#he is alex in act I and ham in act II

[thewhole-beingdeadthing]

The way that you can tell I was on Hamilton tumblr in 2016 is the fact that I refer to the Revolutionary Set as “Herc, Laf, John, and Alex” instead of “Mulligan, Lafayette, Laurens, and Hamilton”

[yarart4ever]

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! HAMILTON ARRIVED ON DISNEY+ A FEW DAYS AGO WHAAAAAAAAAT!!!?????

as you couldn't tell, I am IN LOVE with Hamilton! the musical got me into discovering the musical fandom! sure I was in love with Hairspray and musicals in general but Hamilton was my first actual music obsession!

this is the LIVE SHOW! just recorded professionally! and Imma do my usual review on it! :3

-lol king george's intro at the beginning! XD

-WHO ELSE BOPPED AND GOT EXCITED DURING THE FIRST SONG IN ACT I: ALEXANDER HAMILTON!?

-I like how the crowd is so respectful to the performers and only laughs and claps when necessary!

-the dance choreography! *chefs kiss* perfecto!

-YO! the actors for John Laurens/Philip, Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson and Hercules Mulligan/ Maddison ARE. FINE! they. are. DADDIES! PERIODT!

-okay but like... the actresses for Angelica and Peggy are also pretty fine! like.. UwU WIFEYS!

-Angelica~, (work, work) Eliza~ and PEGGY! the schuyler sisters~! sorry I had to! TvT

-ANGELICA. IS. A QUEEN! PERIODTTTT!!

-lol everything that comes out of King george's mouth is gold! XD

-RIGHT HAND MAN IS A BOP OH MY GOD! (O///o///O)

-aw, Helpless is so wholesome I love it! <3

-okAY BUT SATISFIED IS MY FAVORITE SONG AND IT'S WHAT GOT ME INTO THE HAMILTON FANDOM! I KNOW THE SONG WORD FOR WORD ISTG-

-lmao who else died at raise a glass reprise cuz... XD it got me!

-WAIT FOR IT IS MY SECOND FAVORITE SONG!! (>///o///<) but like show me mother theodosia pls! T^T

-"I'm a general! WEEEE"  Charles Lee~  best quote by far!

-  the way! John Laurens! looks at Alexander! jesus why does he have to be so attractive!?

-damn Alexander got daddy issues! O_O

-that would be enough almost made me cry what??

-EVERYONE GIVE IT UP FOR AMERICA'S VERY HOT FIGHTING FRENCHMAN!... wait that's not the lyrics..

-damn! dying is easy, but living is harder... that hit different! :'(

-THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN!! HOLY THAT SONG SLAPSSSS!!

-oml Hercules Mulligan's solo (O///_///O) and he sticks his tongue out too! he's a aggressive top hottie and I am living for it!!!

- what comes next was totally foreshadowing for when Trump becomes president. like, "when your people say they hate you, don't come crawling back to me"! like yo! foreshadowing or what??

-aw dear theodosia! my third favorite song! you know, ever since I heard this I wanted to name my child theodosia so that I could sing her this song as a lullaby.

-NO!!! JOHN LAURENS MY HUSBAND!!! T^T </3 I knew he was gonna die anyway cause I've listened to the sundtrack many times but still! and Alexander was so happy singing about his son and then he hears about John's death I'm- :'( I almost cried again during that song... you can probably tell that I love John Laurens..

-NON STOP THO!! LIKE WHAT!?! THIS SONG WAS AWESOME IN THE SOUNDTRACK AND IT'S MORE AWESOME NOW THAT I'M SEEING IT AND SINGING ALONG!! (>///O///<)

~~intermission~~

-okay okay, act II! I'm ready!! give. me. that. tea!

-THOMAS JEFFERSON! HOLY SH!T HE'S HOT!!! AAAAHHHHH!!!

-OH! AND HE DOES THE KISS!! excuse me while I faint of fangirling...

-aw, poor Maddison is sick. lol corona?? I'm telling y'all they knew what was gonna happen in 2020! like even John wanted to help end black slavery and then there was that george floyd situation now and just... foreshadowing all over! :T

-HOLY CRAP YO THERE'S AN ACTUAL RAP BATTLE!! XD WHAAAATT??? like Jefferson and Hamilton got them mics, they be all up in each other's face roasting each other like bro!

-"turn around, bend over I'll show you where my shoe fits!" OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHH! GET ROASTED JEFFERSON BAM WHAT??

- lmao why the fnck do they have an grown a$$ man playing a 9 year old?? XD

-okay, I love the sister dynamic for Angelica and Eliza! they're so cute! and I like how no one questions that even though their races are different they're still related. and it bothers me that people nitpick about that. like leave them alone, they are sisters! periodt!

-oh no it's say no to this... I hate this song... I can't believe Hamilton had an affair with someone he doesn't even know! who cares if she's hot?? you're MARRIED!

-and wait... ain't that the actress who played Peggy in the last act?? sheesh no wonder she's so attractive!

-look at this dude saying "lord show me how to say no to this, I don't know how to say no to this"! LIKE BOI! just say no! tf?? it doesn't matter if she's a fncking model! if I was married to a kind hearted, gentle and just generally an amazing person Like Eliza, and a woman pulled me in their bed and said "stay~" I would've  been like "HAHA nope! peace out my guy, I'm already taken thank you very much and they do it to me better than you ever did! periodt!" and I would leave. it's that easy!

-"and her bodies screaming hell yes" BOI IF YOU DON'T KEEP YOUR D!CK IN YOUR PANTS AND GO HOME ALEXANDER I SWEAR TO FnCKING ALLAH......

-and he fncked up... that's it... I'm done!! Deuses! *gives peace sign and leaves*

-no one else was in the room? okay we getting hype now! XP

-damn Aaron Burr is a great dancer! XD

-oh sh!t oh sh!t there's another rap battle! same people too... everyone take cover! seriously this is not a drill!

-damn! okay did not hear this yet?? uhm so.... Hamilton snapped. and not the good type of snapped too... the moment he was given a opportunity to speak he literally shouted "YOU MUST BE OUTTA YOUR GODDAMN MIND!" and when I tell you I shook....

-"daddy's callin'.." oKAY FIRST OF ALL HOW WRONG DOES THAT SOUND TO YOU??

-lol when Burr came on stage and started singing, Jefferson was so confused he was like "bruh the hell did you come from??" and I died! XD

-oh sh!t Burr and Jefferson are joining forces- LOOK OUT EVERYONE AS THEY BRING THE THUNDER!

-YO THE RAPPING IN THIS SONG IS LIKE WOWZAH! LIKE BARS BRO! :D LIKE FnCKING M&M IS QUAKING!

-"sir, I don't know what you heard but WHATEVER IT IS.... Jefferson started it.." LMFAO ALEX I SWEAR TO GOD XD

-one last time oh no I'm scared this song is gonna make me cry isn't it??

-YEP I WAS RIGHT! I'M CRYING NOW! GREAT!

-George Washington's voice is so powerful oh my lord... and oop! he's crying too! also great! :'D

-my hEART T^T-

-King George Istg STOP! XD

-also yay, I like how they used a woman for the guard/right hand man to the king! as a feminist... I approve UwU

-who else flinched when the king started laughing........ because I did....

-"sit down John you FAT MOTHER FnCKER!" oop... was not expecting that!

-NO ALEX DON'T TELL THEM THEY'RE JOINING FORCES YOU'RE DEAD IF YOU TELL THEM THAT- aaaaaaaand you told them... smart.. real smart -_-

-okay but Thomas' reaction was even more funny on screen then in the sound track X'D

-welp... now Burr's gonna tell everybody.. oh wait no.. ALONG with Jefferson and Maddison... good job, Alexander..

-holy sh!t the reynolds pamphlet! he actually wrote it down?? I mean I knew this happened but STILL! WHAT THE FnCK, HAMILTON?!?

-Jefferson is getting to hype for this I swear XD

-OH CRAP ANGELICA IS HERE!

-"all the way from London? DAYUM!" that's me!

-damn, work it, King George! XP

-YEAH DAMN RIGHT HIS POOR WIFE ELIZA DIDN'T DESERVE THIS! >:(

-aw man, Burn hit's different! especially when you catch your ex cheating on you. if that ever happens, LISTEN TO THIS SONG! trust me!

-I feel so bad for her.. :(

-Philip saying "the scholars say I got the same virtuosity and brains as my pops, the ladies say that's not where the resemblance stops~" MADE ME DIE! LIKE ON THE SPOT! NO JOKE!

-the ladies are getting hype for Philip and honestly I CAN SEE WHY! HE'S A DADDY! DUNNO! UwU

-OOF! BEEF!

-he got shot AGAIN!?!

-he dies AGAIN!?!

-WHY DOES THIS HANDSOME BOI KEEP DYING?? LET HIM LIVE BRO!! T^T

-poor Eliza...

-oh god please no not it's quiet uptown! Imma cry again!

-oop... and now I'm crying again... ain't that fun! :'D

-the way they held hands at the end! T^T be still my heart!

-DAYUM! Hamilton chose JEFFERSON over Burr! oof, that's gotta sting!

-"you know what we can change that, you know why?" me: why? "because I'm the president.." me: *blushes and sweats*.... uh.. ahem... welp, that's enough convincing for me you got it sir!  I am so sorry... TvT

-oh no they about to duel! oh sh!t oh sh!t! I'm scared!

-lol A. Ham! XD I'm sorry I just find that so funny! HAM! AHA do I look like a Christmas meal to you?? lmao

-he's... HE'S AIMING HIS PISTOL AT THE SKY! BURR HOLD UP DON'T SHOOT DON'T-

-... he shot Hamilton...

-seriously Burr??

-Eliza has been through many heartbreaks right now..

-oh this is my 5th favorite song. who lives who dies, who tells your story... I'm gonna cry again, aren't I?

-yep! definitely just cried! that song always hits home for me..

I love this musical so much! no words can describe how much it means to me. so I suggest you listen to the soundtrack yourself, if you haven't and tell me how you feel about it. c:

[thesportssoundoff]

“Yo, this is appointment viewing”A UFC 218 preview

Joey

November 28th

Not since LAST November-December have we had two genuinely stacked PPV events back to back. UFC 217 brought the sizzle with three title fights, former champions and title contenders competing for standing and a loaded prelim slate with HWs and BWs looking to find their place in the world. UFC 218 heads to Detroit with just one title fight but with it a host of potential #1 contender clashes alongside a flat out good undercard with relevant fights and action fights all across the ledger. The headliner is a short notice clash between Max Holloway and Jose Aldo, a pretty damn good 145 lb title fight that could either solidify Max Holloway as a P4P great or reannounce Jose Aldo's return to the top of the division. Under it, all four main cards are REALLY on point with potential #1 contender clashes at HW, LW, Flyweight and SW. I can't begin to express my excitement for this bad boy much longer so let's just get right to it!

Fights: 13

Debuts: 1 (Allan Crowder)

Fight Changes/Injury Cancellations: 2 (Frankie Edgar OUT, Jose Aldo IN vs Max Holloway/Al Iaquinta OUT,  Charles Oliveira IN vs Paul Felder)

Headliners (fighters who have either main evented or co-main evented shows in the UFC):  13 (Jose Aldo, Max Holloway, Justin Gaethje, Eddie Alvarez, Alistair Overeem, Henry Cejudo, Sergio Pettis, Francis Ngannou, Michelle Waterson, Tecia Torres, Charles Oliveira, Alex Olivieira, David Teymur)

Fighters On Losing Streaks in the UFC:  1 (Angela Magana)

Fighters On Winning Streaks in the UFC:  11 (Sergio Pettis, Felice Herrig, David Teymur, Drakkar Klose, Alex Olivieira, Yancy Medeiros, Paul Felder, Tecia Torres, Max Holloway, Francis Ngannou, Alistair Overeem)

Stat Monitor for 2017:

Debuting Fighters (Current number: 41-35)- Allan Crowder

Short Notice Fighters (Current number: 23-34-1)- Jose Aldo, Charles Olivieira

Second Fight (Current number: 27-37)- Justin Willis, Dominick Reyes, Sabah Homasi

Cage Corrosion (18-13-1)- 0

Twelve Precarious Ponderings

1- We should begin with the main event which in my estimation an improvement over the Edgar/Holloway booking. To explain, while Edgar/Holloway is a fresh fight and one that would've been truly awesome, we've seen Frankie lose to Aldo twice. Aldo is the superior fighter of that we have no doubt---and so seeing Holloway/Aldo II isn't as fresh but it is a better all around fight. The first fight in my estimation is one of those clear examples of "sometimes stats lie, man." Everybody, almost like a chorus of geese on a cold Winnipeg morning, honks about Aldo winning the first two rounds and that's true but also irrelevant. Why? Because if you WATCH the fight, you can tell that the second round was a round where stats lie. Halloway had no respect for Aldo's power, he marched him down, he took to give (in my opinion he won the round) and by the end of the second round, their respective reactions heading back to their corners should've told you who was winning or about to win that fight. It wasn't Aldo.

2- I also don't buy the idea that leg kicks are some vaunted weapon which has been missing from Aldo's game and will be some deciding factor. For starters, it's not Holloway hasn't faced explosive kickers in the past. Second, it's not Aldo's leg kicks are the key weapon to what was his dominant run to begin with. They're a tool in the act but no more a tool than his amazing takedown defense and superb angles. LASTLY this is a guy who has been rocked/dropped in 3 of his last 4 fights. He's been finished in 2 of them. The only guy who hasn't finished him is a guy who has one KO stoppage in the last six years (love ya Frankie!). Aldo has plenty of ways to beat Holloway and Holloway has plenty of ways to beat him in return---but leg kicks? Not really seeing it. Aldo hasn't been this big leg kick monster since about 2013 or so. They're a sparsely used gimmick at this point.

3- I wonder if the UFC is as frustrated at the 155 lb scene as we are as fans. We have:

-A champion who doesn't seem like he's defending any time soon.

-An interim champion who seems to be torn between waiting for the neverending stop of the McGregor/UFC table dance and taking a fight that risks him losing the biggest payday of his life.

-Two fantastic 155 lb fights that could determine #1 contenders for titles that don't seem to be getting defended any time soon.

-Dustin Poirier sitting on the outside looking in after dominating Anthony Pettis plus depending on who you ask finishing/almost finishing Eddie Alvarez.

Making matters worser than the worst worse, you have Nate Diaz potentially malingering around, the looming threat of Max Holloway or Jose Aldo finally making a move up as well as a solid crop of 155 lb talent who aren't close to title shot contention but would in theory be closing the gap if the division wasn't held up at the top so much (the aforementioned Paul Felder, a suddenly resurgent Clay Guida, Anthony Pettis is still young enough to turn things around, too too early to write off Michael Chiesa and Kevin Lee after tough losses, Devid Teymur and the mystery that is Mairbek Taisumov).  At some point something has to give along these battle lines and I wonder if that means biting the bullet, admitting that there's a need for it and opening up 165 lbs.

3- I do think, title contention wise, it says something that Alvarez/Gaethje is 4th on the card underneath Pettis/Cejudo when it comes to relevancy. Could be nothing, could mean everything.

4- There's a lot of hype and pressure on Francis Ngannou. That's probably well deserved but as I've said perhaps one time too many, don't get caught up in the narrative if he loses. Once upon a time, Stipe Miocic got his first real big step up and he was iced in two rounds by Stefan Struve. Shawn Jordan once put Derrick Lewis on ice skates with a fat guy wheel kick. This will shock and amaze you but fighters do improve over time and at HW, nobody is ever truly a lost cause. Division lives for chaos.

5- I know I'm the weirdo in this regard but I'm really excited to see how Sergio Pettis handles the challenge that is Henry Cejudo. Of all the Duke Roufus products, Sergio is the one who seems to most fit the mold of what they want. Functional in every facet of the fight while still having the flash, sizzle and workrate to keep people interested. Cejudo's rediscovered his power recently and his boxing has looked world's better. I have cardio concerns with him as you always need to but Sergio Pettis has always had an aversion to guys who pack a shot on the feet. This fight could be really great.

6- Paul Felder's stock, which continues to go up and down depending on the time of year, is probably as high as it's been since he iced Danny Castillo way back in 2014. Felder has always been really talented but at 33, the clock's ticking on him really making a run. He's won 4 of his last 5 fights but the only guy who remains int he organization out of that group is Stevie Ray. His losses are two totally acceptable ones (a decision to Barboza where he could've probably won, a 3rd round TKO stoppage vs Francisco Trinaldo in Brazil) and one totally bemusing loss to Ross Pearson where he spun for the entire fight chasing a bonus and never got it. Felder's inconsistency is partially the reason why it's hard to feel overly confident in him vs Charles Olivieira. Do Bronx is always dangerous for a quickie sub and he showed that vs Will Brooks when he got his back and subbed him in the first round in April. Historically Charles has won to the guys he's supposed to beat and found creative insightful ways to lose to the guys he shouldn't. He's always in a fight until it's over and Felder historically leaves enough margin for error where  he could, in theory, give Do Bronx opportunities.

7- David Teymur thus far has passed every test put in front of him. He was successful in TKO-ing guys who he probably would've been fighting on the regional scene and then really broke out when he spoiled the Lando Vannata hype with a decision win in March. Teymur is one of those guys who mixes techniques well, never tries the same trick twice and has improved time and time again whenever he fights. He's a bit old for a prospect (28) and Drakkar Klose will probably be the bigger, stronger fighter but I'm excited to see what Teymur has added to his game during his time away. Dude has top 15 potential in my estimation.

8- There's going to be a lot of interest in the Waterson/Torres fight and fair play to it but I'm all about that Felice Herrig/Courtney Casey bout. I haven't been wow'd in Felice's more recent fights (never really impressed with Kish, thought Grasso won) BUT even having said that, she's finally matching her record with her boisterous personality. On the other hand, I'm all about that Courtney Casey violence. She debuted vs Joanne Calderwood on short notice and put it on her before she gassed. The same for her vs Seo Hee Ham where she started off hot and then the wheels fell off. She rebounded by finishing Christina Stanciu and has a "way more impressive in hindsight" sub of Randa Markos. A loss to Claudia Gadelha followed where she never seemed to get out of second gear and you could almost sense her upside would be "tough woman who lives on the outskirts of the top 10." She then went and beat the fuck out of Jessica Aguilar in a fight that wasn't competitive for a single minute of its duration. She is all action, all the time and Felice Herrig's size, grappling and developing hands are going to give her a real test. This fight is great.

9- Yancy Medeiros vs Alex "Cowboy" Olivieira is gonna be your favorite 90s gore action movie where it's all violence with no sense behind it. Just action figures ramming into one another.

10- Does the Ngannou/Overeem winner gets the "The UFC would like you to face Stipe Miocic on -insert date here-" sprung up on them?

11-  So Dominick Reyes is arguably the most exciting prospect at 205 lbs in a long long time---but I can't help but feel like Jeremy Kimball is going to be a step too far for him in his development. I kind of think the UFC thinks so too since it's buried on the FP prelims where a loss can almost be hidden.

12- Would a loss to Tecia Torres expose Michelle Waterson as being a PVZ-esque hype job?

Must Wins

1- Michelle Waterson

Might as well just flow from A to B, right? Waterson came into the UFC off a loss after the organization had been hounding Invicta to free her up for a while. She went 2-0 and WME-IMG actually signed her and took over as her media reps. The response off of that was a loss to Rose Namajunas where she was outmatched from the get go. Waterson says she went out for a while to get stronger and balance her aggression in the cage (she felt Rose just swarmed her from the jump and she was too timid on the feet) so hopefully we're going to see a new and improved Waterson.  She is still super markketable, talented and has exciting fights more often than not. A loss to Tecia Torres would be really tough on her career and would put a lot of things into question, primarily whether she's big enough for 115 lbs or whether this entire thing is really a new PVZ.

2- Eddie Alvarez

Alvarez exorcised a lot of demons when he beat RDA for the title and ended the bullshit about him just being a good fighter outside of the UFC who couldn't hang (loss to Cerrone and two ugly split decision wins weren't helping). He never had a chance vs McGregor where he was basically knocked out by the first left hand that landed. The last fight vs Dustin Poirier was, I suppose, the return of the Eddie Alvarez of old. He got hurt, survived, found whatever it is that makes him insane and then used it in the second round. A blatantly illegal knee ended the night for Poirier and Alvarez but for a BRIEF second, Eddie Alvarez was the man he was in all those wars. He's had a lot of wear and tear on his body from fighting great competition for little fanfare. The UFC version of Eddie Alvarez is a little smarter, a lot more chinny and the epitome of age kicking in too late to protect the body. Alvarez vs Gaethje really does feel like a battle between Eddie Alvarez retro and Eddie Alvarez off the shelf. Justin Gaethje has a ton of Alvarez in his game while being younger and hitting way harder---but does Eddie still have some magic left?

3- Dominick Reyes

205 lbs needs Dominick Reyes in the worst way. The under 30 LHW prospect got into the UFC on short notice after a viral headkick KO and he did little to disappointed in stomping out Joachim Christenson. Still I think we can admit that Christensen is ways away from being UFC quality and so Reyes still hasn't beaten someone of note. Jeremy Kimball isn't great shakes BUT he has a very deceptive record. He started his career 5-3 and since then he's gone 10-3 which includes a 1-1 stint at Bellator and wins over dudes with far more fanfare than he (TUF finalist Matt Van Buren, Cody Mumma and Chidi Njokuani all ring a bell). This is a sneaky test of Reyes' ability and I'm hoping he'll pass it.

Can't Miss Fights

1-  Justin Gaethje vs Eddie Alvarez

2- Jose Aldo vs Max Holloway

3- Francis Ngannou vs Alistair Overeem

4-Henry Cejudo vs Sergio Pettis

5- Alex  Oliveira vs Yancy Medeiros

[certainheartrunaway]

Ham Radio Updates

  Ham Radio Update

http://www.hamradioupdate.com/rss20.xmlsource

Ham Radio Update – http://www.hamradioupdate.com/

Propagation de K7RA

9 hours ago

Southgate ARC – Spotless days continue this week, with consecutive days without sunspots now at 16 days, according to spaceweather.com as of August 22

Radio hams team-up with the military

9 hours ago

Southgate ARC – What happens when hams team up with the military in a communications exercise that envisions a major earthquake?

New French CEPT paper still wants 144-146 MHz for Aeronautical

9 hours ago

Southgate ARC – The French administration has renewed its attack on the Amateur Radio 144-146 MHz band ahead of a key CEPT ECC CPG meeting in Ankara, August 26-30

Ham radio station active at Chaos Communication Camp

9 hours ago

Southgate ARC – The Chaos Communication Camp is taking place August 21-25. The Cardiff University Amateur Radio Society are attending the event and the Chaoswelle station is active on HF, VHF, UHF and the Es’hail-2 /QO-100 geostationary satellite

Ham radio kept communication alive at Kavalappara

9 hours ago

Southgate ARC – The Malabar Amateur Radio Society set up stations at Collectorate and landslip-hit areas following the recent flooding in Kerala

Foundations of Amateur Radio

9 hours ago

Southgate ARC – The hobby of amateur radio has been around for a long time. It was here before I was born and it will be here after I become a silent key. The same is true for you. While there is a recurring discussion about the death of the hobby, the reality is that our community changes continually. People come and go all the time

EURAO Newsletter September 2019

9 hours ago

Southgate ARC – EURAO Newsletter comes out quarterly, either in pdf format or as a website. Spread the word!

The Latest Episode of ARRL Audio News is Available

20 hours ago

ARRL -Listen to the new episode of ARRL Audio News on your iOS or Android podcast app, or online at http://www.blubrry.com/arrlaudionews/. Audio News is also retransmitted on a number of FM repeaters. Click here and then scroll down to see the list.

  Reminder: World Wide Digi DX Contest Debuts on August 31

A day ago

The K7RA Solar Update

A day ago

ARRL -Spotless days continue this week, with consecutive days without sunspots now at 16 days, according to spaceweather.com as of August 22.

Average daily solar flux for all practical purposes was unchanged, from 67.4 last week to 67.5 this week. Average daily planetary A index went slightly lower from 6.3 to 4.4.

Predicted solar flux looks the same as it has been for months now, at 67 on August 23 to…

The Space Weather Woman

A day ago

Southgate ARC – Promise of a Solar Storm and Satellite Environment Check-In – The latest space weather forecast from Dr Tamitha Skov WX6SWW

The Italian Job (loss)

A day ago

Southgate ARC – If you always wanted to broadcast on 2GO’s old frequency (801 kHz AM), it might be up for grabs right now

Special commemorative callsign EI100YXQ

A day ago

Southgate ARC – This is a special call to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the first East to West voice transmission across the Atlantic from Ballybunion to Louisberg, Cape Breton, NS

SAQ receives 438 listener reports

A day ago

Southgate ARC – Alexanderson Alternator station SAQ says it received 438 listener reports — ‘an incredible amount’ — for its June 30 Alexanderson Day transmissions from Sweden including 8 ‘super’ DX reports, five from the USA and three from Canada

NASA TV to air US cargo ship departure from space station

A day ago

Southgate ARC – Filled with almost 2,700 pounds of valuable scientific experiments and other cargo, a SpaceX Dragon resupply spacecraft is set to leave the International Space Station Tuesday, Aug. 27. NASA Television and the agency’s website will broadcast its departure live beginning at 10:15 a.m. EDT

DX News from the ARRL

A day ago

Southgate ARC – The American Radio Relay League’s round-up of the forthcoming week’s DX activity on the amateur radio bands

So Now What? Podcast

2 days ago

ARRL -“Contesting,” with ARRL Contest Program Manager, Paul Bourque, N1SFE, will be the focus of the new (August 22) episode of the So Now What? podcast for Amateur Radio newcomers.

If you’re a newly licensed Amateur Radio operator, chances are you have lots of questions. This biweekly podcast has answers! So Now What? offers insights from those who’ve been just where you are now. New episodes will be…

Efforts Continue to Enhance ARES Program, Add Resources

2 days ago

ARRL -The ARRL Board of Directors, committees, and Headquarters administrative staff are continuing efforts to enhance the venerable Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES®) program. A major ARES Plan has been adopted, providing new direction going forward. In addition, a standardized training plan has been adopted and a new ARES Emergency Communicator Individual Task Book approved and published.

At it…

ARRL-TAPR Digital Communications Conference Presentations Announced

2 days ago

YOTA Summer Camp Bulgaria 2019 – Looking back

2 days ago

Southgate ARC – IARU Region 1 has published a report on the Youngsters On The Air (YOTA) summer camp held in Bulgaria from August 11-17

Radio Club makes international connections from Loop Head

2 days ago

Southgate ARC – The Clare Herald newspaper reports on the amateur radio activation of the Loop Head Lighthouse as part of International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend (ILLW) during August 17-18

Cincinnati Radio’s Mike Martini to Emcee National VOA Museum of Broadcasting’s Sept. 21 Fundraiser

2 days ago

Southgate ARC – Cincinnati radio and TV broadcast historian Mike Martini will emcee the Saturday, Sept. 21 fundraiser for the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting in West Chester

FCC issues $39,000 + Forfeiture Order against man from North Carolina

2 days ago

Southgate ARC – The WIA report the FCC has issued a $39,000 + Forfeiture Order against a man from North Carolina, for intentional misuse of a local public safety radio communications network, in violation of the Communications Act

ALARA contest August 24/25

2 days ago

Southgate ARC – The Australian Ladies Amateur Radio Association (ALARA) contest is on this weekend

IOTA news from the DARC

2 days ago

Southgate ARC – Compiled by Andreas, DK5ON of the Deutscher Amateur Radio Club

Tony’s 10m Band Report

2 days ago

Southgate ARC – No huge activity on Ten Metres this past week. I worked plenty of European stations on FT8 but nothing special. Best of the rest TM230RF (France special), II8FTDM (Italy special), OH0UDG (Aland Is), OJ0O (Market reef) and AN7AL (Spain special)

Reminder: The Hiram Percy Maxim Birthday Celebration Begins on August 31

3 days ago

Inter-American Proposal Removes 47 – 47.2 GHz from Bands under Study for 5G Services

3 days ago

ARRL -The 34th meeting of the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL) Permanent Consultative Committee II (PCC.II) concluded a week of meetings on August 16 in Ottawa, Canada, in advance of World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-19). The meetings were aimed at reaching regional consensus on WRC-19 agenda items. Attendees at PCC.II included ARRL Technical Relations Specialist Jon Siverli…

WWV Centennial Committee prepares for trial run of WW0WWV special event

3 days ago

Southgate ARC – The WWV Centennial Committee reports that it will conduct a trial run of special event station WW0WWV over the August 24/25 weekend

United States Special Event

3 days ago

Southgate ARC – Members of the Lake County Amateur Radio Association (LCARA, N8BC) will activate special event station W4G for the 103rd anniversary celebration of the National Park Service in conjunction with the James A. Garfield Presidential Home in Mentor, OH

United States POW-MIA Special Event

3 days ago

Southgate ARC – Look for special event station K4MIA/8 to be active between September 13-22nd. Activity is to honor and support our Veterans

The ‘Amateur’ tech that could penetrate the Kashmir blackout

3 days ago

Southgate ARC – The Wire reports shortwave radio transmission presents an effective way to communicate when conventional networks are down

India: Ham radio operators help reunite family

3 days ago

Southgate ARC – On August 16, a few policemen arrived at the house of Vadamalai Raman in village Purandarai located in Villupuram district of Tamil Nadu with photographs of a patient who has been staying at the Bangaon Subdivisional Hospital in West Bengal for over two years

Greenland operation

3 days ago

Southgate ARC – Operators Thomas/OZ1AA, Bo/OZ1DJJ, Dave/OZ5DM, Mikkel/OZ7AKT, Alex/OZ7AM and possibly others will be active as OX7A from Kangerlussuaq during the CQWW DX SSB Contest (October 26-27th). Operation class TBD

AMSAT Space Symposium call for papers

3 days ago

Southgate ARC – AMSAT has issued a call for papers for the 50th Anniversary AMSAT Annual Meeting and Space Symposium to be held on the weekend of October 18 – 20 at The Hilton Arlington, 950 North Stafford Street, Arlington, Virginia

Airborne radio may hinder 144 MHz ham radio

3 days ago

Southgate ARC – Sweden’s national amateur radio society, the SSA, has written again to their regulator, the PTS, pointing out the interference the Aeronautical Mobile Service would cause to amateur radio

Radio Amateurs in India Support Rescue and Relief Operations in Wake of Flooding

4 days ago

ARRL -Radio amateurs in at least three western Indian states along the Arabian Sea coast are pitching in to support communication for rescue and relief operations following heavy rainfall and flooding. In Kerala, Shyam Kumar, VU2JLE, told The Hindu newspaper that he and 15 other radio amateurs belonging to the Wayanad Hams (WHAMS) group have been closely monitoring to help the government speed rescue…

Candidates for ARRL Directors and Vice Directors Announced

4 days ago

ARRL -Two races for the office of ARRL Director and one contest for Vice Director are set for this fall. In the Southeastern Division, incumbent Director Greg Sarratt, W4OZK, faces a challenge from Mickey Baker, N4MB. A three-way race is set for the office of Southeastern Division Vice Director, with incumbent Joseph Tiritilli, N4ZUW, facing James Schilling, KG4JSZ, and Jeff Stahl, K4BH.

In the West G…

Somalia Operation Set for September

4 days ago

Alexanderson Alternator Station SAQ Hails “Incredible” Number of Listener Reports

4 days ago

W/VE Island QSO Party

4 days ago

Southgate ARC – The 2019 W/VE Island QSO Party is this coming weekend

Three starts using 3.5 GHz for 5G

4 days ago

Southgate ARC – The telecommunications and internet service provider Hutchison 3G UK Limited has started using its 5G spectrum at 3580-3680 MHz in a very limited number of areas

Photo tour of the Huntsville Hamfest

4 days ago

Southgate ARC – The Huntsville Hamfest was an amazing event – I understand the attendance on Saturday may have broken a few records

NASA TV coverage of uncrewed Soyuz mission to Space Station

4 days ago

Southgate ARC – An uncrewed Russian Soyuz spacecraft is set to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, Aug. 21 on a test flight to validate the spacecraft’s compatibility with a revamped Soyuz booster rocket. The booster will be used to transport crews to the International Space Station beginning in spring 2020

Highlights of CITEL WRC Preparatory Meeting: August 12 to 16 in Ottawa

4 days ago

Southgate ARC – CITEL, the telecommunications committee of the Organization of American States, concluded a week of meetings on Friday, August 16 at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa

WWV Centennial Committee Prepares for Trial Run of WW0WWV Special Event

5 days ago

Department of Defense Message Prompts Listeners to Take WWV/WWVH Survey

5 days ago

ARRL -Through Saturday, August 24, WWV and WWVH will transmit a US Department of Defense (DOD) message in conjunction with the COMEX 19-3 interoperability exercise in Tennessee. The broadcast also urges listeners to complete a survey on WWV/WWVH listenership and listening habits. The messages are broadcast on WWV at 10 minutes past the hour and on WWVH at 50 minutes past the hour. WWV and WWVH transm…

ARRL Contest and DXCC Rules Now Prohibit Automated Contacts

5 days ago

ARRL -Following the direction of the ARRL Board of Directors, ARRL has incorporated changes to the rules for all ARRL-sponsored contests and DXCC, prohibiting automated contacts. These changes also apply to the Worked All States (including Triple Play and 5-Band WAS), VHF/UHF Century Club, and Fred Fish, W5FF, Memorial awards. The changes are effective immediately.

A resolution at the July ARRL Board …

WIA Contest Champion

5 days ago

Southgate ARC – G’day, this is Peter VK2PR with the WIA Contest Champion results for 2018. The WIA Contest Champion is awarded annually for the best combined effort in WIA Sponsored Contests

Ideas sought for the next FUNcube satellite

5 days ago

Southgate ARC – In November the FUNcube-1 CubeSat will have been in orbit for 6 years and the FUNcube team are now soliciting suggestions for the next satellite

ICQPodcast – Long Island CW Club

5 days ago

Southgate ARC – In this episode, Martin M1MRB is joined by Leslie Butterfield G0CIB, Edmund Spicer M0MNG, Matthew Nassau M0NJX, Dan Romanchik KB6NU, Ruth Willet KM4LAO and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin M6BOY rounds up the news in brief and this episode’s feature is Long Island CW Club

DXCC Country/Entity Report

5 days ago

Southgate ARC – According to the Amateur Radio Cluster Network for the week of Sunday, 11th/August, through Sunday, 18th/August there were 203 countries active

Cuba DX Group celebration

5 days ago

Southgate ARC – The Cuba DX Group will be celebrating its 39th anniversary with special activity on September 1st

Bisho Hammies provide communication

5 days ago

Southgate ARC – Sunday 11 August in South Africa saw the latest running of the King Williams Town Adventure Race. This challenges participants to a series of fun activities including mountain biking, walking, running, kloofing and puzzle solving

Amateur Radio Is There When All Else Fails

5 days ago

Southgate ARC – Jefferson Public Radio (JPR) reports on the vital role played by radio amateurs when disaster strikes

Altrincham Wireless Society 2QV

5 days ago

Southgate ARC – In the second of his mini documentary series Lewis M3HHY covers the history of the Altrincham Wireless Society 2QV

IOTA news from OPDX

5 days ago

Southgate ARC – Weekly IOTA News – compiled by Tedd Mirgliotta, KB8NW, editor of the Ohio/Penn DX Bulletin

Propagation Report from Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP

6 days ago

Southgate ARC – Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP, reports that the solar activity is expected to remain at low levels

VRT withdraws slur against radio amateurs

6 days ago

Southgate ARC – Belgium’s Flemish broadcaster VRT falsely said radio amateurs were likely responsible for the transmission of fictional traffic information to vehicle dashboard screens

SARL RF Noise Workshop

6 days ago

Southgate ARC – The SARL RF Noise Workshop will be held at the National Amateur Radio Centre on Saturday 28 September. This workshop is presented in partnership with AMSAT SA

SARL HF Digital Contest this afternoon

6 days ago

Southgate ARC – The second contest in the SARL HF Contest series is the Digital Contest taking place from 14:00 to 17:00 UTC this afternoon (Sunday) with RTTY and PSK activity on 80, 40 and 20 meters

QSO Today – John Nowacki – W3NA

6 days ago

Southgate ARC – John Nowacki, W3NA, was a teenager in the early sixties when he won a contest to name a popular amateur radio line of antennas that are still sold today

Pirates On US Navy Satellites – UHF SatCom

6 days ago

Southgate ARC – Here we take a look at how to listen to the Brazillian Pirates on UHF SatCom

FCC dismisses ARRL, AMSAT requests in Small Satellite proceeding

6 days ago

Southgate ARC – An FCC Report and Order released August 2 in the so-called ‘small satellite’ rulemaking proceeding, IB Docket 18-86, failed to address concerns expressed by ARRL and AMSAT

BBC increases Kashmir service on shortwave

6 days ago

Southgate ARC – The BBC World Service has stepped up shortwave broadcasts to Jammu and Kashmir during the media shutdown in the region

ICQ Podcast Episode 301 – Long Island CW Club

6 days ago

ICQ Podcast -In this episode, Martin M1MRB is joined by Leslie Butterfield G0CIB, Edmund Spicer M0MNG, Matthew Nassau M0NJX, Dan Romanchik KB6NU, Ruth Willet KM4LAO and Ed Durrant DD5LP to discuss the latest Amateur / Ham Radio news. Colin M6BOY rounds up the news in brief and this episode’s feature is Long Island CW Club.

ICQ AMATEUR/HAM RADIO PODCAST DONORS

We would like to thank Michael Rosenberg (N9YB), Constantine Papas (KL0S) and our monthly and annual subscription donors for keeping the podcast advert free. To donate, please visit – http://www.icqpodcast.com/donate

Radio Spectrum Management Traces an Activated Unregistered Personal Locator Beacon

The Internet’s Impact on International Radio

Australia: WIA board comment

AMSAT member wins Alabama Outstanding Youth Ham Award

First UK 288 GHz CW Contact

FT8 Digital Mode Club 2nd Anniversary

BARTG GB60ATG Special Event

146MHz band Gets Extra Year

Propagation de K7RA

7 days ago

Southgate ARC – No sunspots were visible over the recent reporting week, Thursday through Wednesday, August 8 through 14

WIA Director highlights ham radio spectrum threats

7 days ago

Southgate ARC – WIA Director Aidan VK4APM highlights the threats the Amateur Radio and Amateur Satellite Services face from commercial interests keen to grab our spectrum

Radio amateur adventure weekend of Western Slavs

7 days ago

Southgate ARC – We are happy to announce an additional YOTA Sub-regional event for 2019. The camp is mostly meant to get to know each other

Threat to Amateur Radio 23cm band

7 days ago

Southgate ARC – A joint paper to be submitted to the CEPT CPG meeting in Ankara by France, Lithuania, Malta, Slovenia and The Netherlands attacks the continued use by Radio Amateurs of our 1240-1300 MHz band

QO-100 geostationary satellite talk at Hamfest 2019

7 days ago

Southgate ARC – Paul Marsh M0EYT gave a presentation titled ‘All you need to know to get going on Es’hail-2 / QO-100 geostationary satellite’ at Hamfest 2019 in Dorset on Sunday, August 11

VK6WIA NewsWest

7 days ago

Southgate ARC – NewsWest for Sunday 18th August 2019, is the New Amateurs Edition where we give our attention to new Amateurs, and those seeking to join the hobby. In the regular New Hams segment Bob talks about wire antennas for beginners

France: National societies send joint statement to regulator

7 days ago

Southgate ARC – France’s national Amateur Radio societies AMSAT-F, DR @ F, URC and REF have written to ANFR’s International Affairs Department regarding the 50, 144, 1240 MHz and 5 and 47 GHz Amateur Radio bands

Foundations of Amateur Radio

7 days ago

Southgate ARC – What’s in a Watt? – We need more power. I’m giving her all she’s got, Captain! She cannae take anymore. I’m sure your Scottish ancestors are rolling in their graves right now, but in our community of radio amateurs we have a tendency to advocate the use of more power. More power fixes all problems and hides all sins

144 and 1240 MHz threats: IARU submits papers

7 days ago

Southgate ARC – The IARU has submitted two papers to the CEPT ECC Conference Preparatory Group (CPG) meeting which takes place in Ankara, Turkey on August 26-30, 2019

FCC Dismisses ARRL, AMSAT Requests in Small Satellite Proceeding

8 days ago

ARRL -An FCC Report and Order (R&O) released August 2 in the so-called “small satellite” rulemaking proceeding, IB Docket 18-86, failed to address concerns expressed by ARRL and AMSAT. Both organizations filed comments on the FCC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in the proceeding last year, seeking changes in the FCCs interpretations and procedures affecting satellites operating on Amateur Satell…

The K7RA Solar Update

8 days ago

ARRL -No sunspots were visible over the recent reporting week, Thursday through Wednesday, August 8 through 14.

According to Spaceweather.com, 67% of the days so far in 2019 have been spotless, and for all of 2018 it was 61%. In the previous solar minimum in 2008 and 2009 the spotless days ran 73% and 71%, respectively.

Solar flux has been minimal and unremarkable, with average daily solar flux changin…

2 Meter Sharing Proposal is on CEPT Conference Preparatory Group Agenda

8 days ago

The Space Weather Woman

8 days ago

Southgate ARC – A Coronal Hole Blows, A Perseid Shower, and Mars – The latest space weather forecast from Dr Tamitha Skov WX6SWW

World’s first FT8 contact on 122 GHz

8 days ago

Southgate ARC – Roland Lang, VK4FB, and Stefan Durtschi, VK4CSD, completed what is being claimed as the world’s first FT8 contact on 122 GHz

The spectacular end of Longijang-2 moon mission

8 days ago

Southgate ARC – The last commands to Longijang-2 Moon Orbiting Satellite were sent from the from OM Reinhard, DK5LA, during a thunderstorm with lightning strikes nearby his antennas before the satellite crashed on to the moon surface!!

RSGB-Workshop email reflector

8 days ago

Southgate ARC – A new email group has been created for supporting, discussing and developing technical content based around RadCom and related published articles

Radio hams combine hobby with serving the community

8 days ago

Southgate ARC – KOMU TV carried a news item about the public service role of radio amateurs in Jefferson City

INDEXA Newsletter

8 days ago

Southgate ARC – The Summer 2019 Issue of the INDEXA Newsletter is now available to download

Amazon Forest operation

8 days ago

Southgate ARC – Daniel ‘JD’, IK2SGL, and his XYL have moved to a location in the Amazon Forest, Peru. They are international volunteers in a world-wide education program which contacst and helps the indigenous people of the region: the Awajun people

DX News from the ARRL

8 days ago

Southgate ARC – The American Radio Relay League’s round-up of the forthcoming week’s DX activity on the amateur radio bands

FCC Staff Recommends Designating 988 as National Suicide, Mental Health Crisis Hotline

9 days ago

ARRL -The FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau and its Office of Economics and Analytics have sent a report to Congress that recommends that the Commission considers designating 988 as a three-digit emergency code for a nationwide suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline. The report, mandated by the National Suicide Hotline Improvement Act of 2018, finds that such a three-digit number “would …

Chinese Satellite Profiles Earth’s RF Spectrum as Seen from Lunar Orbit

9 days ago

ARRL -The Chinese DSLWP-B (LO-94) satellite that had been in lunar orbit provided a profile of Earth’s HF spectrum as seen from the moon. The microsatellite subsequently was crashed into the moon’s surface after having completed its mission. DSLWP stands for “Discovering the Sky at Longest Wavelengths Pathfinder.” Among other things, DSLWP-B was designed to test low-frequency radio astronomy and spac…

Questions Raised About Current Process for Awarding the E.T. Krenkel Medal

9 days ago

Australian Radio Amateur Reports First FT8 Contact on 122 GHz

9 days ago

Ulrich L. Rohde, N1UL, Named as Honorary Fellow of Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers

9 days ago

ARRL -The Governing Council of India’s Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE) has conferred its Honorary Fellowship on noted researcher Ulrich Rohde, N1UL. The IETE is a prominent professional society in the field of electronics, telecommunication computer science/engineering, broadcasting, information technology, and related areas.

The Honorary Fellowship is accorded to an …

22nd International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend Set for August 17 – 18

9 days ago

ARRL -Amateur Radio operations at some 400 lighthouses and lightships will commence on August 17 as the 22nd International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend (ILLW) activity gets under way. Germany and the US lead the field in registered operations.

New this year is the US Virgin Islands’ Buck Island Lighthouse, built by the Danish government shortly Denmark sold the islands to the US in 1917, and they beca…

The Doctor Will See You Now!

9 days ago

VK Remembrance Day Contest

9 days ago

Southgate ARC – Book your diary’s for Saturday 0300z August 17 to 0300z August 18th for the VK Remembrance Day Contest

Parks on the Air

9 days ago

Southgate ARC – Parks on the Air – now in England – This scheme started out from an ARRL event to activate all the National Parks in the USA, during a year. So many Radio Amateurs became involved that following the year there was a high level of interest in working from National Parks. As a result Parks on the Air was born

NASA TV to air US spacewalk, briefing on space station docking port install

9 days ago

Southgate ARC – Experts from NASA will preview an upcoming spacewalk with two American astronauts outside the International Space Station to complete the outfitting of docking ports during a briefing at 2 p.m. EDT Friday, Aug. 16, at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston

Ham radio at Exmouth’s Coastwatch station

9 days ago

Southgate ARC – The Exmouth Journal reports radio amateurs will be transmitting to the world from Exmouth’s coastwatch station later this month

GX5TO Special Event Station

9 days ago

Southgate ARC – GX5TO Special Event Station on air on Sunday 22 September 2019 from 10.30Z from Kelham Island Industrial Museum, Sheffield, to help celebrate 100 years of the founding of the Sheffield and District Wireless Society

CEPT ECC Vacancies

9 days ago

Southgate ARC – Ofcom’s Chris Woolford, CEPT Electronic Communications Committee Chair, reports the CEPT ECC is looking for a new Chair of the Working Group Conference Preparatory Group (WG CPG)

Want My RSS

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2KUlHQM via IFTTT

[topmixtrends]

I.

WE OWE the notion of a centralized force dedicated to maintenance of the public order to no less a personage than the Sun King himself, Louis XIV of France, who in 1667 issued an edict creating a lieutenancy of police for Paris. Louis evidently intended to replace the medieval city’s crazyquilt of rudimentary law-enforcement measures with something a little more consistent and predictable.

The notion of a standing law-enforcement body eventually made its way across the English Channel to that other early modern megacity London, where in 1749 a judge and author named Henry Fielding convened an office of six men at his Covent Garden magistracy. Authorized to apprehend lawbreakers and deliver them to Fielding for trial, these were the Bow Street Runners, generally regarded as the prototype of the modern professional police force. But they were not yet a patrol force. That distinction belongs to the Metropolitan Police, organized by Sir Robert Peel under Parliamentary charter in 1829, and it is with this formation that law enforcement in the Anglosphere assumed much of its present shape, with all the familiar paraphernalia of precincts and uniforms, ranks and badges, beats and beat officers.

There matters more or less remained until 1950, when the newly appointed chief of police in Los Angeles, William Parker, undertook a reorganization of that city’s force that made use of lessons learned in World War II counterinsurgency operations, and somewhat more distantly from the American occupation of the Philippine Islands. In what Mike Davis has referred to as one in a series of “pathbreaking substitutions of technological capital for patrol manpower,” Chief Parker’s LAPD dispersed its officers across the octopic sprawl of the city in a supple, responsive grid of mobile units dispatched via radio. In these radio cars, the LAPD seemed to be everywhere at once, overmastering an urban topology determined by the internal-combustion engine like no other in history.

And here another long period of conceptual stagnation enveloped law enforcement, at least in the United States. Despite having been tasked over the past two decades with the front-line responsibility for homelessness, school safety, and the management of mental-health crises, and very much despite the occasional vogue for well-intentioned reforms like “community policing,” the archetypal contemporary American police force remains much as Parker envisioned his LAPD. Pleased to regard themselves as a “thin blue line” — the phrasing is another of Parker’s innovations — between polite society and the red-in-tooth-and-claw savagery an unpoliced community would otherwise surely descend to, the United States’s patrol officers now hunker down behind the tenets of a “warrior” mentality, explicitly embracing the virtues of paranoia and instantaneous, overwhelming response to situations (and people) perceived as threats.

Increasingly militarized, in large part through the so-called 1033 program, a federal initiative that transfers war-surplus materiel like automatic weapons and armored vehicles to public-safety departments at zero cost, they maintain a sullen, wary, often hostile distance from the communities they are formally chartered to protect and serve.

All too frequently, these circumstances intersect, with lethal effect. The deaths of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, and Eric Harris, as well as far too many other human beings whose names will never be more broadly known to the public, indict American policing as it is currently practiced. They stand as evidence that an armed formation comprised of people whose pumped-up bodies, fragile psyches, and febrile politics are all disturbingly reminiscent of Klaus Theweleit’s “armored male” is fundamentally unsuited to maintaining the peace of the 21st-century United States. Although the term feels both bloodless and pitiably inadequate, it is clear that policing as we know it has entered a profound crisis of legitimation.

Two new books propose, however, that this breakdown may also constitute an unusual opening, perhaps even a punctuation of the 75-year-long equilibrium that’s overtaken the praxis of policing. In The Rise of Big Data Policing, the legal scholar Andrew Guthrie Ferguson suggests that a new public-safety paradigm is upon us, enabled by a convergence of separate and distinct technologies that affect where, when, how, and to whom policing is applied. Meanwhile, in The End of Policing, Brooklyn College sociology professor Alex S. Vitale fundamentally questions the institution of policing itself, asking whether it’s remotely appropriate to the absurd variety of tasks we demand of it, and whether it might be supplanted by some more suitable set of arrangements. Should either one of their visions prevail, it’s clear that whatever public-safety formation remains in the aftermath will bear precious little resemblance to the one bequeathed to us by Peel and Parker.

  II.

Let’s get the bad news about The Rise of Big Data Policing out of the way right off the bat: despite being crammed with useful detail, and summarizing many of the issues with data-driven policing better than any single volume I know of, in places it’s perilously close to unreadable. Someone hell-bent on making these abstruse issues accessible to a broader readership has clearly advised Ferguson that he’d be best served by rendering crucial parts of his argument in a choppy, would-be Ellrovian vernacular, and these ham-fistedly noirish passages become a tiresome slog. (A sampling: “The night patrol. At night, you stay in the squad car. At night, you wait for the radio run. At night, good guys look like bad guys. In the dark, you wait.”)

Such lapses aside, the case Ferguson makes is inherently interesting, and increasingly urgent. He introduces us to a panoply of technologies that arise at the intersection of pervasive sensing, large-scale data collection, and persistent storage with sophisticated computational analysis, and argues that they amount to nothing less than a revolution in the way the ends of public safety might be pursued.

A police department equipped with these technologies — threat prediction, risk terrain modeling, biometric recognition, and so on — can predict with a high degree of granularity where and when certain kinds of crimes are likely to happen, and even who is likely to commit them. For example, by geotagging all reports of burglary, a department equipped with the necessary analytic software can build up a highly detailed model of the particular blocks likely to be burgled in the future, even specific houses. And by weighing the factors associated with handgun violence — prior arrests, a pattern of association with people who have also been the victims or perpetrators of violence, physiotemporal proximity to previous murders — those individuals in the city with the highest propensity to commit future violent acts of this sort can be identified. These individuals are then notified by the police, or arrested and taken out of circulation if there is any constitutionally viable justification for doing so, and with any luck the crime itself is in this way prevented from ever happening. In both cases, the power to anticipate drives a fundamental change of stance in the way we police, from reactive to preemptive.

At times, the book is fascinating. We learn about “automated suspicion algorithms” capable of recognizing certain stereotyped gestures and interpreting them as various forms of criminal behavior — flagging up the repeated passing of small objects from one person to another, for example, as a reliable indicator that street-corner drug dealing is taking place. We learn that for all their putative objectivity, facial-recognition algorithms authored in Korea, China, and Japan do far better at recognizing East Asian faces than those developed in the West (the converse is also true). We learn about Persistent Surveillance Systems, aircraft-mounted sensors that allow their operators to orbit aloft in invisible, mile-high gyres and siphon up terabytes of imagery from the city below. We learn that in Oakland, California, the police department’s own data revealed that African-American men were four times more likely than white men to be handcuffed in the course of a routine traffic stop — and that 20 percent of officers were responsible for 67 percent of handcuffing incidents. Above all, what we learn is that the process of supplanting traditional methods of policing with data-driven approaches to threat determination, patrol allocation, and preemptive interdiction, and even self-examination, is well advanced.

Ferguson’s overarching conceit is to divide the various possibilities of data collection and analysis into buckets he calls “black,” “blue,” and “bright data,” and he spends far and away the most time considering the first of these: the use of the new technologies in a relatively conventional mode, allowing a police department equipped with them to anticipate and preempt both violent crime and offenses against property.

As Ferguson tells it, this technology-intensive, data-driven mode of policing, with its sheen of neutrality and scientific objectivity, has irresistible appeal to municipalities in the post–Black Lives Matter moment. Local governments chastened by the revelations of discriminatory conduct on the part of police departments nationwide, large and small, may be looking for a way to shroud their decisions with an aura of cool, detached scientism, on the theory that algorithms can’t plausibly be accused of racism.

And there is a genuine promise to all this, one that should be welcomed by anyone who’s ever been beaten or mugged, come home to find their front door pried ajar, or, for that matter, been harassed on the street by armed officers of the state. That promise consists in the idea that the state’s crime-control resources might be concentrated where they properly belong: on the very small proportion of individuals who constitute genuine threats to the commonweal, rather than entire communities of working people. For better or worse, in 2017 the Overton window has moved so far to the right that any notion that the police might address the criminal mayhem suffered by the poor and vulnerable, without at the same time levying an additional burden of oppressive official attention upon their neighborhoods and lives, counts as genuinely progressive.

  III.

Why, then, hang the grim label “black” on this set of practices? As Ferguson recognizes, the Achilles’ heel of all such technical deployments is that they take place inside history, and have future trajectories that are to varying degrees determined by that history. By dubbing the ordinary use of predictive technologies in American law enforcement “black data,” he hopes to simultaneously acknowledge two critical facets of the way in which history plays out.

The first is straightforward: due to the fundamental complexity and obscurity of information technology, these tools are “black” in the sense of philosophy’s proverbial black box, i.e., the way in which they work is opaque and largely inexplicable to nonspecialists, and therefore not well suited to existing procedures of governance and democratic accountability. As communities and polities, we just don’t understand these tools well enough to regulate them effectively.

The second sense in which Ferguson means “black” is far more pressing and explosive, albeit at the cost of introducing an unpleasant degree of semantic torque. Put simply, his argument is that the new data-collection and -analysis tools are invariably racist in practice, if not in intent.

This is the central claim of The Rise of Big Data Policing, and Ferguson marshals a great deal of evidence to support it. To start with, predictive systems of the sort described tend to fall afoul of the Heisenbergian certainty that to measure something is to intervene in its fortunes. Police officers, like any of us, can be primed to interpret their perceptions of the world by information they are presented beforehand; knowing that a given location lies within the bounds of a computationally-derived “red box” predisposes the patrol officer to understand the things they see there as evidence of crime, or at least its precursors — and every face that of a potential criminal. (As one skeptical criminal-justice scholar characterized the insinuation, “I go in this box, and everybody’s Michael Brown.”)

Whatever arrests are generated in this way, of course, then feed back into the perception that the location in question was in fact a hotspot of criminal activity, and the cycle begins anew. Meanwhile, identical crimes may be committed elsewhere, in districts not so heavily attended to by the police; they’ll go undetected, never show up in the database, and never cause those locations to be rendered on a map of predicted future hotspots.

A fundamental problem with building predictive models this way is that arrests are not, and historically never have been, fully co-extensive with criminal acts. In fact, just the opposite is true: arrests are discretionary, and — unsurprisingly to anyone who’s paid the slightest attention to the history of American law enforcement — the discretion of the arresting officer is applied in patterns which map directly to racial repression and exclusion. We know that white, black, and Latino/a Americans smoke marijuana at similar rates, for example, but are charged with possession at wildly different ones; as the Oakland data suggests, much the same goes for traffic offenses. So any predictive engine that uses a history of prior involvement with the police as part of its threat model will disproportionately tag nonwhite citizens.

The vendors of predictive technology swear up and down that their systems “aren’t looking for race,” and indeed they may well not be. But as Ferguson reminds us, race correlates strongly with other factors we might choose to measure; train your algorithm to look for those indicators, and you are indeed folding a historical pattern of racial discrimination into your results, whether or not that was ever your intention.

And that pattern is damning. It is invariably poor communities of color that suffer most from crime, and in the United States it has become a commonplace to observe that such communities are simultaneously over- and underpoliced. Black and brown Americans are subjected to heavy manners no majority-white community would tolerate. The litany of humiliations they experience at the hands of the police has perhaps become overfamiliar, but is nonetheless worth enunciating again: they endure endless hassling over what are at worst quality-of-life offenses, specious charges like “failure to comply” or “walking in roadway,” and oppressive stop-and-frisk tactics sharply increasing the chance that a blameless individual will come into contact with the law. Overwhelmingly, it is they who suffer the kinetics of police aggression.

It simply isn’t possible to meaningfully discuss, or understand the implications of, technological change in policing without addressing this state of affairs. As Ferguson makes painfully clear, deployments of technology invariably take place within a social context — and in the United States at this moment, as in any given moment of the past three centuries, that context is one of murderous state violence directed at black and brown bodies.

This is the reason why so many of us are uncomfortable with the new technologies of policing, even where it does seem likely that a proposed innovation might potentially shed some real benefit upon the broader public. In the hands of an organization fully accountable to the citizenry, perhaps, these capabilities might not trigger quite the same premonitory twitching of the peripheral nerves that they do in the here and now. But the police as we know them do not in fact appear to be accountable — and when we’re told they’re moving from a reactive to a proactive posture, too many of us have excellent reason to shudder.

  IV.

As a useful organizing principle, “black data” is rhetorically unfortunate. Forcing the word “black” to connote both the opacity of data-driven policing and its obscured structural racism is asking too much — too much of language, too much of readers. The term strains beneath the load. The tags Ferguson uses to describe his other buckets — “blue” and “bright” — aren’t so loaded, and as a result wind up faring slightly better.

By “blue data,” Ferguson means the same, highly granular collection and analysis technologies involved in the production of “black data” being turned inward, to track the police themselves and assess them in the performance of their duties. In a proposal sure to be resented by police officers everywhere, if not actively sabotaged by their unions, he calls for the use of “worker surveillance technologies” to track beat cops, rank them by response time, and screen them for early signs of a propensity toward the inappropriate application of force. He extends the hope that a patrol organization that knows the public can see them — and can in fact see the public seeing them — is one bound to exercise a greater degree of respectful care in its dealings with that public.

This curiously Foucauldian notion is, in context, laudable. But if Ferguson believes that transparency underwritten by data analytics must surely entrain better behavior on the part of the police, his optimism is probably misplaced: a large, rigorous recent study suggests that body cameras have had virtually no detectable impact on patrol-officer conduct. (It is in this chapter, as well, that Ferguson inadvertently puts his finger on the deepest problem of all with data-driven decision systems: that whatever inconvenient truths any such system might turn up will simply be disregarded. When an older risk-assessment system, for example, flagged over half of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, patrol force as having the potential to use excessive force, it was retired rather than being attended to and acted upon. Thus always to the tellers of truth, evidently.)

It is with “bright data,” the final and most speculative of Ferguson’s three modes, that he comes closest to naming the deeper opportunity created by emerging data technologies. If there is one thing that machine-learning-based data-analysis techniques excel at, it is pattern detection and recognition, and Ferguson proposes that we use these capabilities to “reveal hidden problems and remedies” across the wide belt of circumstances we now call upon the police to manage.

From decent housing to the provision of adequate childcare or mental-health resources, these remedies, happily, don’t require the interventions of an armed patrol force. Indeed, once having recognized that the “data-driven ability to identify risk does not necessarily require a policing remedy,” it’s just a short jump to understanding that many, perhaps most of the situations we currently ask them to handle “do not have to be addressed by the police,” and in fact that “a predictive policing approach may be just as effective without direct police involvement.” This is achingly tentative language for what is actually a profoundly radical proposal. Using computational analysis to unpick the latent and unsuspected correlations between seemingly discrete events, in the hope that we can intervene in time to prevent the worst outcomes from arising, undoubtedly substitutes a faith in technology for a commitment to politics. Nonetheless, here we have a first harbinger of what is sure to become a central point of contention in progressive thought in the decades to come: can algorithmic technology achieve the liberation that centuries of organizing, activism, agitation, and even revolution could not?

  V.

If Ferguson sees a new policing paradigm aborning, though, he never quite questions the institution of the police itself — and this despite the harms he so accurately diagnoses. What was probably intended to strike an eminently justifiable tone of ambivalence all too often reads instead as an aversion to the conclusions warranted by the facts he’s spent so much effort assembling. Perhaps this is why the measures he calls for in his conclusion are at best tepid and anticlimactic: quality-assurance protocols for third-party data, a set of purchasing guidelines to police administrators contemplating the acquisition of new technologies, perhaps a community-run Police Awareness System capable of identifying abusive cops.

The task of imagining something fundamentally different falls to Alex S. Vitale, in his new book The End of Policing. In successive chapters, he details how the basic post-Parker model of a mobile patrol force has been applied to realms in which it is wildly inapposite, from managing homelessness, emergent mental-health crises, or undocumented immigration, to constraining the practice of democracy as it emerges in the form of protests, strikes, and demonstrations.

Throughout, one of Vitale’s basic points, backed by a solid accumulation of empirical evidence, is that no reform in staffing, training, equipment, or procedure is likely to alter the fundamental hostility of the police force to the policed public, especially when that public is black, brown, and/or poor: “At root, [reformers] fail to appreciate that the basic nature of the law and the police, since its earliest origins, is to be a tool for managing inequality and maintaining the status quo. Police reforms which fail to directly address this reality are doomed to reproduce it.”

This finding is unlikely to faze, say, critical legal studies scholars, let alone anyone with personal or familial exposure to oppressive policing, but it will abrade those inclined toward technocratic centrism — it’s an insight that Ferguson never seems to quite get his head around, for example, despite brushing right up against it in his section on “bright data.” Where others might shy away from the implications of this line of thought, though, Vitale pursues them to their logical conclusion: in context after context, public safety is enhanced, and the public interest is best served, when the police are eliminated from the equation.

His calls for removal of the police from the schools, the decriminalization of most drugs, the legalization of sex work, a greater scope for restorative justice, and an enhanced degree of community involvement in public safety are all welcome. (Presumably even the police themselves wish that someone would relieve them of the responsibility of dealing with endemic homelessness, mental illness, and low-level quality-of-life offenses.) Vitale understands that living up to our own, oft-expressed ideals of justice means rethinking the ways in which we conceptualize and address the various forms of violence endemic in our communities.

He concludes by articulating “a larger vision that questions the basic role of police in society,” though one wishes he hadn’t waited until the last seven pages of a 228-page book to develop it; indeed, there’s something bleakly humorous in learning, on page 223, that following his advice would require “transform[ing] some of the basic economic and political arrangements in our society,” especially since he doesn’t specify any way how we might actually go about doing so.

“Access to decent housing and employment,” for example, certainly seems like something that might ameliorate the conditions that underlie crime, but in a society almost exclusively reliant on the unfettered market to allocate housing (and, what is more, facing the prospect of massive and permanent structural disemployment due to the spread of automation technology), that access feels like it might be a difficult thing to achieve. At the very least, anyone making meaningful progress toward resolving those issues will have achieved a great deal more than simply fixing the police.

The End of Policing’s great strength lies in demonstrating that if the shape of American policing is historical, it is also contingent. We could have made different choices regarding how we set about securing the public against the array of threats that confront it, and — refreshingly, at this moment of general despair — Vitale believes we still can. For all their logical consistency of his arguments, though, their critical weakness is how little they have to do with how power works in the world we actually find ourselves living in. (It reminds me of the charge an online commentator once lodged against the legal idealist Lawrence Lessig: “He knows everything about the way the world should work, and not a damn thing about how it actually does.”) While perhaps unfair to Vitale, and certainly unkind, this nevertheless drills right down to the bitter truth of things: it is, to say the very least, exceedingly difficult at present to imagine an America capable of taking heed of the excellent advice he offers.

The vision enunciated in those final pages is, to be sure, a deeply appealing one, but it would seem to require nothing short of a full-spectrum, Great Society approach to the distribution of goods and resources — and even so, any gains realized by such a program would likely prove to be just as fragile as those won by the original Great Society turned out to be, if not continually defended against those who would undermine them on ideological or pecuniary grounds. For better or worse, we’re compelled to pursue the ends of justice with the United States we have, not the one we wish we had.

  VI.

Ultimately, however, though Vitale comes closer to getting it than Ferguson, both authors miss something central: the reason why a clearly injurious policing paradigm continues as it does isn’t because we don’t understand that it is broken. It’s because policing as an institution is working as fully intended, i.e., to suppress black, brown, and poor lives, contain their political emergence, channel public funds toward an array of favored private contractors, and perhaps to absorb surplus male aggression. Per the cybernetician Stafford Beer’s dictum that “the purpose of a system is what it does,” we evidently want our uniformed public servants to punish, to kick ass, and to look a certain way while doing it. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t tolerate any of this.

Which is not to say that there is no worth in supposing that things might be different. If at present the task of defending the public and keeping it free from harm falls to the constabulary force we call “the police,” a formation that is by heritage and conception poorly equipped to answer the challenges it now faces, Ferguson’s and Vitale’s books dare to at least sketch the contours of a different way of doing things.

Where The Rise of Big Data Policing and The End of Policing agree is that we face a rupture in our approach to the maintenance of public order. For Ferguson, that rupture consists in the full-spectrum, persistent awareness afforded by the emergent technics of data collection and analysis, as well as the fact that those tools have been placed in the hands of an institution increasingly inclined to conceive itself as apart from, if not above, the people we suppose it to serve; for Vitale, in the utter bankruptcy of traditional policing methods when applied to social problems, the obscene violence which all too often results, and the all but total lack of accountability for it.

If these scholars appear to be in rough consensus that some such discontinuity exists, though, it remains an open question as to what kind of public-safety arrangements we wish to see prevail on the other side of it. The great contribution of these books is in spurring us to realize that policing as it has come down to us from the days of Louis XIV is at or at least very near the end of its useful service life, and that it will be necessary to devise some new institution consecrated to the public defense if we wish for it to retain any popular legitimacy at all. Now comes the difficult, vexed, contested work of imagining what that institution might look like, and how we can design it to operate in a manner commensurate with the rights, obligations, and aspirations enjoyed by citizens of a free, democratic society.

¤

Adam Greenfield is a London-based writer and urbanist. His most recent book is Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life (Verso, 2017).

The post Shuck the Police: Are We Done with Traditional Law Enforcement? appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2A5VndZ