#Office of Digital Inclusion

[detroitography]

Detroit Tech Access Hubs Map

I’ve added the term “access” to the City of Detroit’s listing of “tech hubs” since that seems to be a term with a wide and varied definition. In this case the City is talking about: […] free wifi, devices, and basic digital literacy training The sites range from support from major telecom companies like Comcast and ATT to the Connect313 efforts. Previous researchers have also included a broader…

[notanannoyingfangirl]

Key Trends Shaping the Future of Corporate Compliance

Corporate compliance functions are entering a new era of rapid transformation, driven by technological advances, regulatory shifts and stakeholder pressures surrounding sustainability. By understanding critical developments in compliance operating models, risk management approaches and oversight frameworks, leaders can proactively position their organizations for long-term success.

Digitization to Enable “Compliance by Design”

Automation through robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence and advanced analytics is empowering next-generation compliance. Machine learning facilitates real-time audits, gathering intelligence across transactions, communications and ecosystem signals to identify regulatory exposure. Self-updating compliance manuals tuned to latest ordinance shifts are on the horizon. The end vision is embedding compliance through system design across operations.

Focus Expanding Beyond Narrow Regulations

With intensifying scrutiny by investors, employees and society on ethical conduct, compliance roles are ballooning beyond narrowly meeting legal obligations alone to championing holistic integrity. Leading organizations are tying codes of conduct to societal value frameworks addressing diversity, sustainability and equitable impacts surrounding products and services. Data transparency, anti-corruption and human rights commitments are rising in priority.

Centralized Governance with Localized Operations

Global companies are moving towards centralized compliance governance under chief ethics/compliance officers and committees to align policies while localizing procedures. Geographic and divisional compliance heads are being empowered to tailor training programs using cultural nuances and localized languages to make integrity standards intuitively resonate across borders rather than appear disconnected edicts from headquarters.

Ultimately corporate compliance is maturing into a value creation function contributing towards trust and transparency with stakeholders rather than merely a check-the-box necessity. As guardians of integrity underpinning quality, fairness and reliability commitments made across supply chains and communities, compliance is becoming an ethical backbone driving capitalism’s next chapter.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

What kind of bubble is AI?

My latest column for Locus Magazine is "What Kind of Bubble is AI?" All economic bubbles are hugely destructive, but some of them leave behind wreckage that can be salvaged for useful purposes, while others leave nothing behind but ashes:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Think about some 21st century bubbles. The dotcom bubble was a terrible tragedy, one that drained the coffers of pension funds and other institutional investors and wiped out retail investors who were gulled by Superbowl Ads. But there was a lot left behind after the dotcoms were wiped out: cheap servers, office furniture and space, but far more importantly, a generation of young people who'd been trained as web makers, leaving nontechnical degree programs to learn HTML, perl and python. This created a whole cohort of technologists from non-technical backgrounds, a first in technological history. Many of these people became the vanguard of a more inclusive and humane tech development movement, and they were able to make interesting and useful services and products in an environment where raw materials – compute, bandwidth, space and talent – were available at firesale prices.

Contrast this with the crypto bubble. It, too, destroyed the fortunes of institutional and individual investors through fraud and Superbowl Ads. It, too, lured in nontechnical people to learn esoteric disciplines at investor expense. But apart from a smattering of Rust programmers, the main residue of crypto is bad digital art and worse Austrian economics.

Or think of Worldcom vs Enron. Both bubbles were built on pure fraud, but Enron's fraud left nothing behind but a string of suspicious deaths. By contrast, Worldcom's fraud was a Big Store con that required laying a ton of fiber that is still in the ground to this day, and is being bought and used at pennies on the dollar.

AI is definitely a bubble. As I write in the column, if you fly into SFO and rent a car and drive north to San Francisco or south to Silicon Valley, every single billboard is advertising an "AI" startup, many of which are not even using anything that can be remotely characterized as AI. That's amazing, considering what a meaningless buzzword AI already is.

So which kind of bubble is AI? When it pops, will something useful be left behind, or will it go away altogether? To be sure, there's a legion of technologists who are learning Tensorflow and Pytorch. These nominally open source tools are bound, respectively, to Google and Facebook's AI environments:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

But if those environments go away, those programming skills become a lot less useful. Live, large-scale Big Tech AI projects are shockingly expensive to run. Some of their costs are fixed – collecting, labeling and processing training data – but the running costs for each query are prodigious. There's a massive primary energy bill for the servers, a nearly as large energy bill for the chillers, and a titanic wage bill for the specialized technical staff involved.

Once investor subsidies dry up, will the real-world, non-hyperbolic applications for AI be enough to cover these running costs? AI applications can be plotted on a 2X2 grid whose axes are "value" (how much customers will pay for them) and "risk tolerance" (how perfect the product needs to be).

Charging teenaged D&D players $10 month for an image generator that creates epic illustrations of their characters fighting monsters is low value and very risk tolerant (teenagers aren't overly worried about six-fingered swordspeople with three pupils in each eye). Charging scammy spamfarms $500/month for a text generator that spits out dull, search-algorithm-pleasing narratives to appear over recipes is likewise low-value and highly risk tolerant (your customer doesn't care if the text is nonsense). Charging visually impaired people $100 month for an app that plays a text-to-speech description of anything they point their cameras at is low-value and moderately risk tolerant ("that's your blue shirt" when it's green is not a big deal, while "the street is safe to cross" when it's not is a much bigger one).

Morganstanley doesn't talk about the trillions the AI industry will be worth some day because of these applications. These are just spinoffs from the main event, a collection of extremely high-value applications. Think of self-driving cars or radiology bots that analyze chest x-rays and characterize masses as cancerous or noncancerous.

These are high value – but only if they are also risk-tolerant. The pitch for self-driving cars is "fire most drivers and replace them with 'humans in the loop' who intervene at critical junctures." That's the risk-tolerant version of self-driving cars, and it's a failure. More than $100b has been incinerated chasing self-driving cars, and cars are nowhere near driving themselves:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Quite the reverse, in fact. Cruise was just forced to quit the field after one of their cars maimed a woman – a pedestrian who had not opted into being part of a high-risk AI experiment – and dragged her body 20 feet through the streets of San Francisco. Afterwards, it emerged that Cruise had replaced the single low-waged driver who would normally be paid to operate a taxi with 1.5 high-waged skilled technicians who remotely oversaw each of its vehicles:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/cruise-general-motors-self-driving-cars.html

The self-driving pitch isn't that your car will correct your own human errors (like an alarm that sounds when you activate your turn signal while someone is in your blind-spot). Self-driving isn't about using automation to augment human skill – it's about replacing humans. There's no business case for spending hundreds of billions on better safety systems for cars (there's a human case for it, though!). The only way the price-tag justifies itself is if paid drivers can be fired and replaced with software that costs less than their wages.

What about radiologists? Radiologists certainly make mistakes from time to time, and if there's a computer vision system that makes different mistakes than the sort that humans make, they could be a cheap way of generating second opinions that trigger re-examination by a human radiologist. But no AI investor thinks their return will come from selling hospitals that reduce the number of X-rays each radiologist processes every day, as a second-opinion-generating system would. Rather, the value of AI radiologists comes from firing most of your human radiologists and replacing them with software whose judgments are cursorily double-checked by a human whose "automation blindness" will turn them into an OK-button-mashing automaton:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

The profit-generating pitch for high-value AI applications lies in creating "reverse centaurs": humans who serve as appendages for automation that operates at a speed and scale that is unrelated to the capacity or needs of the worker:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

But unless these high-value applications are intrinsically risk-tolerant, they are poor candidates for automation. Cruise was able to nonconsensually enlist the population of San Francisco in an experimental murderbot development program thanks to the vast sums of money sloshing around the industry. Some of this money funds the inevitabilist narrative that self-driving cars are coming, it's only a matter of when, not if, and so SF had better get in the autonomous vehicle or get run over by the forces of history.

Once the bubble pops (all bubbles pop), AI applications will have to rise or fall on their actual merits, not their promise. The odds are stacked against the long-term survival of high-value, risk-intolerant AI applications.

The problem for AI is that while there are a lot of risk-tolerant applications, they're almost all low-value; while nearly all the high-value applications are risk-intolerant. Once AI has to be profitable – once investors withdraw their subsidies from money-losing ventures – the risk-tolerant applications need to be sufficient to run those tremendously expensive servers in those brutally expensive data-centers tended by exceptionally expensive technical workers.

If they aren't, then the business case for running those servers goes away, and so do the servers – and so do all those risk-tolerant, low-value applications. It doesn't matter if helping blind people make sense of their surroundings is socially beneficial. It doesn't matter if teenaged gamers love their epic character art. It doesn't even matter how horny scammers are for generating AI nonsense SEO websites:

https://twitter.com/jakezward/status/1728032634037567509

These applications are all riding on the coattails of the big AI models that are being built and operated at a loss in order to be profitable. If they remain unprofitable long enough, the private sector will no longer pay to operate them.

Now, there are smaller models, models that stand alone and run on commodity hardware. These would persist even after the AI bubble bursts, because most of their costs are setup costs that have already been borne by the well-funded companies who created them. These models are limited, of course, though the communities that have formed around them have pushed those limits in surprising ways, far beyond their original manufacturers' beliefs about their capacity. These communities will continue to push those limits for as long as they find the models useful.

These standalone, "toy" models are derived from the big models, though. When the AI bubble bursts and the private sector no longer subsidizes mass-scale model creation, it will cease to spin out more sophisticated models that run on commodity hardware (it's possible that Federated learning and other techniques for spreading out the work of making large-scale models will fill the gap).

So what kind of bubble is the AI bubble? What will we salvage from its wreckage? Perhaps the communities who've invested in becoming experts in Pytorch and Tensorflow will wrestle them away from their corporate masters and make them generally useful. Certainly, a lot of people will have gained skills in applying statistical techniques.

But there will also be a lot of unsalvageable wreckage. As big AI models get integrated into the processes of the productive economy, AI becomes a source of systemic risk. The only thing worse than having an automated process that is rendered dangerous or erratic based on AI integration is to have that process fail entirely because the AI suddenly disappeared, a collapse that is too precipitous for former AI customers to engineer a soft landing for their systems.

This is a blind spot in our policymakers debates about AI. The smart policymakers are asking questions about fairness, algorithmic bias, and fraud. The foolish policymakers are ensnared in fantasies about "AI safety," AKA "Will the chatbot become a superintelligence that turns the whole human race into paperclips?"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space

But no one is asking, "What will we do if" – when – "the AI bubble pops and most of this stuff disappears overnight?"

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/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/#pop

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

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

--

tom_bullock (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/tombullock/25173469495/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[eraserdude6226]

Guess all those FBI DEI staff won't have to worry about quitting their jobs after all!!

[mariacallous]

In his first two weeks of office, President Trump signed several Executive Orders (EOs) to fulfill one of his many campaign promises—to reduce the size of the federal government. He has rolled back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, asserting that the federal government will no longer consider race, ethnicity, or other federally protected characteristics in hiring and retention decisions. In recent days, he announced a financial buyout to federal employees who do not wish to comply with the new Return to Office (RTO) mandate, which requires employees to be in an office for five days per week, despite concerns about available office space. The details of the buyout were outlined in an email with the subject line, “Fork in the Road,” sent by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on January 28, 2025, to over 2 million federal workers. The OPM also offered deferred resignation where federal employees could resign immediately and still be paid for the next several months. Meanwhile, those who decide to stay are not promised future employment and the memo stated new conditions for employees, that they be “loyal, trustworthy, and to strive for excellence in their daily work”; principles that likely will become benchmarks for future performance reviews.

Under the Trump administration, federal workforce reductions will happen, along with a greater deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and outsourcing to private firms. These new services will cost millions of dollars to design, deploy, and train the federal workforce, creating new national and data security threats as well, given the level of protected information at stake. But the influence of Big Tech leaders, who are formally and informally advising President Trump and his administration, may be accelerating a smaller government workforce based on their own values about corporate governance. Big Tech companies were among those that led the RTO mandates for their own employees after the pandemic with similar terms and conditions, as well as promises made that were not kept. Many of these same companies are making AI more technically advanced without realizing that millions of people are still impacted in the U.S. by the lack of digital access. As Biden era policies were working to address the connectivity challenges faced throughout the U.S., these programs are now being challenged, which will almost guarantee that even the best of AI technologies embedded in government functions may be inaccessible to most people.

[karadin]

while you were sleeping ...

The U.S. Army has told units to prepare for deployment at the U.S.-Mexico border in the next 24 to 48 hours.

Trump declared a 'state of emergency' at the border, despite the fact that we have a fully staffed border patrol and we are not in a wartime footing with Mexico.

National Science Foundation freezes grants in response to Trump executive orders

Native Americans concerned that they may be rounded up in mass deportation efforts due to racial profiling

Trump states that GAZA should be 'swept clean' and over one million refugees to be moved to Egypt and Jordan. (these countries have refused by the way)

Trump also mentions that Gaza has 'great beachfront property' and his son in law Jared Kushner, a friend of Netanyahu since childhood, has made the same statements that Gaza would be great place to build condos (and not for Palestinians)

Despite a 'cease fire' attacks have continued in Gaza, many by settler groups with police esorts, as soon as Trump lifted Biden era sanctions on settler incursions.

some USAID officials were put on leave for not abiding Trump's order to halt all international aid.

Trump has placed all Diversity and Inclusion federal employees across agencies on paid leave for 30 days until their positions are terminated.

The US Air Force took down a video for new recruits showcasing the Tuskegee Airmen, a famous all black fighting force from WW2, as well as the WAVES, women who joined the service during WW2.

The advisory office of DOGE now run solely by Elon Musk, a US government contractor puts him in nominal charge of government programs, a conflict of interest, however he has been booted from an office next to Trump in the White House to another building.

This Department of Government Efficiency now is taking over the US Digital Service in charge of all US gov websites, including the new IRS Free File (where you can do your taxes online for free, a holdover from the Biden Administration.)

Trump is paving the way for the Pentagon to remove transgender service members

The Quaker faith have taken the Trump administration to court over a new policy to enter churches and religious spaces in mass deportation efforts.

Trump puts hold on refugees - hundreds of thousands of people fleeing strife in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Haiti and Venezuela have been stopped from entering the US - the program was bipartisan and many have waited years in a legal process to enter.

Trump has revoked a Biden admin program that allowed 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans and nearly 1 million migrants allowed into the country through an app called CBP One, all of these individuals are now targeted for deportation.

Vice President Vance complained when U.S. Catholic bishops condemned ICE entering places of employment, churches and schools in mass deportation raids (lifting an Obama era restriction)

Vice President Vance states that Big Tech is too powerful in the US, at the same time Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg, along with other 'tech bros' were featured at Trump's inauguration, seated in front of his cabinet picks.

Trump fires DOJ employees who worked on Trump's prosecution for insurrection on Jan 6 as well as his stolen US government 'eyes only' documents. Republicans are investigating the bi-partisan Jan 6th investigations under the Biden administration.

Trump pardoned more than 1,500 individuals for their crimes during the Jan 6th insurrection, this has lead to backlash among a bi-partisan Congress as well as the public. One of the insurrectionists was killed by police at a conflict on his day of release, another was re-arrested for breaking his parole for previous convictions.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Amazonas lawmakers amend ‘Anti-LGBT’ law after activist pressure

On December 13 of this year, the Legislative Assembly of Amazonas (Aleam) approved an amendment to Article 7 of Law 7.127/2024, which originally prohibited the reproduction of “content that portrays children associated with homosexuality in digital media, television, and cultural or artistic presentations.” The second vote occurred after pressure from activists, who submitted complaints to both the Amazonas State Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP-AM) and the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF).

The author of the original proposal is state representative Carlinhos Bessa (PV-AM). Speaking to CENARIUM, Bessa stated that the inclusion of the term “homosexuality” in the law had “slipped through unnoticed” and affirmed his support for the LGBTQIA+ community in Aleam. The representative also authored the new bill to amend the existing law.

The original text, which included the word “homosexuality,” was filed in the Legislative Process Support System (SAPL) on February 7, 2023, and took 533 days to be approved in the House plenary on August 13, 2024. Before reaching the plenary, the bill underwent review by committees such as the Constitution, Justice, and Citizenship Committee (CCJ), which is responsible for assessing the constitutionality of parliamentary proposals.

Defending the original proposal, the representative claimed—without presenting data—“that in the case of children, the State is often called upon to intervene, through the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which monitors cases where minors are either active or passive subjects.”

Continue reading.

[detroitography]

Map: Households with No Internet 2021

The City of Detroit’s Office of Digital Equity and Inclusion has a series of data points and maps that set the baseline for their work on increasing access to high speed internet across the city. They’ve calculated Council District and Current “Neighborhood” rates using an interesting methodology based on occupied housing units per census tract.

[croziers-compass]

George Henry Hodgson of the HMS Terror A Historical Recount, collection, and documentation of Lt. Hodgson's Life

Birth Record

When George Henry Hodgson was born on January 25, 1817, in London, London, England, his father, Robert, was 43 and his mother, Mary, was 39. He had one sister. He died in 1848 at the age of 31.

 Henrietta Mildred Hodgson (only Sibling)

George Hodgson's Sister's Life and Death (Lefthand Side) A Portrait of Her here: ⚓

⚓ George Henry Hodgson was an English Royal Navy officer and polar explorer. He fought in the First Opium War (1839-1842) where he distinguished himself in combat. He later served under Captain Francis Crozier as Second Lieutenant aboard HMS Terror on the 1845 Franklin Expedition, which sought to chart unexplored areas of the Canadian Arctic, find the Northwest Passage, and carry out scientific observations.

Found in: A naval biographical dictionary: comprising the life and services of every living officer in Her Majesty's navy, from the rank of admiral of the fleet to that of lieutenant, inclusive. - O'Byrne, William R., 1823-1896

Previous Services Aboard the HMS Excellent

Muster Roll

George Henry Hodgson Lt. Record (links to my google drive)

Arctic Medal 1818-1855

All Officers and men of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines

Digital Memorial

I hope you have all enjoyed this lovely journey through records and materials relating to Lt. George Henry Hodgson. Admittedly there is very little substance here but I am more than happy with what I have procured. I hope it satisfies you as well.

[darkmaga-returns]

Go ahead. Play the cat, trapped in a simulacrum, chasing the laser pointer around the house. The biggest story of 2024 will also be the biggest story of 2025: that we are perilously close to full-blown Technocracy. Hemingway famously quipped, “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” Totalitarianism is like that. ⁃ Patrick Wood, Editor.

As the embers of 2024 spit out their dying sparks and tendrils of smoke corkscrew into 2025, I want to ask: what were the important news stories of this year?

Most people will say something international. The war in Ukraine, the atrocities in Gaza, the fall of Assad.

Maybe some will cite elections, it was a big year for voting after all. A global shift-change in the corridors of power saw a dozen governments swapped out for new faces, with 2 weeks of the year left it’s still possible Trudeau, Macron or Scholz may join the procession.

The tech minded might talk about advancements in Artificial Intelligence.

Those are the big stories of 2024. The banner headlines. Sound and fury and all that signifies. But were they the most important?

No, the important story of 2024 was The Great Reset.

Remember that? It was this pan-global supranational plan to tear down and then rebuild society in a “sustainable”, “inclusive”, “fair” and “secure” way that would – totally accidentally – eradicate civil liberties and individual freedom for every single person on the planet.

It was all the rage a few years ago, you might remember. But when it didn’t go over too well with a lot of people, the powers that be dropped the subject and there’s been very little talk about it since 2022.

Does that mean it’s gone away?

We need to have “object permanence” in politics as in all things. Something doesn’t cease to exist just because you can’t see it anymore. The world doesn’t vanish when you close your eyes.

The Great Reset is still the plan.

It’s still happening. It’s just distributed now. A compartmentalized strategy uploaded to the cloud, everywhere and nowhere. A million nanobots working a million angles to change a million tiny rules and build a million tiny cells.

Like the end of The Usual Suspects, stand the right distance back and you can see the pattern.

Just last week, the UK’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty published his annual health report. What does he recommend? Sin taxes on “unhealthy” foods and 15 minute cities. Labour have already increased “sin taxes” on sugar, salt, alcohol and tobacco. Next comes red meat, dairy and just “carbon” in general.

Earlier this year the UK introduced licensing for keeping chickens. They banned smoking too.

By 2035 it will be impossible to buy a new petrol car in the UK. Or the EU. Or Canada. Or New Zealand. Or Australia. Or Mexico. Or South Africa. Or California, and 11 other US states.

From that point you and your car will be anchored to charging points. Even better your new car will probably have automatic drive features, speed limiters – oh and remote kill switches.

This week, all of sudden, the news tells us that wood burning stoves cause cancer. A ban is already being discussed. Since coal is already a no-no for domestic users (since 2023), there effectively goes your last chance of energy and heat independence. If they ban stoves there will be no heating available to you that can’t be hooked up to a smart meter, surveilled, controlled.

Unless you count burning a candle inside a plant pot. And they’re coming for those too.

The much-publicised murder of Sara Sharif has already been parlayed into a new bill taking away parents “automatic right to homeschool their children” – if the state deems them “vulnerable”.

Digital IDs are coming for everyone from everywhere. Here’s just a selection of reasons –

To secure the border and ensure electoral integrity in the US.

To protect children on social media in Australia.

To promote efficiency in the EU.

To combat illegal immigration in the UK.

To track migrant workers in Russia.

Because they said so in China.

[beardedmrbean]

A White history teacher accused a California teachers union of discriminating against him on the basis of his skin color and called the move "disgusting."

Isaac Newman, a teacher in the Elk Grove School District, on Friday filed a federal lawsuit against his local National Education Association affiliate for allegedly violating his Title VII civil rights. The suit alleged that the Elk Grove Education Association formed a seat on its executive board that was only available to candidates of color, meaning Newman wasn't eligible.

"It's disgusting, and that's why I'm suing," he told Fox News Digital in an interview.

"My union barred me from a leadership position simply because of the color of my skin," he said, discussing the suit. "I'm prohibited from running for a leadership position simply because of my race. This kind of racial litmus test is illegal, and it's un-American, and that's why I'm taking them to court." 

In 2023, Elk Grove Education Association officials voted to create a "BIPOC At-Large" seat on its executive board, a position limited only to people who "self-identify" as "African American (Black), Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawai’ian, Pacific Islander, Latino (including Puerto Rican), Asian, Arab, and Middle Eastern," according to the suit. 

"Plaintiff Isaac Newman is a white [EGEA] member who wants to run for union office to address the District’s recent adoption of what he believes to be aggressive and unnecessary Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) policies," reads the lawsuit, filed by The Fairness Center, a legal group focused on representing "those hurt by public-sector union officials."

The suit asked the court to "declare the BIPOC Position unlawful" and prevent the union "from creating any similar positions in the future where candidate eligibility is, in whole or in part, based on race." 

Newman said the alleged discrimination was "frightening," as was the prevalence of critical race theory in society's culture. 

"I'm actually really frightened for my children," he said, "when we look to a future where people are being taught [critical race theory]."

Newman believes that DEI ideology pushes hostile messages that focus on a person's skin color as opposed to their expertise and knowledge.

"The message there is that as a White teacher in a district that is very diverse, my students can't learn from me," he said. "It's abhorrent, and it's flatly wrong."

Newman told Fox News Digital that after disagreeing with the union pushing "aggressive" DEI agendas in the district, he decided to run for an executive seat to challenge the status quo. 

"I'm looking to see my district and union back away from this fantastically toxic ideology, back away from DEI and embrace merit and individuality," he said. "I'm hoping to see that other teachers, other people in similar organizations, will stand up." 

Newman said he was not alone in his opposition to DEI in school districts. 

"Most people who think like me are unwilling to speak up," he said. "There are a lot of teachers [who are silent], and it's not really a conservative or liberal thing."

"There are a lot of teachers who recognize that meritocracy, colorblindness are at the core of good teaching," Newman added. "What's shocking is in these DEI trainings, they actually call out colorblindness and meritocracy as racist myths. And of course, if you're dedicated to that, well, then you're going to have division, and you're going to have mediocrity." 

Fox News Digital reached out to the Elk Grove union for comment. 

"Teachers’ unions don’t get a pass from laws that prohibit racial discrimination," said Fairness Center President and general counsel Nathan McGrath. "The Civil Rights Act explicitly forbids unions from discriminating based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin and from segregating members based on these attributes." 

[queersilcozine]

[Image ID: a set of 4 images, all with a black background and golden art deco graphics in the four corners. The first one features an altered screenshot from Arcane - Silco sitting in his office with his profile to the camera. Behind him is the large circular window. An inclusive LGBTQ flag is superimposed behind the window and colourful rays of the rainbow spread over the image in low opacity. Golden text in an art deco font reads: OUR VISION. The rest of the images feature white art deco font text that read the text featured in full below. The last image features the SILCO QUEER ZINE logo in gold and rainbow colours and art deco font on the bottom centre. /end if ID]

FULL TEXT:

OUR VISION

Transgender rights activist Mara Keisling tells us that the most important thing any queer person can do is tell their story.

For decades, zines have acted as vehicles of awareness and engagement within niche subcultures and marginalized communities, amplifying voices spoken over or absent altogether from more mainstream publications. Even today – in a time when many such self-published projects have expanded beyond their printed roots and into the frontiers of the modern, digitized landscape – zines remain an important and accessible form of activism, expression, and self-definition.

To make a zine, therefore, is to take ownership of our own narratives, to seek connection with each other and with our world, and to pay modest homage to those who came before us.

So – let’s make a zine.

This month, we are opening applications for contributors to the maiden voyage of the Queer Silco Zine; and would like to invite the Arcane fan community to join us at the figurative table. Together, we aim to create a feast of unabashed queer existence, using the character of Silco as the lens of our collective thematic focus.

The goal of this project is not to limit or rigidly define the meaning of the term 'queer'; nor will we profess, or even foolishly aim, to document every possible nuance nested beneath the broad umbrella of queer identities and experiences. Rather, the Queer Silco Zine is a passion project by and for queers – as well as by and for the people who love us – simply to share our space, tell our stories, and pay tribute to the vibrance and variety of our queer lives. While we can’t hope to portray every facet of our community’s collective experiences, we hope at least that others will see pieces of themselves reflected in the finished zine’s pages.

We hope too that that will be as valuable to them as it is to us.

Silence is death; and to exist proudly is to resist loudly. We believe that, in sharing community, we persevere and thrive -- brothers and sisters (and siblings) back to back against everything the world throws at us.

[usafphantom2]

USAF Should Look At China’s Future Multi-Crew Fighter Model For F-15EX

The F-15EX's currently empty rear cockpit needs to be taken advantage of by adding a new kind of second crewmen, an Air Mission Commanding Officer.

Major Joshua “Soup” Campbell Posted on Jul 25, 2024 11:24 AM EDT Edited By Tyler Rogoway

F-15EX and J16, both two seaters, but one uses the second crewman in a different capacity than the traditional weapon system officer role.

PLA/USAF

Amidst strategic shifts in its force posture, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) faces pivotal decisions on the deployment of its next-generation fighter fleet. With plans to retire aging F-15C/D Eagles and scale back F-15E Strike Eagle operations, the USAF is poised to integrate a limited number of F-15EX Eagle IIs into the fleet. Yet, while the F-15EX boasts advancements as an evolution of the F-15E Strike Eagle family of fighters, current strategies overlook the aircraft’s rear cockpit potential.

The first F-15EX Eagle II delivered to the Oregon Air National Guard’s 142nd Wing, the first operational unit to receive the type, touches down in Portland in June 2024. 142nd Wing/Oregon Air National Guard

Meanwhile, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) advocates for multi-seat configurations to manage data-rich combat environments effectively. USAF plans, on the other hand, currently exclude utilizing the F-15EX’s rear cockpit, limiting its role to air-to-air missions and possibly limited air-to-ground missions sometime in the future.

In this era of transformative air combat, as the PLAAF pioneers new operational concepts with multi-seat fighters, the USAF stands at a crossroads, balancing legacy strategies with the imperative for adaptive, integrated command and control of unmanned systems and network-centric operations. With the F-15EX, however, the USAF has an opportunity to lead the way regarding future air combat by fully embracing the Eagle II’s two-crew capability.

The Eagle II Opportunity

With the pending divestment of the F-15C/D and reduction of the F-15E inventory, the USAF has committed to purchasing a relatively small number of F-15EXs to replace the F-15C/D in Japan, as well as at three National Guard bases with units tasked with U.S. homeland defense. The Eagle II, however, evolved from the Strike Eagle and subsequent F-15 derivatives, is capable of far more than what the legacy Eagle fleet previously provided to combatant commanders.

Given its modernized sensors, self-protection suite, fiber optics, future integration of an open mission system and digital open architecture backbone, more powerful engines, increased computing capabilities, and the inclusion of a rear fully-missionized cockpit, the F-15EX represents a significant advancement over both the F-15C/D and F-15E. Yet, current operational plans do not involve taking advantage of the rear cockpit, leaving it empty and unused, assigning the F-15EX to perform long-range and medium-range air-to-air only missions with minimal expansions into other missions sets the F-15EX is purpose-built to fulfill.

From left to right, an F-15C, an F-15E, and an F-15EX. USAF

The evolving character of air combat, however, demands that platforms do more amongst the growing complexity of high-end warfare. When considering the future of air combat, which places information at center stage in a high-end conflict, failing to utilize the rear cockpit would be a missed opportunity to expand future roles and responsibilities of the F-15EX, disregarding the investment that already exists in the aircraft’s capabilities.

By contrast, People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) assessments of the anticipated complexities of forthcoming high-end combat environments have led them to identify multi-seat, multi-role configurations as critical to operations.

Available information suggests that the PLAAF believes an additional operator offers the potential for more effective interpretation and utilization of the vast sensory data that could overwhelm the cognitive and processing capacities of a single individual, particularly in the future of contested air combat environments. Having made this assessment, the PLAAF is now moving forward in developing operational concepts for how best to employ multiple operators in a single tactical aircraft, like the J-16 and the two-seat J-20S variant (also referred to variously as the J-20B and J-20AS), beyond their traditional roles. The USAF could benefit from adopting a multi-operator approach like the PLAAF’s with the F-15EX.

A picture of a two-seat J-20 during testing. Chinese internet

Information Saturation

Any future high-end conflict will produce vast amounts of data that need processing. Both the U.S. military and PLA continue to develop robust integrated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) networks to facilitate combat operations and support long-range kill chains. As such, sensors within the land, sea, air, and space domains will provide more data than can be consumed by human operators to process — and make accurate — real-time tactical and operational decisions. Due to the rapidly changing environments in a future contest, these decisions will need to be made quickly and potentially at the forward edge of the battlespace.

In an anticipated information-saturated environment, the USAF advocates for the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-to-human collaboration to alleviate the workload and cognitive demands on operators. While the incorporation of AI may process and distill information to provide operators with pertinent data, a saturated, complex combat environment full of adversary ships, aircraft, and coastal defenses employing deception and denial tactics will still likely result in an overwhelming influx of information for operators to process, leading to task saturation. Performing a multitude of missions and tasks — including controlling collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) and managing other aircraft in formation — all the while making air-to-air and air-to-ground engagement decisions within a contested, degraded, and operationally limited (CDO-L) environment will challenge and could exacerbate cognitive processes for both humans and their AI agents. The PLAAF, on the other hand, seems to be intent on leveraging AI integration with more human operators, not less.

Public Domain

Moving Beyond Traditional Roles

A recent article published in January 2024 by Chinese state-owned outlet Ta Kung Pao Online in Hong Kong, titled “J-16 Leads the Air Force Aircraft Fleet in Preparations for Future Air Battles,” sheds light on the evolving role of the J-16 back-seater and its implications for the future role of the J-20S back-seater. The article outlines the traditional division of responsibilities between front-seat and back-seat operators in the J-16. It also underscores how, due to evolving characteristics of air warfare, the role of the backseat operator has evolved as combat has evolved, informing future J-20S operations.

A Chinese J-16. Japan Ministry of Defense A stock picture of a Chinese J-16. Japan Ministry of Defense

According to the article, the J-16 stands out as the primary two-seat fighter in the PLAAF’s combat air force. While the two-seat Su-30 Flanker exists in the PLAAF’s inventory, its fleet is smaller in size, whereas the J-16 contains more advanced avionics and is in continued domestic production exceeding 245 aircraft, leaving the PLAAF to rely heavily on the J-16 and its more advanced capabilities.

A Chinese Su-30MKK Flanker. Dmitriy Pichugin A stock picture of a Chinese Su-30MKK Flanker. Dmitriy Pichugin

Equipped with asymmetric, outsized weapons that don’t fit in the J-20’s weapons bay, the J-16 provides a broad array of operational capabilities, making it a versatile asset in various scenarios. Similar to the F-15E, the J-16 conducts long-range air-to-air engagements and attacks on ground and maritime targets where the back-seater serves as a weapons controller responsible for employing different types of weapons. The PLAAF, however, is beginning to adapt the J-16 to the expected information-dominated combat environment and evolving manned-unmanned teaming by developing new roles and responsibilities for the aircraft and its operators.

Information-Dominated Combat Environment

In the context of the evolving landscape of networked and unmanned warfare, contemporary air combat will incorporate a multitude of systems where all combat elements are interconnected with vast amounts of information. Through data transmission and intelligence-sharing platforms, collaborative operations based on interconnected systems have become the predominant operational model, with the J-16 capable of assuming the central command role for entire formations. According to the Ta Kung Pao article, the J-16 back-seater, in this new environment, evolves from simply a “weapon controller” into an “air mission commanding officer.”

A close-up look at the pilot and the back-seater in a Chinese J-16. China Military Online/Liu Chang and Liu Yinghu

With this new evolution, the air mission commanding officer (AMCO) encompasses multiple roles and responsibilities in a high-tech conflict that includes overseeing air-to-surface weaponry, managing and disseminating multi-platform intelligence, and issuing operational directives. While this may seem similar to the USAF’s airborne Forward Air Controller-Airborne (FAC[A]), there appear to be differences in employment concepts between the PLAAF’s AMCO and the USAF’s FAC(A), particularly regarding the operational environments with which they are utilized.

Primarily employed in close air support (CAS) or strike coordination and reconnaissance (SCAR) missions, the FAC(A) is the airborne version of a joint terminal air controller (JTAC) in which both can nominate and mark targets, deconflict airspace, relay critical ground schemes of maneuver, and authorize airstrikes. The PLAAF’s AMCO, however, seems to focus on roles and responsibilities that leverage the PLA’s sensing network in a contested air interdiction environment.

Utilizing the PLA’s expanding sensing network to build situational awareness in the battlespace, the J-16 back-seater, assuming the AMCO role and plugged into the sensing network, is intended to direct coordinated efforts among various aircraft, in conjunction with ground and naval units, to execute comprehensive aerial attacks. Additionally, the back-seater’s role is to command and coordinate multiple drones acting as ‘loyal wingmen’ with the intent to amplify combat effectiveness through combined manned and unmanned operations.

Whether or not the PLAAF is actually proficient with this type of force package integration in a high-end combat environment remains to be seen. There is a distinct possibility that the PLAAF is overstating its capabilities in such an environment and much of this training is nascent or scripted, or this is the aspirational plan for future operations. However, the article points to recent footage from state-run CCTV that claims to showcase joint exercises involving GJ-2 drones under the command of J-16s enabling swarm attacks. Analysts, however, suggest that the articles and CCTV coverage of these events do not match reality given current PLAAF capabilities and likely reflect a desire for future capability. But while the PLAAF may be unable to conduct the defined roles and responsibilities of the AMCO in the current state, the PLAAF continues to move forward in preparing its endeavors. More importantly, however, the J-16’s implementation of an AMCO also serves as a testbed for future two-seat J-20S operations.

While the J-20S may lack the payload capacity of the J-16, the PLAAF anticipates that “stealth, high-speed, and advanced situational awareness” allow the J-20S to “penetrate enemy territory, gain air superiority,” and subsequently assume command over trailing aircraft like J-16s and J-10Cs. Moreover, the J-20S, like the J-16, will be able to coordinate and control CCAs to compensate for its magazine depth and weapons limitations, a task overseen by the AMCO in the rear cockpit.

Drawing parallels from the expanding roles of J-16 and J-20S back-seaters, incorporating a Weapon System Officer (WSO) into the F-15EX’s rear cockpit would expand its capabilities and enhance the lethality of USAF strike packages. With the advent of large, integrated sensing networks providing a vast amount of data, an F-15EX WSO, assuming a role similar to an AMCO, can coordinate and direct fires, provide mission-critical intelligence in the midst of mission execution to other platforms in a strike package, pass information of evolving situations between pulsed operations, and even coordinate with various naval or ground forces.

As highlighted in this picture, a two-person crew did fly the first F-15EX jet to Portland in June 2024. Oregon National Guard

Additionally, the F-15EX’s weapons array integration, including outsized weapons, allows it to perform an array of missions already being fulfilled by the F-15E, which includes long-range air interdiction. Moreover, it can be deployed to other environments in the event of horizontal escalation or low- to medium-tier conflicts, providing global firepower reach against smaller, maligned nation-states while still providing key capabilities in the high-end fight. Furthermore, the lack of stealth allows the F-15EX the ability to carry highly specialized pods that stealth assets simply can’t, or won’t, carry. Advanced pods can provide many warfighting-enhancing capabilities, from communications to sensing, electronic warfare, network redundancy, and edge computing.

A US Air Force F-15C Eagle carrying an infrared search and track (IRST) pod. This is one of many specialized podded capabilities members of the F-15 family, including the F-15EX, can carry. USAF

Finally, an F-15EX WSO can oversee the employment of groups of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) or swarms of other drones.

CCAs, AI, and Command and Control

Both the USAF and PLAAF view CCAs as a way of generating cost-effective mass. The intent is to augment attack formations with low-cost, AI-infused robotic wingmen to increase capabilities in the realm of firepower, sensing, electronic warfare, communications, and other capabilities that manned aircraft bring to the fight. Though both air forces promote heavy reliance on AI in CCAs, AI currently lacks intuition and the ability to infer information in a complex CDO-L combat environment that it is not accustomed to and lacks the ability to break from its given prescribed parameters to adapt. It is therefore expected that some level of human-to-machine interaction between manned aircraft and CCAs will be required to make decisions in a combat environment for some time. Due to the anticipated human interaction with CCAs, the PLAAF foresees multi-seat fighter platforms as an operational requirement.

In a document titled “Study on the Combined Manned Aircraft/UAV in Air Operations,” published around 2021 by Wang Danjing and Liu Ying of the Department of Combined Tactics Air Force Command College in Beijing, the discussion of command and control of CCAs described the task intensive nature of managing combat operations and CCAs simultaneously. When deciding the optimal manned-to-unmanned mixed formation characteristics, task management and cognitive performance were at the forefront of the author’s conclusion that the ideal formation to employ CCAs consists of pairing a two-seat aircraft with a single-seat aircraft.

Wang and Liu note that “U.S. scientists show that there is a nonlinear relationship between a person’s workload and work performance,” suggesting that adding management of CCAs to a pilot’s tasks could impact performance. The authors conclude that “the manned aircraft formation scope is better as a two-aircraft formation, with one being a two-seat aircraft tasked with tactical control of the UAVs, while the other is a single-seat aircraft tasked with executing the task of standing guard and attacking.”

While USAF tactics will almost definitely differ from the PLAAF’s regarding CCAs, utilizing an extra body in the backseat of the F-15EX can enhance the employment of CCAs, allowing the front-seat pilot to focus on other tasks or coordinate various functions in a combat setting.

Moreover, it is expected that CCAs will not always launch with their manned platforms to conduct missions in an Agile Combat Employment (ACE) scheme of maneuver or disparate basing environment like in the Pacific. Positioned between forward assets and bases, an F-15EX could take command of CCAs and transfer to forward fighter platforms or launch or recovery locations.

Take Aways

Although the U.S. military typically does not examine adversary strategy, operations, and tactics with the intention of replicating them, it is crucial to recognize the strengths of developing adversary capabilities and evaluate how they align with U.S. military operational principles.

Given the information provided above, it is imperative for the USAF to recognize and address the limitations of human cognition in future information-intensive environments and consider deploying additional operators to process the vast data available and manage new cognitive demands and new responsibilities like CCAs in a high-tech warzone. The PLAAF’s ambitious approach to utilizing its two-seat J-16 and J-20S platforms in complex, high-end combat environments may provide insights into how to maximize the F-15EX’s enhanced capabilities by incorporating a back-seater.

Similar to how the PLAAF intends to use the J-16 to cooperate with other fighter platforms, C2ISR platforms, and its kill-web to employ its outsized weapons, the F-15EX provides the range, payload, and sensors to do the same for the USAF. Additionally, with its fully missionized rear cockpit and large-area display, the F-15EX is capable of doing everything the multi-seat F-15E can do, and more.

The F-15EX’s fully missionized rear cockpit allows a WSO to conduct a multitude of mission-related functions, freeing the pilot to focus on other tasks at hand. Incorporating a WSO in the F-15EX would thus harness the intended capabilities the F-15EX is designed for. With no one in the rear cockpit, however, the F-15EX’s potential expansion of roles and responsibilities and overall effectiveness cannot be realized, leaving the Air Force unable to capitalize on the investment that is already paid for with each aircraft rolling off the line.

With every new set of roles, responsibilities, and mission expansion, however, comes new training requirements. For the F-15EX to adopt similar roles and responsibilities of the AMCO, the F-15E training pipeline can leverage existing training plans either by restructuring F-15E training flights that develop these specific tasks or by creating a new AMCO training pipeline in concert with the F-15EX syllabus being constructed to prepare future Eagle II pilots. Taking qualified F-15E WSO instructors into an AMCO pipeline that runs in concert with the F-15EX syllabus, the Air Force can fully realize a cohesive multi-seat aircraft ready for the high-end environment.

Unfortunately, however, the USAF has chosen to focus the utilization of the F-15EX on a single mission: long-range air-to-air. While capable of conducting close air support (CAS), combat search and rescue (CSAR), long- and medium-range air interdiction, maritime air interdiction, defensive counter-air, suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD), and more, leaving the rear cockpit empty in this high-tech piece of machinery and conducting only long-range air-to-air engagements leaves all this potential capability on the table.

USAF

Equipped with outsized, long-range weapons and specialized pods, and the ability to command CCAs and swarms of other drones while directing combat fires and disseminating multi-platform intelligence from a multi-crew platform, the F-15EX offers a broader spectrum of capabilities beyond solely engaging in long-range air-to-air combat. Additionally, much of the necessary technology for these functions is already integrated into the aircraft.

For these reasons, it is imperative that the Air Force not let preconceived notions of traditional roles and responsibilities obstruct decision-making concerning the future of air warfare and the potential evolution of roles and responsibilities.

The character of warfare is evolving, necessitating the utilization of both machinery and personnel in innovative ways that align with the changing environment. The multi-operator platform direction currently pursued by the PLAAF yields operational insights worthy of consideration by USAF planners for the near- and mid-term, even as the USAF continues to develop advanced AI solutions for the long term.

Major Joshua “Soup” Campbell is an F-15E Weapon System Officer (WSO) and graduate of the distinguished USAF Weapon School with 1,500 hours in the F-15E which includes 630 combat hours. He spent the last year as a Fellow at the USAF’s China Aerospace Studies Institute with a strategic and operational focus. He is currently attending Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies through the Department of Defense’s Strategic Thinker’s Program. He has worked in a variety of capacities at both the squadron level and MAJCOM staff positions.

[citrus-cactus]

My own thoughts on the incredibly intriguing idea of Maki/Menoa so I don’t clog up @digitalgate02 ‘s post!

(BTW, ramblings assume a world where either Maki and Menoa are roughly the same age and become roommates in college, or maybe they meet post-Tri/pre-Kizuna in a world where… uhhh… I guess the Reboot never happened and Maki and Daigo both lived!)

Under the cut cuz it got kind of long, and for varying degrees of toxic yuri/toxic polycule relationship discussion. Also, Maki’s bisexual now. Sorry I don’t make the rules… except in this case, I totally did :)

I do think an attraction between Maki and Menoa (platonic at first, but possibly moving to romantic and sexual) would start to form the instant one learned that the other lost their digimon partner. The downside(?) is that I don’t think either of them could ever be completely honest with each other. I agree that Menoa would probably assume “partner dissolution” is what took Bakumon, and convince Maki to work on Morphomon and Bakumon 2.0 with her. I think she would express academic curiosity in the going to the Digital World and seeing the effects of the Reboot, but she would be less invested in both these concepts than Maki is. And she probably doesn’t actually like… believe in the less-tangible aspects of the Digital World, such as Homeostasis, but she supports Maki asserting some form of control over it regardless. Conversely, Maki is probably really intrigued by Menoa’s area of focus as a way to resurrect Bakumon, but she also does not want to be completely forthcoming about what happened to her as a kid, and keeps researching the Reboot as her/their possible Plan B. On at least a surface level, they feel they are kindred spirits based on their shared sorrow and similar goals, and they both start to lean into that, feeding off each other in an increasingly messy feedback loop of obsession and codependence. Kind of like what I assume would have happened if Hiroki Hida hadn’t been interested in becoming a police officer or starting a family, and just focused on getting to the Digital World with Oikawa. It would be unhealthy as hell, but at least the two of them would have each other! <3

Daigo’s inclusion in this also fascinates me, because I can’t think about him as a character without his “can’t it be me, your new partner?” feelings for Maki. I think he still serves an important role for Maki in providing small “reality checks” to the obsessive drive that comes from hanging out with Menoa (whether Maki actually listens to him or not is another matter)—so yes, he has to be in there too. I think he would try to convince himself it’s healthy for Maki to have someone who can really understand what she’s going through… he can be there for her all he wants, but both he and Maki know (and have discussed) that he can’t be everything she needs 100% of the time.

I’m most interested in a situation where Maki wants to stay close to both Daigo and Menoa, because she gets completely different things out each relationship. Both provide something she knows is missing in her life, and serve to refocus her grief at losing Bakumon in different ways… though it’s possible that someday, she will be forced to choose between them. Daigo offers sympathy but no quick-and-easy closure (“she’s gone and I know it hurts, but I love you.”) while Menoa is more of an enabler of ethically dubious solutions (“I love you and I share your hurt, but we can bring her back.”). Daigo would tolerate Menoa for Maki’s sake (until something objectionable happened that caused him to reevaluate their shared scientific pursuit—but by then, of course, it may be too little, too late). Menoa tolerates Daigo as well, but she secretly wants to study him like a bug. Consider: he’s an adult with a digimon partner who’s alive and well— a god, even—and yet, couldn’t Bearmon’s apotheosis be considered a form of partner dissolution? There is much to consider in regards to Daigo and his supposed Digimon partner that could aid her in her research… but she has no intention of telling him that.

I can almost envision a sort of Reanimator AU between these three, with Menoa moving in with Maki so they can make out conduct extremely unethical experiments in secret while Daigo objects from the sidelines (much like this AU’s source material, the degree to which the events that transpire lend themselves to a queer-lens interpretation is half the fun, but at the end of the day it is a horror story).

I can also see a (slightly less toxic) thruple situation where (to Daigo), Maki is his girlfriend and Menoa is his girlfriend’s girlfriend, and they typically engage in closed-door activities as Couple A and Couple B and occasionally come together as a threesome, all centered around Maki.

You can’t convince me that Maki/Menoa isn’t some form of toxic yuri though, and apparently I am HERE for that! >:)

[humanrightsday]

How human rights are a pathway to solutions, playing a critical role as a preventative, protective and transformative force for good.

Since their adoption in 2015, many developing countries have made remarkable strides towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, a troubling disconnect persists: economic growth alone does not guarantee the alleviation of poverty or inequalities, the climate emergency accelerates, and the destruction of our natural world continues. As we mark Human Rights Day 2024, we are reminded that human rights are not abstract ideals. They are vital tools for addressing these pressing challenges and advancing dignity and justice for all. 

In conflict and crisis settings, where violence and forced displacement prevail, human rights come under acute threat. Women and children are especially affected. In such contexts, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) works to support human rights solutions that strengthen accountability, protect communities and foster peace, recovery, and stability. This includes partnering with National Human Rights Institutions, which often represent the frontline defenders of human rights. For example, in Nigeria, UNDP collaborated with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to support the National Human Rights Commission’s Human Rights Dashboard and Observatory to enable real-time tracking and analysis of human rights violations, directly support to conflict-affected populations. Local initiatives also remain key. That includes women in Somalia who are being supported to lead peace efforts including assisting those facing violence, discrimination, and injustice. “I have resolved numerous local disputes…I feel motivated when I see I have been able to change people’s lives positively,” says Fatuma who led a local Peace Working Group.

As the accelerating climate emergency threatens the ability of current and future generations to enjoy their right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, UNDP is focusing on access to justice, working with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and OHCHR to help communities claim their rights. Moreover, in countries such as Belize, UNDP’s Climate Promise is supporting national climate change dialogues that comprise of key groups like civil society, Indigenous Peoples, and women's organizations, ensuring that everyone can have a say in their climate futures  -- advancing climate justice. The private sector also has a pivotal role to play. UNDP supports the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights including to advance sustainable practices that protect the environment. Indeed, technology offers both risks and opportunities to advance human rights. The Global Digital Compact aims to create an inclusive, open, safe, and secure digital space that respects, protects and promotes human rights. Tech-enabled UNDP tools like iVerify and eMonitor+ deployed in over 25 countries to monitor and address false narratives and hate speech show the potential. It is now crucial to adopt a rights-based approach to technologies like A.I., addressing ethical challenges, protecting data, and tackling biases to mitigate risks today and unlock immense benefits for the generations to come. 

The Pact for the Future reaffirms that the three pillars of the United Nations – sustainable development, peace and security, and human rights – are equally important, interlinked and mutually reinforcing. Remove one, and the balance falters. Alongside our partners from the UN and beyond, UNDP is dedicated to bringing the Pact to life. In many ways, it calls for a re-think of how our global community plans, acts, and thinks together for the future, concertedly creating a more continuous thread of actions that will shape the world to come. That involves embedding human rights into every aspect of our work to help realise a future where justice, equality and opportunity stretches beyond the far horizon.

Achim Steiner, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

This Human Rights Day, 10 December 2024, we focus on how human rights are a pathway to solutions, playing a critical role as a preventative, protective and transformative force for good.