.) Firstly, I don't care for the brick wall in front. 4bds, 3ba, $780K. See what you think of the remodel.

Hmmm. I can kind of visualize how grand this entrance was- the fireplace and stairs, alone. I think they were maybe going for a cottage look? I would never paint an old wooden floor white, from a cleaning standpoint alone.

In this room, they're going for a tropical island look. What in the world possessed them to put up a bamboo ceiling? This is an Italianate.

I was wondering if this was the original dining room, and I think it is, b/c of the fireplace. It's hidden, and you can barely see it.

I'm so confused wandering this home b/c everything is so white, I'm snow blind. The kitchen is this way, thru the hall, b/c I can tell by the signs.

Small sunporch.

Ah, here it is. Nautical/tropical vibe going on.

Okay, we seem to be in a back hall.

Here's a family room. So many tables. My shins. Why is there a towel hanger on that lamp table?

Bedroom off the family room.

I like when they hide the shower in a closet, but that step to get in is too high.

Nice little office for two.

Back hall to the garden.

Upstairs primary bedroom.

Nice vintage bath has a little color to it.

Secondary bedroom has a little tropical vibe.

Another bath. Interesting use of coatracks.

Looks like a sunporch with an office and laundry.

Look at this rooftop deck. Climb out right thru the roof.

Home is a corner property near the Cape Fear River.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/224-S-3rd-St-Wilmington-NC-28401/54308913_zpid/

[ourshadowstallerthanoursoul]

An audience with... John Paul Jones

(from Uncut, April 2010 - link)

You’re stuck on a deserted island, you have one instrument you can bring. It is: a) piano, b) bass or c) mandolin? (Gary Attersley, Ontario, Canada)

Oh… that’s horrible! I’ll probably get Hugh Manson – the guy who builds all my bass guitars – to build me some monstrous instrument that encapsulated all three! Hugh and his brother Andy Manson once actually designed me a triple-necked guitar with 12-string guitar, six-string guitar and mandolin on it! Andy also designed a triple-necked mandolin. But I guess if it really came down to it on a desert island, it would have to be the piano, because you can do so much on it. You’re a whole band. The bass is not much fun on your own.

John, it’s so good to see you so engaged with today. Any advice for old farts who can’t move on? (Andrew Loog Oldham)

Who are you calling an old fart? I dunno, Andy, you tell me! Ha ha. He’s done a good job of staying up to date. Andrew, of course, gave me the name John Paul Jones. I was John Baldwin, until Andrew saw a poster for the French film version of John Paul Jones. I thought it ’d look great in CinemaScope, as I wanted to do music for films. I imagined it saying “Music By John Paul Jones”, over the whole screen. I never realised then that he was the Horatio Nelson of America!

I know that you’ve been getting heavily into bluegrass lately – who are some of your favourite bluegrass artists of all time? (Ryan Godek, Wilmington, Delaware)

Apart from Bill Monroe, you mean? Oh, there’s loads. I’m friends with the Del McCoury band, I love that style of classic bluegrass. I love Sam Bush’s Newgrass stuff. And of course there’s Nickel Creek, Chris Feely, Mike Marshall. I love it all, really. One thing I like about bluegrass is that you don’t require amplifiers, drums and trucks. You can pull an instrument out of a box and get on with some instant music making. I carry a mandolin around wherever I go. I also like the fact bluegrass musicians play more than one instrument. There’s a tradition of them swapping instruments. In bluegrass bands I swap between double bass, fiddle and banjo.

One Butthole Surfers anecdote, please? (Dave Grohl)

Ha! I was brought in to produce the Butthole Surfers’ 1993 album, Independent Worm Saloon. I guess it was to give it a heavy rock vibe, but it didn’t work like that. They were actually incredibly hard-working in the studio, but I do recall running up a phenomenal bar-bill at the San Rafael studio. And then there was Gibby [Haynes, Butthole Surfers’ frontman] and his… eccentric studio behaviour. Gibby did one vocal take shouting into his guitar. He held it out in front of his face and screamed at it. Ha! He was trying to find out if it picked up through the pick-ups, which it kind of did. And that was pretty good.

How’s the violin coming along? (Sean, Berkshire)

I started about three years ago. With the guitar, or the piano, you can sound OK quite quickly. With the violin, it takes much longer. Once you get past the first six months of scraping, of muttering to yourself, “What is this fucking horrible noise on my shoulder?” you get the odd musical bit, and you think, ‘Oh, this is starting to get good.’ And you continue with it for a while. I’m getting into country fiddle playing, Celtic folk songs, a bit of swing. Basic stuff, but very satisfying.

Why not record a second ‘Automatic For The People’ with REM? (Franz Greul, Austria)

They haven’t asked me! But doing the string arrangements for that album was a great experience, actually. They sent me the demos of their songs, and we went into a studio in Atlanta, with members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. They were great songs, something you can really get your teeth into as an arranger. And I’ve been good friends with them ever since.

How did you first meet Josh Homme? And is he still a notorious party monster? (Rob Hirst, Kippax, Leeds)

Well, I think we’ve all calmed down rather a lot. Dave introduced me to Josh at his 40th birthday party. It was a ridiculous themed place where they have jousting with knights. As Dave said, it was like somewhere you’d have your 14th birthday party. Or maybe even your 4th. Anyway, Dave sat Josh and I together for a blind date. Which was reasonably embarrassing for both of us, surrounded by people going “prithee this” and challenging each other to duels. But we survived the trauma and went into the studio the next day, and just started jamming. And I knew immediately it was going to be something special.

If Them Crooked Vultures had Spice Girls-like nicknames what would they be? (Paul Jones, Liverpool)

Dave would be Smiley Vulture. He can’t stop grinning. Josh would be Slinky Vulture. He’s a slinky kinda guy. And I’d be Speedy, I guess. Or Jumpy. So there you go. Smiley, Slinky and Speedy. Or does that sound more like the dwarfs?

I remember you being a pretty funky bass genius back in the day! What memories do you have of those sessions? (Donovan)

The sessions with Don and Mickie Most were great, because we were given a free hand. I usually got leeway, because I was the sort of Motown/Stax specialist, so producers in the mid ’60s would get me in for cover versions of American records, and none of them could write bass parts convincingly enough, so I was London’s answer to James Jamerson, I guess! And I was certainly encouraged to get kinda… funky when I worked with Donovan.

How did it feel to see Jimmy Page and Robert Plant venture off in their own project in the ‘90s without mentioning a word of it to you? (Danny Luscombe, Hull)

Oh yeah, I was pissed off about it. The surprise was in not being told. It’s ancient history now, but it was a bit annoying to find out about it while reading the papers. It came just after Robert and I had been discussing the idea of doing an Unplugged project. Then I’m on tour in Germany with Diamanda Galás, I turn on the TV and see Robert and Jimmy doing it, with someone else playing all my parts! I was pissed off at the time. You would be, woudn’t you? But… it’s all in the past, isn’t it?

Did you listen to much work by Josh Homme or Dave Grohl before you were contacted in relation to joining Them Crooked Vultures, and if so, how did you honestly rate it? (Ralph Ryan, Lisronagh, County Tipperary)

I did like the Foo Fighters and Queens Of The Stone Age, before I’d met either of them. There’s a tendency for people – especially musicians from my generation – to say that there has been this terrible decline in musicianship, that today’s bands haven’t got the chops, blah blah blah. But that’s not true at all. There’s always some people for whom technique on an instrument isn’t necessary. They can get their ideas across without being able to have the chops. But Josh really does have the chops, he just doesn’t feel the need to flash them about all the time. In fact, there were a few riffs he gave me that I had to simplify, because they were bloody difficult to play. I really had to work at it, where he could just flick it off. He is an astonishing musician.

Were you serious when you told Peter Grant that you wanted to jack it in to become choirmaster at Winchester Cathedral? (Brian Fisher, Manchester)

Ha! That was a tongue-in-cheek joke, although I was serious about leaving Led Zeppelin in 1973 unless things changed. But Peter did sort things out pretty quickly. What kind of choirmaster would I have made? A bloody good one! Listen, any way that they’ll pay you for making music is just the best situation in the world. I’d do it for nothing. I don’t care what music it is. I just love it all. The rubbing of notes together. I love it all. I would be very passionate about whatever I decided to do.

What was the worst session you ever did as a jobbing session player? (Adam Burns, Castleford, West Yorkshire)

I generally have fun memories of that time. I’d criss-cross London playing two or three sessions a day, going between Trident and Olympic and Abbey Road and Philips in Marble Arch, you know. You’d be backing Shirley Bassey, Cat Stevens, Lulu, whoever was paying you. The worst experience was a Muzak session. With Muzak sessions, the music was deliberately boring. I distinctly remember one session where I embellished the bass part a little bit, just so that it wasn’t so boring for me to play. They said, “No, you can’t do that. Any interest in the music will distract people’s attention from when they’re meant to be eating.” Or standing in a fucking lift. For fuck’s sake! So I was like, “OK, thanks, bye!”

[brandneaux]

[commiepinkofag]

Detroit is biggest U.S. city to pass resolution calling for ceasefire in Gaza

The resolution passed 7-2 following hundreds of comments by Detroiters

After hearing hundreds of spirited comments from Detroiters, the Detroit City Council voted 7-2 on Tuesday to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza — becoming the largest U.S. city to do so. Public comments were overwhelmingly in favor of the resolution, calling it a “bare minimum” given the ethnic cleansing happening in Gaza. …

Detroit joins other U.S. cities like Atlanta, Georgia; Akron, Ohio; Wilmington, Delaware; Providence, Rhode Island; and Richmond, California in passing a ceasefire resolution.

[randaness]

Heather Cox Richardson is a political historian whose context - and thoroughness - I often enjoy alongside the news. Here's her Facebook post from yesterday (I tried to do screenshots but Tumblr mobile would NOT let me put them in the right order):

"July 22, 2024 (Monday)

Vice President Kamala Harris has continued to rack up endorsements and delegates since President Biden’s surprise announcement yesterday that he would not accept the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. As of tonight, Harris has the support of at least 2,471 delegates, more than the 1,976 she will need to secure the nomination.

Endorsements have also continued to mount, with the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Victory Fund, and the Latino Victory Fund all endorsing her.

Labor unions have also backed her: the AFL-CIO, which represents 12.5 million workers, endorsed Harris. So did the Service Employees International Union, with 2 million workers, as well as the United Steelworkers, which represents 850,000 metal workers and miners, and the Communications Workers of America. Other unions endorsing Harris include the American Federation of Teachers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Money continues to roll in. Since Biden’s announcement, Harris and the Democrats have raised about $250 million in donations and pledges. More than 888,000 were from small-dollar donors. Volunteers are also joining the Harris campaign, which said that more than 28,000 people have signed up to work on the campaign in the day since Biden passed the torch. Today, Beyoncé gave Harris permission to use her song “Freedom” as a campaign song, and TikTok users have jumped on the Harris trend.

Harris is keeping some of the key infrastructure of Biden’s campaign. She has announced that Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez-Rodriguez and Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon will remain in their positions. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer announced today that she, too, will stay on as co-chair for Harris’s campaign as she was for Biden’s.

Harris spoke today at campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, smoothing the transition from Biden’s campaign to her own. “I know it’s been a rollercoaster and we’re all filled with so many mixed emotions about this,” Harris said. “We love Joe and Jill. We really do. They truly are like family.” Biden called in to the meeting from Delaware, where he is isolating as he recovers from Covid, to thank the staff. “I know it’s hard, because you’ve poured your heart and soul into me, to help us win this thing,” Biden told them, but added: “The name changed at the top of the ticket. The mission hasn’t changed at all.” Biden told Harris: “I’m watching you kid, I love you. You’re the best, kid.”

Harris went on to indicate that she will be taking the fight for the presidency aggressively to Trump, highlighting his criminal behavior. “Before I was elected as Vice President, before I was elected as United States Senator,” she said today, “I was the elected Attorney General, as I've mentioned, to California, and before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump's type.”

She was clear, though, that the fight is not just about Trump; it is about “two different versions of what we see as the future of our country…. Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. To a time before many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights. But we believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.” She promised to continue the work of building the middle class, protect abortion rights, enact commonsense gun safety legislation, and protect voting rights. She contrasted the Democrats’ vision of “a country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law” with the Republicans’: “a country of chaos, fear, and hate.”

Biden’s announcement and Harris’s rapid consolidation of support and money appear to have blindsided the Trump-Vance campaign. MAGA Republicans have responded with scattershot arguments that suggest they had not thought through a scenario in which Biden would step down, an omission so astonishing it perhaps suggests they could not imagine a presumptive nominee voluntarily giving up power.

Without a coherent strategy, MAGA Republicans today have been all over the map, suggesting among other things that Biden’s voluntarily stepping down from his presumptive nomination is a “coup” and that Harris is a “D[iversity] E[quity and] I[nclusion] hire.”

For a party that is offering voters a popular set of policies, the opposing party’s nominee shouldn’t matter all that much, but Trump policies and the Trump campaign’s Project 2025 are both so unpopular that operatives intended to run not on policy but by firing up their base against Biden himself. In The Atlantic yesterday, journalist Tim Alberta explained that the entire Trump campaign apparatus was focused on Biden and that putting extremist Ohio senator J.D. Vance on the ticket “was something of a luxury meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter.”

Now the energy appears to have shifted. As Anne Applebaum wrote today in The Atlantic, operatives staged the Republican National Convention of just last week to project strength and power, and Trump’s rambling and incoherent performance there seemed “deranged, sinister, and frightening.” Now, Applebaum wrote, “it just looks deranged,” as Biden’s decision to step away from power contrasts powerfully with Trump’s desperate attempts to cling to power with the Big Lie while he calls up his threadbare descriptions of national carnage.

The change Applebaum identified dovetailed neatly with a new political action committee started by conservative lawyer George Conway to highlight Trump’s “mental unfitness for office.” Frustrated by the apparent unwillingness of the press to cover Trump’s mental health while it focused on President Biden’s, Conway formed the “Anti-Psychopath PAC” to highlight Trump’s mental state. “The failure to treat Trump’s behavior as pathological has led the media and the country, perversely, to treat it as normal,” Conway told The Independent, and said that Project 2025 should be seen as an extension of Trump’s malignant narcissism “because basically he wants to turn the government into a mechanism for retribution.”

A post on Trump’s social media feed tonight suggested that Trump recognizes that being the oldest candidate ever nominated for the presidency is a campaign issue. The post said that “Lyin’ Kamala Harris…has absolutely terrible pole [sic] numbers against a fine and brilliant young man named DONALD J. TRUMP! Be careful what you wish for, Democrats???”

Today, Trump’s vice presidential pick Vance gave his first campaign speech at his former high school in Middletown, Ohio. There, dressed in a blue suit with a red tie that echoed Trump’s signature look, Vance spoke of his history in the town and promised that he and Trump are “ready to save America.” But his lack of experience on the campaign trail showed in his delivery, and the Fox News Channel, which was covering the speech, cut away from it while he was speaking.

Media outlets gave more attention to the Ohio state senator who preceded Vance, George Lang, who began a chant of “fight, fight, fight” and told the audience: "I believe wholeheartedly Donald Trump and Butler County's JD Vance are the last chance to save our country politically. I'm afraid if we lose this one, it's going to take a civil war to save the country, and it will be saved." He later posted on social media that he regretted his “divisive remarks.”

Later in the day, Vance spoke in Radford, Virginia, where he said that “[h]istory will remember Joe Biden as not just a quitter, which he is, but as one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States of America.” He continued: “Kamala Harris is a million times worse and everybody knows it. She signed up for every single one of Joe Biden’s failures, and she lied about his mental capacity to serve as president.”

Josh Dawsey and Michael Scherer of the Washington Post reported today on a different kind of jockeying in the 2024 presidential race. Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has recently been in talks with Trump about dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump in exchange for a position in a Trump administration. Kennedy, who opposes vaccines, is interested in a portfolio that covers health and medical issues."

[ausetkmt]

The first time Karl Ricanek was stopped by police for “driving while Black” was in the summer of 1995. He was twenty-five and had just qualified as an engineer and started work at the US Department of Defense’s Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island, a wealthy town known for its spectacular cliff walks and millionaires’ mansions. That summer, he had bought his first nice car—a two-year-old dark green Infiniti J30T that cost him roughly $30,000 (US).

One evening, on his way back to the place he rented in First Beach, a police car pulled him over. Karl was polite, distant, knowing not to seem combative or aggressive. He knew, too, to keep his hands in visible places and what could happen if he didn’t. It was something he’d been trained to do from a young age.

The cop asked Karl his name, which he told him, even though he didn’t have to. He was well aware that if he wanted to get out of this thing, he had to cooperate. He felt at that moment he had been stripped of any rights, but he knew this was what he—and thousands of others like him—had to live with. This is a nice car, the cop told Karl. How do you afford a fancy car like this?

What do you mean? Karl thought furiously. None of your business how I afford this car. Instead, he said, “Well, I’m an engineer. I work over at the research centre. I bought the car with my wages.”

That wasn’t the last time Karl was pulled over by a cop. In fact, it wasn’t even the last time in Newport. And when friends and colleagues shrugged, telling him that getting stopped and being asked some questions didn’t sound like a big deal, he let it lie. But they had never been stopped simply for “driving while white”; they hadn’t been subjected to the humiliation of being questioned as law-abiding adults, purely based on their visual identity; they didn’t have to justify their presence and their choices to strangers and be afraid for their lives if they resisted.

Karl had never broken the law. He’d worked as hard as anybody else, doing all the things that bright young people were supposed to do in America. So why, he thought, can’t I just be left alone?

Karl grew up with four older siblings in Deanwood, a primarily Black neighbourhood in the northeastern corner of Washington, DC, with a white German father and a Black mother. When he left Washington, DC, at eighteen for college, he had a scholarship to study at North Carolina A&T State University, which graduates the largest numbers of Black engineers in the US. It was where Karl learned to address problems with technical solutions, rather than social ones. He taught himself to emphasize his academic credentials and underplay his background so he would be taken more seriously amongst peers.

After working in Newport, Karl went into academia, at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. In particular, he was interested in teaching computers to identify faces even better than humans do. His goal seemed simple: first, unpick how humans see faces, and then teach computers how to do it more efficiently.

When he started out back in the ’80s and ’90s, Karl was developing AI technology to help the US Navy’s submarine fleet navigate autonomously. At the time, computer vision was a slow-moving field, in which machines were merely taught to recognize objects rather than people’s identities. The technology was nascent—and pretty terrible. The algorithms he designed were trying to get the machine to say: that’s a bottle, these are glasses, this is a table, these are humans. Each year, they made incremental, single-digit improvements in precision.

Then, a new type of AI known as deep learning emerged—the same discipline that allowed miscreants to generate sexually deviant deepfakes of Helen Mort and Noelle Martin, and the model that underpins ChatGPT. The cutting-edge technology was helped along by an embarrassment of data riches—in this case, millions of photos uploaded to the web that could be used to train new image recognition algorithms.

Deep learning catapulted the small gains Karl was seeing into real progress. All of a sudden, what used to be a 1 percent improvement was now 10 percent each year. It meant software could now be used not just to classify objects but to recognize unique faces.

When Karl first started working on the problem of facial recognition, it wasn’t supposed to be used live on protesters or pedestrians or ordinary people. It was supposed to be a photo analysis tool. From its inception in the ’90s, researchers knew there were biases and inaccuracies in how the algorithms worked. But they hadn’t quite figured out why.

The biometrics community viewed the problems as academic—an interesting computer-vision challenge affecting a prototype still in its infancy. They broadly agreed that the technology wasn’t ready for prime-time use, and they had no plans to profit from it.

As the technology steadily improved, Karl began to develop experimental AI analytics models to spot physical signs of illnesses like cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s from a person’s face. For instance, a common symptom of Parkinson’s is frozen or stiff facial expressions, brought on by changes in the face’s muscles. AI technology could be used to analyse these micro muscular changes and detect the onset of disease early. He told me he imagined inventing a mirror that you could look at each morning that would tell you (or notify a trusted person) if you were developing symptoms of degenerative neurological disease. He founded a for-profit company, Lapetus Solutions, which predicted life expectancy through facial analytics, for the insurance market.

His systems were used by law enforcement to identify trafficked children and notorious criminal gangsters such as Whitey Bulger. He even looked into identifying faces of those who had changed genders, by testing his systems on videos of transsexual people undergoing hormonal transitions, an extremely controversial use of the technology. He became fixated on the mysteries locked up in the human face, regardless of any harms or negative consequences.

In the US, it was 9/11 that, quite literally overnight, ramped up the administration’s urgent need for surveillance technologies like face recognition, supercharging investment in and development of these systems. The issue was no longer merely academic, and within a few years, the US government had built vast databases containing the faces and other biometric data of millions of Iraqis, Afghans, and US tourists from around the world. They invested heavily in commercializing biometric research like Karl’s; he received military funding to improve facial recognition algorithms, working on systems to recognize obscured and masked faces, young faces, and faces as they aged. American domestic law enforcement adapted counterterrorism technology, including facial recognition, to police street crime, gang violence, and even civil rights protests.

It became harder for Karl to ignore what AI facial analytics was now being developed for. Yet, during those years, he resisted critique of the social impacts of the powerful technology he was helping create. He rarely sat on ethics or standards boards at his university, because he thought they were bureaucratic and time consuming. He described critics of facial recognition as “social justice warriors” who didn’t have practical experience of building this technology themselves. As far as he was concerned, he was creating tools to help save children and find terrorists, and everything else was just noise.

But it wasn’t that straightforward. Technology companies, both large and small, had access to far more face data and had a commercial imperative to push forward facial recognition. Corporate giants such as Meta and Chinese-owned TikTok, and start-ups like New York–based Clearview AI and Russia’s NTech Labs, own even larger databases of faces than many governments do—and certainly more than researchers like Karl do. And they’re all driven by the same incentive: making money.

These private actors soon uprooted systems from academic institutions like Karl’s and started selling immature facial recognition solutions to law enforcement, intelligence agencies, governments, and private entities around the world. In January 2020, the New York Times published a story about how Clearview AI had taken billions of photos from the web, including sites like LinkedIn and Instagram, to build powerful facial recognition capabilities bought by several police forces around the world.

The technology was being unleashed from Argentina to Alabama with a life of its own, blowing wild like gleeful dandelion seeds taking root at will. In Uganda, Hong Kong, and India, it has been used to stifle political opposition and civil protest. In the US, it was used to track Black Lives Matter protests and Capitol rioters during the uprising in January 2021, and in London to monitor revellers at the annual Afro-Caribbean carnival in Notting Hill.

And it’s not just a law enforcement tool: facial recognition is being used to catch pickpockets and petty thieves. It is deployed at the famous Gordon’s Wine Bar in London, scanning for known troublemakers. It’s even been used to identify dead Russian soldiers in Ukraine. The question whether it was ready for prime-time use has taken on an urgency as it impacts the lives of billions around the world.

Karl knew the technology was not ready for widespread rollout in this way. Indeed, in 2018, Joy Buolamwini, Timnit Gebru, and Deborah Raji—three Black female researchers at Microsoft—had published a study, alongside collaborators, comparing the accuracy of face recognition systems built by IBM, Face++, and Microsoft. They found the error rates for light-skinned men hovered at less than 1 percent, while that figure touched 35 percent for darker-skinned women. Karl knew that New Jersey resident Nijer Parks spent ten days in jail in 2019 and paid several thousand dollars to defend himself against accusations of shoplifting and assault of a police officer in Woodbridge, New Jersey.

The thirty-three-year-old Black man had been misidentified by a facial recognition system used by the Woodbridge police. The case was dismissed a year later for lack of evidence, and Parks later sued the police for violation of his civil rights.

A year after that, Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, a Detroit resident and father of two, was arrested for a shoplifting crime he did not commit, due to another faulty facial recognition match. The arrest took place in his front garden, in front of his family.

Facial recognition technology also led to the incorrect identification of American-born Amara Majeed as a terrorist involved in Sri Lanka’s Easter Day bombings in 2019. Majeed, a college student at the time, said the misidentification caused her and her family humiliation and pain after her relatives in Sri Lanka saw her face, unexpectedly, amongst a line-up of the accused terrorists on the evening news.

As his worlds started to collide, Karl was forced to reckon with the implications of AI-enabled surveillance—and to question his own role in it, acknowledging it could curtail the freedoms of individuals and communities going about their normal lives. “I think I used to believe that I create technology,” he told me, “and other smart people deal with policy issues. Now I have to ponder and think much deeper about what it is that I’m doing.”

And what he had thought of as technical glitches, such as algorithms working much better on Caucasian and male faces while struggling to correctly identify darker skin tones and female faces, he came to see as much more than that.

“It’s a complicated feeling. As an engineer, as a scientist, I want to build technology to do good,” he told me. “But as a human being and as a Black man, I know people are going to use technology inappropriately. I know my technology might be used against me in some manner or fashion.”

In my decade of covering the technology industry, Karl was one of the only computer scientists to ever express their moral doubts out loud to me. Through him, I glimpsed the fraught relationship that engineers can have with their own creations and the ethical ambiguities they grapple with when their personal and professional instincts collide.

He was also one of the few technologists who comprehended the implicit threats of facial recognition, particularly in policing, in a visceral way.

“The problem that we have is not the algorithms but the humans,” he insisted. When you hear about facial recognition in law enforcement going terribly wrong, it’s because of human errors, he said, referring to the over-policing of African American males and other minorities and the use of unprovoked violence by police officers against Black people like Philando Castile, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor.

He knew the technology was rife with false positives and that humans suffered from confirmation bias. So if a police officer believed someone to be guilty of a crime and the AI system confirmed it, they were likely to target innocents. “And if that person is Black, who cares?” he said.

He admitted to worrying that the inevitable false matches would result in unnecessary gun violence. He was afraid that these problems would compound the social malaise of racial or other types of profiling. Together, humans and AI could end up creating a policing system far more malignant than the one citizens have today.

“It’s the same problem that came out of the Jim Crow era of the ’60s; it was supposed to be separate but equal, which it never was; it was just separate . . . fundamentally, people don’t treat everybody the same. People make laws, and people use algorithms. At the end of the day, the computer doesn’t care.”

Excerpted from Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia. Published by Henry Holt and Company. Copyright © 2024 by Madhumita Murgia. All rights reserved.

[postcard-from-the-past]

General Oglethorpe Hotel and Golf Club in Wilmington Island, Savannah, GA, US

American vintage postcard

[lonestarbattleship]

A "Vought OS2U Kingfisher is salvaged by a Royal Canadian air force Piasecki H-21 helicopter in the spring of 1964. It had remained on the slopes of Mount Buxton, Calvert Island, British Columbia, since it crashed there on August 20, 1942. After reconstruction by the Vought Aeronautics' quarter century club, the OS2U was placed on display aboard Battleship North Carolina at Wilmington, North Carolina, and was dedicated on June 25, 1971."

Date: Spring 1964

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command: NH 73761