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machination.org

President Scammer.

Mr. Trump is now not only a major crypto dealer; he is also the industry’s top policy maker. So far in his second term, Mr. Trump has leveraged his presidential powers in ways that have benefited the industry — and in some cases his own company — even though he had spent years deriding crypto as a haven for drug dealers and scammers.

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.

I have to hope that enough enthralled by fascism are not fascists

Jason Kottke quotes A.R. Moxon and follows-up with:

Yeah, this is basically why I don’t waste time anymore railing against the many hypocrisies of conservatives — they’re not gotchas that you’re catching them in, they’re part of the domination.

True, but I have to hope their hypocrisy, as evidence of domination, is revealing to those who are not in fact fascists in their hearts then they realize they will be on the short end of the stick. It is worth pointing it out, it just isn't a tool to reform the fascists.

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.

Snow day!

Alternative Capitol Hill sledding location at Eastern High School with the U.S. Capitol locked-down for election certification.

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.

A missed opportunity with The Onion buying Infowars and announcing their plans? What if they quietly acquired & published real critiques of gov’t, political parties, oligarchs' documented corruption and lies? One might succeed in Judo-ing the conspiratorial distrust that isn’t entirely unfounded among some Jones/Trump fans.

I still struggle with achieving the right balance of exposure to my local nuclear fusion reaction. Sometimes it is due to my own bad choices, but often I can blame systemic causes. Regardless, I managed a good starting dose this morning and it made a difference.

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?