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machination.org

Journal

I've been quiet here (not so much directly on Bluesky). I hope I can say it is because I have been busy in worthwhile efforts.

The blowback is going to come in all forms

A neighbor, whose org is largely funded by USAID, shared that they laid-off 70% of their staff and they who remain are there to close-up shop. The web site is reduced to a splash page. They helped farmers farm better and more sustainably, adopting new technology and adapting to new environments, enabled locally-controlled economic development and community banking, implemented clean water and sanitation programs, and facilitated medical services capacity building.

They worked in different places around the world, but I was aware of their work supporting efforts in Latin America — places this administration vilifies and slanders and does not to want people to migrate from to here.

I’m not without a lefty critique of empire, soft power, and a suspicious jaundiced eye of the origins of USAID and what else perhaps hid or hides in the folds of its efforts. But if I were, so implausibly given Musk’s opportunity (his seemed fairly implausible until now), I would be listening and my first move would not be to blow real things real people need out of the water.

And the blowback? I already alluded this is obviously counterintuitive to the wish to mitigate migration (however you come to hoping for that). Our agricultural assistance through US aid involves buying American commodities and distributing them elsewhere acts as a price stabilizer here (there are critiques on this too, but just dropping this and not doing a better thing or fixing subsidies here, of which I hear nothing from, well… anybody). Our capacity for tracking, preventing, building resistance to disease is being wounded by freezes at NIH, CDC, pulling out of WHO, and shutting down USAID. That will hurt, and presumably kill, many. And maybe us.

And, cam anyone expect the ripple effects of pulling out these and other rugs so suddenly to not result in radicalizing some people in a way that no nation state can prevent and which has compounded the violence in the world, and our own security?

USAID shutdown reportedly styming anti-human trafficking direct service efforts

I worked for nearly a decade with the organization that currently runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline. I do not know the current specific details, but I believe it and am saddened by this news. I and my team supported some efforts to engage with some of the international partners alluded to if not mentioned in this reporting. I have all kinds of feelings about the space (and Polaris's unfortunate support for some very flawed legislation in the US), and I do not have an uncritical view of USAID, but it pains me to understand the many ways people just trying to help people are being crippled, seized-up and disrupted... and now, in this case, to maybe even _know_ some of the people. (Never mind the disruptions to refugee and immigration support separate from the USAID developments, where there are some more close-to-my-old-'home' hits.)

From Wired:

The funding cuts and pauses have immediately made it harder for people to safely escape scam compounds, according to half a dozen sources working to combat scams and trafficking. The cuts have also shrunk services that house and care for human trafficking victims and are limiting investigatory work into criminal groups. After just days of funding disruptions, sources say that the cuts have caused “chaos” for staff working to help survivors on a daily basis. Some organizations have already gone dark, and relief workers add that the withdrawal of services could embolden the criminal groups behind the fraud.

I’ve kind of been at a loss, frozen and watching the horror show. Keeping a link log of the wretched developments but not publishing it. So far there are just my trite-and-sometimes cathartic reactions on social spaces. Not sure I have anything useful to add. Girding myself.

We finally got here—I’ve got a double Manhattan, a lit tree, most things cleaned and cooked before the holiday, only some wrapping (and lots of Santa-ascribed assembly) to sneak in tomorrow … so, eff it, now I will kick back and watch A Very Murray Christmas.

Tonight I’m remembering Phillip Wearne again. A friend in a chaotic time, and perhaps still also a missed opportunity to learn more from him. He introduced me to Graham Greene’s works, for which I’ll always be grateful.

EVP

I am not in the market to buy a new car, yet. But were I, my wife and I would be looking to EVs. When I entertain the hypothetical, I pause at my sense of the industry treating vehicles (all of them, seemingly, not just EVs) as an IoT appliance, tethered to the manufacturer one way or another, even if you don’t subscribe to extra services.

I believe the following should be rights:

  • Purchase any new car and operate it without any dependency on “phoning home” for any reason.
  • To be able to physically remove the component(s) of the car’s computer that allows it any connectivity to cellular, wifi, even GPS networks or any other methods of connecting to any other party.
  • To apply software updates for free locally, as a customer, at least if they’d otherwise be delivered over the air for free, through a physical port.
  • I think there needs to be some guarantee of continued software support, at least for security and bugs, for a reasonable estimate of the lifespan of the car.
  • And I want to see right-to-repair legislation evolve to explicitly cover EVs to the extent practical—but aggressively. Maybe I can or can’t swap out the battery system myself, I don’t know. But there should still be reasonable self-service options guaranteed to owners.

Perhaps the consumer can leave the comms components in, as well (in order to use those functions for other purposes, or just to save themselves the trouble), and opt-out via software—but easy user-executed physical air gapping of a vehicle should be a right.

All of this for privacy, independence, sustainability and for security, especially when operating an EV past a manufacturer’s support window if it is otherwise safe.

I don’t think there’s a single EV on the market that voluntarily meets these privacy criteria. Am I wrong?

Who is working on this? Is there any draft legislation in Congress?

50F

This is the first 50f morning for me this year that sustained long enough for me to be awake, not have immediate intervening responsibilities, such that I can meet it on the stoop with coffee in hand.

If I controlled the global thermostat every morning should be 50f, but… never mind seasons—2 decades of notable climate shifts means there will be many fewer of these in my life at this latitude than I’d have assumed. Except maybe if the AMOC collapses, I gather? Not hoping for that.

What good comes out of increasing the void of help for the innocent?

I’m not really making an effort at being a news blogger. I have little to add of any unique value. I do not want to sound self-important. If there’s anything to when I do comment on the larger world I do not control or have particular expertise in, it is to assert as much agency as I think we all might have due to any way we might relate to the world, to care about things and to ask for justice.

So, if you know me, you already knew I wasn’t going to be surprised nor accept the justification behind this happening: Israel strikes aid convoy organized by U.S. humanitarian group, killing 5 .

But there is a little more: I knew ANERA people. The people I know and knew are no longer with the organization and generally were not in the field in the occupied territories. I know this is an organization meaningfully contributing to establishing some kind of well being for civilians without being attached to ideology.

The IDF’s actions are reprehensible and evidence of their institutional incapacity to act proportionately or in good faith and only give fuel to their self-stated ostensible intended opponents.

I slowly became good at a sort of GTD style of managing my email inbox. Not quite Inbox Zero, but a healthy total count can be managed on a hand or two. Not as good with browser tabs. Painfully declaring tab bankruptcy today. All those novel links, essays, news articles… ‘til we meet again.

The Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts can suck it. The vertical playground at Swampoodle is one of The Childe’s favorite places to play.

It is near several places we make regular errand runs to and, in addition to climbing fun, it provides him a vantage point to observe the train traffic coming in and out of Union Station (The Childe is a trainspotter, although he does not yet know this term).

Like many park areas with something interesting for different groups, it is a small oasis in the city. We need more such things for all of us. (We also need the city to keep the drinking fountains in clean, working order in all the parks. I did just put in a 3-1-1 request with regards to Swampoodle’s drinking fountain.)

This says nothing about me (except to significantly explain my stint of SAHD duty in the latter case), but I am proud to know people directly involved in each of these efforts:

I don’t have to let go of my broader and deeper political critiques to appreciate some of this progress.

A lot of security in my neighborhood (or the adjacent one, anyway), including out of town police known for instigating violence with demonstrators, to protect a war criminal running out on a international warrant for his arrest.

Everyone else's ego running my world

I still cannot claim genuine and deep sports-ball fandom, but today was a day where I was glad to have a couple of sports to distract me for most of the day.

On very light reflection, I see the age-old (can it even be) irony in that I traded hating the decisions of couple of egocentric competitive madmen on the national and world stage for getting entertainment out of a particular one in a fast car and another couple-three that were on bikes.