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mostlysignssomeportents · 16 days

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The CFPB is genuinely making America better, and they're going HARD

On June 20, I'm keynoting the LOCUS AWARDS in OAKLAND.

Let's take a sec here and notice something genuinely great happening in the US government: the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's stunning, unbroken streak of major, muscular victories over the forces of corporate corruption, with the backing of the Supreme Court (yes, that Supreme Court), and which is only speeding up!

A little background. The CFPB was created in 2010. It was Elizabeth Warren's brainchild, an institution that was supposed to regulate finance from the perspective of the American public, not the American finance sector. Rather than fighting to "stabilize" the financial sector (the mission that led to Obama taking his advisor Timothy Geithner's advice to permit the foreclosure crisis to continue in order to "foam the runways" for the banks), the Bureau would fight to defend us from bankers.

The CFPB got off to a rocky start, with challenges to the unique system of long-term leadership appointments meant to depoliticize the office, as well as the sudden resignation of its inaugural boss, who broke his promise to see his term through in order to launch an unsuccessful bid for political office.

But after the 2020 election, the Bureau came into its own, when Biden poached Rohit Chopra from the FTC and put him in charge. Chopra went on a tear, taking on landlords who violated the covid eviction moratorium:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cfpb

Then banning payday lenders' scummiest tactics:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/29/planned-obsolescence/#academic-fraud

Then striking at one of fintech's most predatory grifts, the "earned wage access" hustle:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usury/#tech-exceptionalism

Then closing the loophole that let credit reporting bureaus (like Equifax, who doxed every single American in a spectacular 2019 breach) avoid regulation by creating data brokerage divisions and claiming they weren't part of the regulated activity of credit reporting:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

Chopra went on to promise to ban data-brokers altogether:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/13/goulash/#material-misstatement

Then he banned comparison shopping sites where you go to find the best bank accounts and credit cards from accepting bribes and putting more expensive options at the top of the list. Instead, he's requiring banks to send the CFPB regular, accurate lists of all their charges, and standing up a federal operated comparison shopping site that gives only accurate and honest rankings. Finally, he's made an interoperability rule requiring banks to let you transfer to another institution with one click, just like you change phone carriers. That means you can search an honest site to find the best deal on your banking, and then, with a single click, transfer your accounts, your account history, your payees, and all your other banking data to that new bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

Somewhere in there, big business got scared. They cooked up a legal theory declaring the CFPB's funding mechanism to be unconstitutional and got the case fast-tracked to the Supreme Court, in a bid to put Chopra and the CFPB permanently out of business. Instead, the Supremes – these Supremes! – upheld the CFPB's funding mechanism in a 7-2 ruling:

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/05/supreme-court-lets-cfpb-funding-stand/

That ruling was a starter pistol for Chopra and the Bureau. Maybe it seemed like they were taking big swings before, but it turns out all that was just a warmup. Last week on The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner rounded up all the stuff the Bureau is kicking off:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-06-07-window-on-corporate-deceptions/

First: regulating Buy Now, Pay Later companies (think: Klarna) as credit-card companies, with all the requirements for disclosure and interest rate caps dictated by the Truth In Lending Act:

https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2024/06/cfpb-applies-credit-card-rules

Next: creating a registry of habitual corporate criminals. This rogues gallery will make it harder for other agencies – like the DOJ – and state Attorneys General to offer bullshit "delayed prosecution agreements" to companies that compulsively rip us off:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-creates-registry-to-detect-corporate-repeat-offenders/

Then there's the rule against "fine print deception" – which is when the fine print in a contract lies to you about your rights, like when a mortgage lender forces you waive a right you can't actually waive, or car lenders that make you waive your bankruptcy rights, which, again, you can't waive:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-warns-against-deception-in-contract-fine-print/

As Kuttner writes, the common thread running through all these orders is that they ban deceptive practices – they make it illegal for companies to steal from us by lying to us. Especially in these dying days of class action suits – rapidly becoming obsolete thanks to "mandatory arbitration waivers" that make you sign away your right to join a class action – agencies like the CFPB are our only hope of punishing companies that lie to us to steal from us.

There's a lot of bad stuff going on in the world right now, and much of it – including an active genocide – is coming from the Biden White House.

But there are people in the Biden Administration who care about the American people and who are effective and committed fighters who have our back. What's more, they're winning. That doesn't make all the bad news go away, but sometimes it feels good to take a moment and take the W.

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/2024/06/10/getting-things-done/#deliverism

#pluralistic #cfpb #consumer finance protection board #rohit chopra #scotus #bnpl #buy now pay later #repeat corporate offenders #fine print deception #whistleblowing #elizabeth warren

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duckprintspress · 9 months

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There’s no time like the present to back the Duck Prints Press Patreon!

Why should you back Duck Prints Press?

support a queer-owned indie press, founded by fandom creators for fandom creators looking to publish their original work!

help a great, transparent, ethical small business that helps usually queer, often disabled, creators publish queer stories and art!

AND you get awesome stuff in exchange!

Wait, I’ll get stuff?

You will get so much stuff!!!

a free short story every month!

exclusive teasers and previews!

behind-the-scenes access via our Patreon blog and Discord!

voting rights to influence future anthology themes!

a discount in our webstore!

and that’s JUST THE MINIMUM LEVEL! You get all that for ONLY $3 PER MONTH. Higher levels get EVEN MORE!

Why is now a great time?

we will no longer be releasing new short stories to our website! So backing on Patreon will be the only way to get them!

as a result, we just changed how many stories our backers get!

$3/month backers now get one short story per month

$5/month backers now get two short stories per month

$7/month backers now a minimum of four short stories per month

$10/month backers now a minimum of five short stories per month

$25/month backers now a minimum of six short stories per month

when you back, you also get instant access to every single backer-reward story we’ve ever released! As of right now, that’s 30 free stories for backers at the $3/month, $5/month, and $7/month level, and 59 free stories for backers at the $10/month and $25/month level! That’s a LOT of stories!!!

Did you just buy Many Drops Make a Stream by Adrian Harley? People who back us on Patreon will get an exclusive epilogue when we fulfill the pre-order campaign! And, if you back us at the $10/month or $25/month level before October 15th, you can still get our Patreon-exclusive bonus reward (it’s a totally awesome engraved wooden coaster)! We’ll add the extra retroactively to your order, even though pre-orders are now closed!

Did you just buy To Drive the Hundred Miles by Alec J. Marsh? Patrons at the $10/month and $25/month level who back the campaign (which runs until October 20th!) will also get a bonus extra: a snowflake ornament!

and I mean, isn’t it always a good time to support a queer indie press?

So come on over to our Patreon, help us grow our Press, and get lots of awesome stuff for yourself!

Who We Are: Duck Prints Press LLC is an independent publisher owned and operated by @unforth. We work with fan creators to publish their original art and stories. We are particularly dedicated to publishing works featuring characters from across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Love what we do but aren’t up for backing right now? That’s okay! Sign up for our monthly newsletter and get previews, behind-the-scenes information, coupons, and more!

#support us #duck prints press #patreon #queer patreon #indie press #indie publishing #queer publishing

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fursasaida · 10 months

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If you have a bunch of trees, and you chop them down to make paper or lumber or whatever, you can sell the paper or lumber or whatever for money, but on the other hand trees store carbon and cutting them down is bad for climate change. If instead you do not chop down the trees, that is good for the environment, and it is a great innovation of modern finance that, now, you can get paid for not chopping down the trees. This is called “carbon credits.” There are measurement problems.

If you mine Bitcoin, you use a lot of electricity to run computers to perform calculations to get Bitcoins for yourself, which you can sell for money. But this is bad for the environment, because it uses electricity that is probably generated in ways that release carbon.[1] If you were to stop mining Bitcoin, conversely, that would be good for the environment. Can you get paid, though, for not mining Bitcoin? Oh yes, modern finance has solved that one too:

Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms Inc. made millions of dollars by selling power rather than producing the tokens in the second quarter as the crypto-mining industry continued to grapple with the impact of low digital asset prices.

The Castle Rock, Colorado-based company had $13.5 million in power curtailment credits during the quarter, while generating $49.7 million in mining revenue. Riot booked $27.3 million in power curtailment credits last year and $6.5 million in 2021 from power sales to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which is the grid operator for the Lone Star state. …

The company had $18.3 million in power credits in June and July based on its latest monthly operational updates, including $14.8 million in power curtailment credits received from selling power back to the ERCOT grid at market-driven spot prices under its long-term power contracts and $3.5 million in credits received from participation in ERCOT demand response programs.

Here is the 10-Q; this stuff is described in Note 8. Some of what is going on here is that Riot has a long-term power supply agreement in which TXU Energy Retail Co. has to supply it with electricity at fixed prices through 2030, and Riot has the option to sell the power back to TXU, at market rates, for credit against its future electric bills, when the spot price exceeds the contract price. But part of it is demand response, where ERCOT pays Riot cash for using less than its typical electrical load during periods of peak demand.

As with carbon credits, there are measurement problems; I have never mined a single Bitcoin, yet ERCOT has never sent me a penny for my forbearance. Still, how great is modern finance? Twenty years ago, if you had told people that one day they could get paid for not mining Bitcoin, they would have said “what?” But now it is possible. Modern finance created the problem (Bitcoin mining) and the solution (paying people not to mine Bitcoin); the overall result is that nothing happens and yet people get paid. Just a miracle of financial engineering.

Also: Riot is getting paid for not using electricity, but if you are an enterprising Bitcoin miner surely you should look into getting paid for not using carbon when you are not mining Bitcoin. Riot is not there yet, but it is possible to imagine a warming world in which energy prices go up and Bitcoin prices go down and Bitcoin miners can get paid more for not mining Bitcoin than for mining Bitcoin. Giant fortunes will be made by people who got in early to the business of not mining Bitcoin. The future is so good, man.

This is from Matt Levine's "Money Stuff" newsletter (which yes is under the Bloomberg masthead), which I highly recommend if you want some kind of awareness of what the finance yahoos are doing but want to feel like you're hearing it from a human person

#crypto #finance

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pb-dot · 2 months

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Introducing: The Thereafter Release Newsletter

Big news everybody! As of today, I open up for subscriptions to the Thereafter release newsletter, which is the method I have chosen to release my serial novel Thereafter. The first chapter is slated to be released on May 1st at 13:00 GMT, with subsequent chapters coming out on the 1st and 15th every month until I change the schedule or the story is done. Back-of-the-book-brief and a bit of a Q&A below the cut

The year he turned 13, Michael Sørstrand saved the world of the Molefolk from the tyranny of the Lightlord and his armies. It’s been mostly downhill for him after that. Now, 20 years later, Michael finds himself spirited away by magic yet again. The world he finds himself in is stranger and more chaotic by a long shot than the serene caves of the Molefolk. Something defying description has destroyed the world of the Molefolk and countless other magical worlds. The survivors and refugees of these innumerable worlds that have banded together in the ramshackle town of Therafter, built from what parts of their worlds they could salvage. It is here they have called upon Michael to once again take on the mantle of hero to provide hope and inspiration for the disparate masses of survivors. The good news? The wizards and warlocks in charge of Thereafter have managed to summon three other heroes through the void between worlds. The bad news? They’re all messed up in their own, unique ways, and they don’t play particularly well with others, either. Now, Michael and his fellow ex-heroes must rediscover what heroism they once had, find peace with each other and themselves, and ask what it means to be heroes in an imperfect world. They’ll have their work cut out for them. The city of Thereafter is rife with desperate crime and runaway magic, and the calamity that shattered the countless worlds is still out there, somewhere.

Q: Is there any cost associated with subscribing to the story of Thereafter?

A: Subscribing to the Thereafter story release newsletter is free and will remain free for the duration. If I get enough subscribers that staying on the buttondown free plan becomes unfeasible (100+ subscribers), I will open a patreon or similar crowdfunding page to help pay for the costs associated with the upgrade to a paid plan.

Q: Why are you sending this story out there for free?

A: At a point in my work on the first draft of His Impossible Brushstrokes I realized that I love writing too much to put writing entirely on pause while I edit Brushstrokes and The Clockwork Boy. Rather than get started on yet another manuscript to try to sell to an open-minded indie publisher, I decided to just get some of my writing out there.

Q: Why Buttondown?

A: I did some light research on the topic of newsletter services, and found Buttondown's approach to be the most promising for a small operation like mine. The first tier of paid plans is also more reasonable than what substack can offer.

Q: Does Thereafter have an age limit?

A: As I'm not a children's developmental psychologist, I feel ill-equipped to answer this question. I will however say that Thereafter is a story intended for mature audiences, both in that coarse language and references to sexual acts as well as not-insignificant descriptions of violence feature prominently, but also in that the feeling of being an adult and the often painful contrast with the potential of youth is a pivotal part of the narrative. As such, I suggest "adulthood" as the recommended reading age.

Q: Will you tag potentially upsetting material?

To the best of my ability, yes. I can't guarantee I'll catch every single one, but I will do my best, and I'll do my best to amend any glaring omissions in the archived posts.

Q: Speaking of archival, how will that work?

Buttondown archives every mail sent out, and I will post archived chapters to my Cohost under the tag Thereafter Chapters a week after they go out. This way, the Newsletter is the primary source for new chapters, while allowing for multiple ways of back reading depending on individual preferences.

Q: What's your stance on fanworks, remixes, and similar works?

Thereafter is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial ShareAlike license, which is to say that you're free to make works based on or remixing anything in it, provided you do attribute the source, make no money off it, and make your work available under the same license. On a less legalese level, I adore fanworks, but I will personally not read fanfiction of my work as I'm worried about picking up ideas, concepts or interpretations from these subconsciously. I should also mention that I am not super strict about these things, just smack a Thereafter tag in there (and maybe @ me if you feel brave and cool) and we're gravy.

Q: How might your readers interact with you and the community?

Buttondown does not feature a comment section to the best of my knowledge, but I encourage anyone who has thoughts or something to say about the chapters to give the #Thereafter tag here or on cohost some love. If you have questions or a message for the author, contact me here on Tumblr, or on the aforementioned Cohost. I respond to tagged posts, Asks, DMs if we're moots, or you seem legit, the whole bag.

Q: Would you fight 100 duck-sized horses or 1 horse-sized duck?

Ok, this is getting silly, time to wrap it up. (The 100 duck-sized horses, easily. Horses are flesh machines made to break in stupid ways, ducks remember being dinosaurs and giving them a chance to relive the glory days seem like a massive mistake.)

#thereafter #thereafter wip #writing #writeblr #self-publishing

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shirleywhere · 11 months

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The Swiss are getting salty at their neighbor Germany over the latter’s inability to operate a punctual train system to their exacting standards. Last year, one out of three long-distance trains operated by Deutsche Bahn were late, the worst performance in a decade. The Swiss are livid; officials there are considering banning DB trains, as German delays are seen at risk of degrading the timeliness of Switzerland’s rail system, which has just a 7.5 percent late arrival rate. Any train that arrives from Germany more than 15 minutes late is stopped at the city of Basel, where passengers transfer to a Swiss train. This mostly will come as a shock to my fellow American readers who have managed to read this entire newsletter while waiting for a single R train to show up at Herald Square.

Humza Jilani, The Wall Street Journal

#deutsche bahn #germany #switzerland #whatthehellweretheythinking

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fountainpenguin · 7 months

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"Suspense is controlling my mind... I can't find a way out of here..."

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New 130 Reasons Why I'm Fairy Trash update today!

Fairly OddParents || One-Shot - “Approval”

Read on FFN || Read on AO3

Find more Lavender Train story arc HERE

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A glimpse into 155,000-year-old Foop's life on the student council as he decorates the gym for a high school dance. Guest appearances by Poof, Denzel, Kevin, the von Strangle twins, the O'Terrae clones, Whistle, and Foop's betrothed: Anti-Coriander.

(First 1000 words under the cut)

40. Approval (~5,000 years after "Temptation" and 5,000 before "All I Ever Wanted")

Wednesday February 8th, Aurora 177

Year of Water, Winter of the Powerful Rapids

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If Foop had truly had an inkling of how much work it takes to run the school as its student body secretary, he may not have bothered campaigning. Honestly they were three years into the current zodiac cycle and he still hadn't decided if he'll run for the position again.

He probably would. He most definitely would, so he didn't even know why he was complaining. The one and only cycle that he reigned as student body president with Poof as his secretary, half the meetings didn't get their minutes recorded in any real detail, and Poof had typed every single document using the Central Star region's way of spelling Snobbish words.

And other minor annoyances… like, he'd written out directions once and called the first floor "second floor" and Foop spent 30 minutes flitting around in puzzled circles until it clicked that he and Poof were using different terms for their destination. He walked in late and his snacks were cold. Hmph. No one ever seemed to have that problem when it was him sending out newsletters. Atrocious.

And when Poof had double-dipped his hand briefly into the role of student body treasurer, the budget may as well have been sliced in half with the way Poof divvied up their things. Honestly, it felt sometimes like his counterpart flopped in his various roles on purpose just to make him miserable. He'd like to believe Poof was better than that level of petty, but sometimes when you were dripping with exhaustion and low on caffeine, it was impossible to tell.

Poof's on freaking peppermint a solid 70% of his waking hours anyway. A lot of help HE is. He supposed he could thank his counterpart for getting addicted to candy in a way that let Foop operate sober and without temptation of any kind. That was the only silver lining to any of this.

Foop despised his counterpart's peppermint habit, but like Darkness would he ever rat Poofy out to his mummy and daddy. No. They both relied on their parents' approval- if not for physical comfort and safety, then certainly for emotional support. Hard pass. Disgrace. Poof had far too much dirt on him to ever make him risk tipping their mutually assured destruction too far to one side.

My secret affairs with Anti-Marigold come to mind… His father will flay him alive when he finds out about that. An anti-will o' the wisp… Really. The prince of Anti-Fairy World could have done "so much better in a mistress" (and High Count Anti-Cosmo will painfully let him know it). His lecherous father was a textbook nymphomaniac. Foop would rather die than allow the pooferazzi to document Anti-Cosmo dragging his son out to all his old brothel haunts or… or… something like that.

Do we even have brothels in Anti-Fairy World? Who knows. That's not the point. The High Count undoubtedly did something scandalous with his spare time when he wasn't holed up plotting world domination, and whatever that thing may be, Foop would sooner sprint one billion kilometers in the other direction than ever face it head-on.

Anti-Cosmo didn't approve of the fact that Foop ended up on student council in the first place. Foop had cheated some of the vote (as he'd cheated it for years) by relying on bashful simpletons like Whistle to campaign in his favor while simultaneously threatening others into voting for him. He'd stuffed the ballot box and didn't even care. Honestly, part of him suspected the school knew what he was up to, and Foop took cruel pride in the fact that if he managed to do a good enough job keeping the school activities flowing, the faculty might simply look the other way. Oh, there's such a great joy in being wanted as a leader instead of merely feared…

Not that my father understands that. My position is secured someday, especially if I don't have heirs until I'm so old that my wand sparks when I use it. Meanwhile, my father will be twisting his neck, peering anxiously over one shoulder in cold anticipation of my rise to power until the day he dies.

Ah, youth. He reveled in it.

At least Poof knew how to lead a meeting that kept all the officers engaged. Poof had this animated way of speaking where he sort of gushed over his words, the long tails of his blue bandana ribbon snapping behind him in an imaginary wind every time he paced. He could sell a genie on underwater real estate. Maybe that was why the people kept electing him student body president year after year.

They'd been setting up for tonight's dance since before the window for early-morning breakfast wishes closed off. Well… Foop had, anyway. It wasn't really necessary. In a pinch, magic could always be whipped out to speed the process along, but Foop had his own… reasons for wanting to keep eyes on their location for hours at a time.

He traced the pad of one finger along the dark scar that curled around his neck. Left side, just above the collarbone…

Cavatina Sanderson had slit that scar across Poof's innocent skin 20,000 years ago, during the same Autumn Masquerade where Foop first met Anti-Coriander. Foop had even died and regenerated a few times since then - not on purpose! (mostly) - but the scar wasn't his to heal. This same scar branded his counterpart's neck. It had been given to Poof first, and the stupid sync between their cores kept it firmly in place like a teeter-totter. Terribly annoying.

He never knew how to explain it when strangers asked. Wasn't even his battle wound to brag about. Or Poof's, for that matter… That infuriating pixie had simply backed his counterpart against a wall and shoved a blade right up to his neck. Poof just let it happen. And if he'd done it at one dance, Foop had no reason to believe he wouldn't make another appearance tonight.

Therein lay the anxieties.

[Cnt’d - FFN and AO3 links above]

#FOP #Fairly OddParents #FOP Foop #130 Prompts #ridwriting #Nerdy blue bat son #Purple hippie dragonfly #Snazzy sequel son #Panicked sequel son #Cilantro princess #Cavatina #Big Crock #Little Crock #FAIRIES!#Bat cube and associates #I wrote / drew this in May. It's been a long wait #apparently art #fic announcement

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wilderun · 2 years

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I often hear that wolfdogs are a modern fad, but in reality, wolfdogs in the USA have a long and deep-running history. Here is a little about wolfdogs of the last 100 years.... McCleery Wolf Ranch -- A breeder who acquired wolves in 1921 during government culls, and created a line of wolves and wolfdogs, passed along for several generations, of which the last remaining descendants now reside at Wolf Haven’s McCleery Ranch facility.

IOWOLFER -- A wolfdog organization and pedigree tracking/verification registry created in 1979 that supported responsible wolfdog ownership and breeding practices. This organization was ran by Suzanne Smith, a wolfdog and wolf breeder who worked to try and outcross the arctic lines to get away from the jaw malocclusion that was in the line. IOWOLFER held rendezvous and shows ever year where wolves and wolfdogs and their owners could mingle and evaluate animals and work together on projects. IOWOLFER spearheaded issues like correcting percentages on lines that had been misrepresented such as the Gordon K Smith line, lobbying for rabies vaccine approval for wolfdogs, fighting against anti-ownership laws, and public education.

Fur Farms -- The Davidson Fur Farm operated in the 70-90′s that bred and sold puppies into private ownership. Later, he bred a line of 50% F1 and 75% F2 Norwegian Elkhound/wolf crosses. Many wolfdog lines descend from animals from fur farm facilities like this one. Davidson often traded animals with facilities that operated in the 60′s-90′s, such as Don Garrett, Rod Twitto and Harold Matz, other fur farms at the time that also sold to private ownership.

Bear Country USA -- This was a drive through zoo opened in 1972 and is still in operation today, although no longer has quite the same caliber of wolf as they used to. Many lines of wolfdog today trace back to their wolves or animals from other zoos such as the Folsom Zoo. This is an ‘end line’ facility, because, as far as I am aware, no one is quite sure where they sourced their original wolves from.

Rick Halvorson -- Rick Halvorson acquired a pair of pure arctic wolves from Aqualand via an auction, and another animal from Stanley Park Zoo, back in the 70's. These animals came from several generations of inbreeding at the zoos, tracing back to (to my understanding) a full sibling pairing of wild caught arctic wolves. People who acquired Halvorson arctics proceeded to inbreed them as well, to maintain the arctic genetics. Pure arctics started to have severe jaw and skull deformities due to the extensive inbreeding. Crossing to other wolf subspecies such as C. l. Hudsonicus was done, along with crosses to dog (including, most famously, great pyreneese crosses). The last few pure arctics from the Halvorson line ended up in sanctuary after a breeder who was trying to preserve them passed away, and are now deceased due to old age with the exception of a single 17.5yo female.

Below are a collection of old advertisements from the Wolf Hybrid Times and other newsletters, where established kennels could list advertisements in. While none of these breeders are active any longer and contact information was removed for privacy purposes, descendants of kennels like these are what makes up the vast majority of multi-generational wolfdogs in North America (and even overseas in Europe!) today. Unfortunately, due to the secrecy that has arisen around lineage on wolfdogs in the last 2 decades or so and certain breeders who won’t give out pedigrees or give false information, a lot of modern wolfdog owners don’t have their animals’ pedigrees tracing back as far as it actually could go, into the 60′s in many cases.

For further information about wolfdogs:

https://texaswolfdogproject.org/resources/owning-a-wolfdog

https://runningwithwolfdogs.com/

https://www.wolfdogbehaviorist.com/

http://www.floridalupine.org/

#wolf #wolves #wolfdog #wolf hybrid #wolfdog education #wolfdog history

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handeaux · 11 months

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Remembering The Long-Forgotten Clermont County Gold Rush Of 1868

Byron Williams, who published the exhaustive 1913 history of Clermont and Brown counties in Ohio, spares not a single word in his two-volume epic for the gold rush of 1868. Perhaps this is understandable.

Compared to the renowned California Gold Rush of 1849, the Clermont County gold rush of 1868 was hardly noticeable outside a handful of incurable optimists. Oh, there was gold in the creeks east of Cincinnati, it is true. There’s still gold there and it is easily found. The problem is, it takes a lot more time, money and effort to get that gold out than it is commercially worth – even at the lofty prices gold has claimed since it was deregulated in 1975. The economic futility of Ohio gold was summarized as early as 1873 in the report of Ohio State Geologist Edward Orton:

“From what has already been said, it will be seen that Clermont County has no monopoly of the gold-bearing formation of Ohio. This formation should be named the ‘Drift gold field,’ rather than the ‘Clermont County gold field.’ All of the counties of southwestern Ohio certainly share in its treasures, and without doubt one locality is as good as another, where gravels are found that have been washed from the bowlder clay. The best results thus far known to have been obtained in gold-mining in Ohio are reported for Warren county, where in one day gold to the value of six dollars was obtained – by an outlay of ten dollars; a half-dozen days’ work being also thrown in.”

Nevertheless, there are some folks for whom the gold fever never subsides, and Clermont County has been subjected to hard-working miners and unscrupulous fraudsters in approximately equal measures ever since. According to the Spring 1985 newsletter of the Ohio Geological Survey:

“Gold was first discovered in Clermont County on the farm of Robert Wood, near Elk Lick, on the banks of the East Fork of the Little Miami River. This site is now located on the north shore of William H. Harsha Lake at East Fork State Park.”

It is almost certain that any discovery of gold will attract equal numbers of hard-working miners and shady flim-flam men. Several stock companies were set up to finance gold-digging operations in Clermont County, but few paid dividends. The newspapers were full of breathless proclamations of easy riches. “Professor” J.W. Glass announced in the Ohio Statesman [21 September 1868]:

“I believe that were we supplied with an abundance of water for hydraulic purposes, our hills would pay equally well as those of California.”

Glass estimated that hand-panning would yield no more than fifty to seventy-five cents worth of gold in a day, while hydraulic mining could generate anywhere from twelve to fifteen dollars a day. A correspondent signing himself M. Jamieson informed the Cincinnati Gazette [31 August 1868]:

“Old California miners have prospected over a good portion of this field, and report gold in almost any ravine where they tried their luck. Those miners seem sanguine, and say they found no better diggings in California.”

Alas, such wishful appraisals never, shall we say, “panned out.” The Cincinnati Post [22 Januray 1897] echoed State Geologist Orton while taking an honest look at the situation:

“Every year or so some newspaper correspondent in Clermont County, Ohio, or some contiguous county sends a report of the discovery of gold and of mining enterprises for its recovery. These reports of gold in these counties are true. It has not been found to be minable, because it costs about $5 – in money and labor – to get out $1 in gold.”

That judgement didn’t prevent the Post from printing, just eight years later, a small feature on Clermont miner John Allen, who had dug a 200-foot tunnel into a hillside along Cabin Run Creek in an area known as Bear Hollow. Allen called his mine Paradise Gulch and worked it without ever striking the mother lode into the 1920s. His mine shaft is now collapsed.

Allen failed to find the source of the gold flakes extracted from nearby creeks because he misunderstood the local geology. Unlike California, where seams of gold up in the hills erode into flakes of placer gold in the streams, Ohio has only placer gold. The mother lode for Ohio’s gold is somewhere up in Canada and all the gold found here was dragged south by the glaciers that once blanketed our state.

Gold fever revived in the 1930s when the regulated value of the precious metal was boosted to $35 an ounce and so many men were out of work due to the Great Depression. A farmer named Robert Titus found a few gold flakes in a creek that ran through his farm and set up a company to exploit the find. Titus built a gasoline powered sluice that could sift a cubic yard of gravel and sand in less than an hour. According to the Ohio Geological Survey:

“Considerable excitement was created by this venture and Titus was reportedly offered financial backing and outright purchase of his 40-acre farm for $1,500 per acre. No commercial quantities of gold were ever produced from this deposit and most of the metal recovered was sold for souvenirs.”

Today, Clermont County prospectors are almost exclusively hobbyists. The Cincinnati Mineral Society has led occasional field trips to a tributary of Stonelick Creek since the 1960s, as has the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History and Science.

Still, the lure of gold fires the imagination. Michael Hansen of the Ohio Geological Survey recalled the heady days of gold speculation in the 1980s:

“In early 1980, when gold prices skyrocketed to more than $800 per ounce, the survey received up to 600 letters each week after newspaper articles across the state identified the Survey as the organization responsible for such matters in Ohio.”

#clermont county gold #ohio gold

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 5 months

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Trump déjà vu: It's always about him

January 31, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

Remember that time—during Trump's presidency—when every proposed action by the US government was evaluated by a single criterion: Does the action advance Trump's personal interests? Although Trump is not president, House Republicans are giving us a reminder of what it was like when Trump was president. The text of the proposed immigration bill has yet to be released, but House Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly told his GOP colleagues on Tuesday that the bill is “dead on arrival” in the House. Why? Because Trump told him so—in order to advance Trump’s election prospects.

The situation is even more maddening than it appears at first blush. The House will likely vote on vague impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas. One of the grounds for impeachment is that Mayorkas has lost “operational control of the border”—a fact that is unassailably true because Texas is blocking federal access to portions of the border!

There are other stories that deserve attention, but immigration is the lead issue. We should know by Friday if Trump will kill an immigration compromise that has been months in the making and whether the House will impeach a Cabinet secretary for the first time in 150 years.

[...]

The House GOP prepares to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

It appears that the House will issue articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week. Here is what you need to know: The impeachment is a sham designed to distract from the GOP’s abject failure to address immigration reform in decades. For a lengthier and more detailed explanation, see WaPo, The Republican effort to impeach Mayorkas, explained. (Accessible to all.)

WaPo interviewed an expert on immigration policy, Frank O. Bowman III, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, who summarized the proposed articles of impeachment as follows:

The first article is essentially a claim that the various policy decisions of the secretary, with which they happen to disagree, are ‘violations of law,’ which have produced, in their view, a whole bunch of bad consequences,” Bowman said. “Their claims that he has violated the law [are] wrong because virtually every one of them is an argument about the way in which the secretary has interpreted the frankly contradictory provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act and other immigration legislation.”

Moreover, even if Mayorkas were convicted and removed by the Senate (which won’t happen), President Biden could simply appoint another Homeland Security Secretary to implement the same policies that are angering Republicans. In other words, the entire proceeding is pointless and ineffectual.

Meanwhile, Congress is not acting to pass an immigration bill. And, by the way, Mike Johnson, how much progress have you made on eleven budget bills that must pass to avoid a government shutdown in March? Wasting time on a show-trial impeachment is the last thing that Republicans should be doing.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

#Robert B. Hubbell #Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter #Mayorkas #immigration

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belovedzine · 1 year

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Interested in receiving our quarterly newsletter? Exclusive buttons and stickers delivered straight to your mailbox? Early access to zine downloads and merch drops?

Or, you just really care about seeing lesbian-run projects thrive and want to help us keep Beloved going?

We at Beloved Zine are so excited to announce that we now have a Patreon page!

Ever since our first issue (Love Letters) came into being, we have been dreaming up ways to expand this project and offer the ButchFemme community something tangible and real– pages you can touch, stickers and postcards and tote bags you can show off. We are so endlessly grateful to the ways that the community has shown up for us, giving us so much love and support.

In deciding to launch a Patreon dedicated to funding the expansion of Beloved, we had a couple things in mind. First, Beloved is currently fully 110% run out of a teeny tiny bedroom in Manhattan. Our first and major priority for the funds from our Patreon page is to pay rent for a physical studio space for Beloved. A physical studio space would mean order time could be cut down significantly, because the entire packing and shipping would no longer be operated out of Lottie's home, and we could invite volunteers to help pack orders rather than have Lottie put together every single order by themself.

Additionally, with a brick and mortar/physical studio location, we could offer real life community events for the NYC ButchFemme community. Part of expanding this project is creating these opportunities for community building with Butches, Studs, and Femmes in lesbian spaces. In the future, hopefully with your continued support, we will be able to expand Beloved into even greater heights with loftier goals, such as financially compensating staff + contributors, creating gallery spaces for ButchFemme art, among many other ideas!

With the launch of our Patreon, we wanted to emphasize the fact that so far, this has been an entirely volunteer run group. Every single person working at Beloved as an editor/director/assistant is in school and/or works full time. None of us on The Beloved Team have made a single cent off of this project.

That being said, it would be great if we could have enough money to keep Beloved going and eventually be able to compensate ourselves and our contributors for the labor of love behind our work!

On our Patreon, for $5 a month, you will get early access to our upcoming issues' themes, spreads, and artwork before anywhere else. You will also receive an exclusive Beloved sticker design every three months. We will be offering monthly stickers designed by our lovely Art Directors at the $10 tier, with an additional button pin delivered to you in the mail if you join the $20 tier. Our goal + priority is to be steady enough outside of seasonal releases that we can use the funds from Patreon combined with our sales income to lease a small studio space to operate out of full-time!

Independently run and reader-supported networks of publishing zines exist in the same historical continuum of lesbian communities of ButchFemmes. It would mean the world to us if you chose to become one of our Patrons and helped sustain this project!

You can learn more about our Patreon here! Thank you so much for your support either way. ♡

Much Love,

♡ The Beloved Team ♡

#reshares appreciated!!!!!#beloved #butchfemme #butch4femme #butch4butch #femme4butch #butch-femme #butch/femme #femmebutch #butchfemme zine #beloved zine #lesbian zine #lesbian #crowdfunding

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erqwtyhw · 8 months

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kdp payment issues

Issues with Amazon KDP Payments - What You Should Know

Are you struggling to make a decent monthly income with Amazon KDP? Read this...

#Single Operated Newsletter #Paidletter

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 months

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Twinkfrump Linkdump

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in CHICAGO (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Welcome to the seventeenth Pluralistic linkdump, a collection of all the miscellany that didn't make it into the week's newsletter, cunningly wrought together in a single edition that ranges from the first ISP to AI nonsense to labor organizing victories to the obituary of a brilliant scientist you should know a lot more about! Here's the other 16 dumps:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

If you're reading this (and you are!), it was delivered to you by an internet service provider. Today, the ISP industry is calcified, controlled by a handful of telcos and cable companies. But the idea of an "ISP" didn't come out of a giant telecommunications firm – it was created, in living memory, by excellent nerds who are still around.

Depending on how you reckon, The Little Garden was either the first or the second ISP in America. It was named after a Palo Alto Chinese restaurant frequented by its founders. To get a sense of that founding, read these excellent recollections by Tom Jennings, whose contributions include the seminal zine Homocore, the seminal networking protocol Fidonet, and the seminal third-party PC ROM, whence came Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and every other "PC clone" company.

The first installment describes how an informal co-op to network a few friends turned into a business almost by accident, with thousands of dollars flowing in and out of Jennings' bank account:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/TLG.html

And it describes how that ISP set a standard for neutrality, boldly declaring that "TLGnet exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information." They introduced an idea of radical transparency, documenting their router configurations and other technical details and making them available to the public. They hired unskilled punk and queer kids from their communities and trained them to operate the network equipment they'd invented, customized or improvised.

In part two, Jennings talks about the evolution of TLG's radical business-plan: to offer unrestricted service, encouraging their customers to resell that service to people in their communities, having no lock-in, unbundling extra services including installation charges – the whole anti-enshittification enchilada:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/

I love Jennings and his work. I even gave him a little cameo in Picks and Shovels, the third Martin Hench novel, which will be out next winter. He's as lyrical a writer about technology as you could ask for, and he's also a brilliant engineer and thinker.

The Little Garden's founders and early power-users have all fleshed out Jennings' account of the birth of ISPs. Writing on his blog, David "DSHR" Rosenthal rounds up other histories from the likes of EFF co-founder John Gilmore and Tim Pozar:

https://blog.dshr.org/2024/04/the-little-garden.html

Rosenthal describes some of the more exotic shenanigans TLG got up to in order to do end-runs around the Bell system's onerous policies, hacking in the purest sense of the word, for example, by daisy-chaining together modems in regions with free local calling and then making "permanent local calls," with the modems staying online 24/7.

Enshittification came to the ISP business early and hit it hard. The cartel that controls your access to the internet today is a billion light-years away from the principled technologists who invented the industry with an ethos of care, access and fairness. Today's ISPs are bitterly opposed to Net Neutrality, the straightforward proposition that if you request some data, your ISP should send it to you as quickly and reliably as it can.

Instead, ISPs want to offer "slow-lanes" where they will relegate the whole internet, except for those companies that bribe the ISP to be delivered at normal speed. ISPs have a laughably transparent way of describing this: they say that they're allowing services to pay for "fast lanes" with priority access. This is the same as the giant grocery store that charges you extra unless you surrender your privacy with a "loyalty card" – and then says that they're offering a "discount" for loyal customers, rather than charging a premium to customers who don't want to be spied on.

The American business lobby loves this arrangement, and hates Net Neutrality. Having monopolized every sector of our economy, they are extremely fond of "winner take all" dynamics, and that's what a non-neutral ISP delivers: the biggest services with the deepest pockets get the most reliable delivery, which means that smaller services don't just have to be better than the big guys, they also have to be able to outbid them for "priority carriage."

If everything you get from your ISP is slow and janky, except for the dominant services, then the dominant services can skimp on quality and pocket the difference. That's the goal of every monopolist – not just to be too big to fail, but also too big to care.

Under the Trump administration, FCC chair Ajit Pai dismantled the Net Neutrality rule, colluding with American big business to rig the process. They accepted millions of obviously fake anti-Net Neutrality comments (one million identical comments from @pornhub.com addresses, comments from dead people, comments from sitting US Senators who support Net Neutrality) and declared open season on American internet users:

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-issues-report-detailing-millions-fake-comments-revealing

Now, Biden's FCC is set to reinstate Net Neutrality – but with a "compromise" that will make mobile internet (which nearly all of use sometimes, and the poorest of us are reliant on) a swamp of anticompetitive practices:

https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/04/harmful-5g-fast-lanes-are-coming-fcc-needs-stop-them

Under the proposed rule, mobile carriers will be able to put traffic to and from apps in the slow lane, and then extort bribes from preferred apps for normal speed and delivery. They'll rely on parts of the 5G standard to pull off this trick.

The ISP cartel and the FCC insist that this is fine because web traffic won't be degraded, but of course, every service is hellbent on pushing you into using apps instead of the web. That's because the web is an open platform, which means you can install ad- and privacy-blockers. More than half of web users have installed a blocker, making it the largest boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But reverse-engineering and modding an app is a legal minefield. Just removing the encryption from an app can trigger criminal penalties under Section 1201 of the DMCA, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine. An app is just a web-page skinned in enough IP that it's a felony to mod it.

Apps are enshittification's vanguard, and the fact that the FCC has found a way to make them even worse is perversely impressive. They're voting on this on April 25, and they have until April 24 to fix this. They should. They really should:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf

In a just world, cheating ripoff ISPs would the top tech policy story. The operational practices of ISPs effect every single one us. We literally can't talk about tech policy without ISPs in the middle. But Net Neutrality is an also-ran in tech policy discourse, while AI – ugh ugh ugh – is the thing none of us can shut up about.

This, despite the fact that the most consequential AI applications sum up to serving as a kind of moral crumple-zone for shitty business practices. The point of AI isn't to replace customer service and other low-paid workers who have taken to demanding higher wages and better conditions – it's to fire those workers and replace them with chatbots that can't do their jobs. An AI salesdroid can't sell your boss a bot that can replace you, but they don't need to. They only have to convince your boss that the bot can do your job, even if it can't.

SF writer Karl Schroeder is one of the rare sf practitioners who grapples seriously with the future, a "strategic foresight" guy who somehow skirts the bullshit that is the field's hallmark:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

Writing on his blog, Schroeder describes the AI debates roiling the Association of Professional Futurists, and how it's sucking him into being an unwilling participant in the AI hype cycle:

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/dragged-into-the-ai-hype-cycle

Schroeder's piece is a thoughtful meditation on the relationship of SF's thought-experiments and parables about AI to the promises of AI hucksters, who promise that a) "general artificial intelligence" is just around the corner and that b) it will be worth trillions of dollars.

Schroeder – like other sf writers including Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross (and me) – comes to the conclusion that AI panic isn't about AI, it's about power. The artificial life-form devouring the planet and murdering our species is the limited liability corporation, and its substrate isn't silicon, it's us, human bodies:

What’s lying underneath all our anxieties about AGI is an anxiety that has nothing to do with Artificial Intelligence. Instead, it’s a manifestation of our growing awareness that our world is being stolen from under us. Last year’s estimate put the amount of wealth currently being transferred from the people who made it to an idle billionaire class at $5.2 trillion. Artificial General Intelligence whose environment is the server farms and sweatshops of this class is frightening only because of its capacity to accelerate this greatest of all heists.

After all, the business-case for AI is so very thin that the industry can only survive on a torrent of hype and nonsense – like claims that Amazon's "Grab and Go" stores used "AI" to monitor shoppers and automatically bill them for their purchases. In reality, the stores used thousands of low-paid Indian workers to monitor cameras and manually charge your card. This happens so often that Indian technologists joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

Isn't it funny how all the really promising AI applications are in domains that most of us aren't qualified to assess? Like the claim that Google's AI was producing millions of novel materials that will shortly revolutionize all forms of production, from construction to electronics to medical implants:

https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/

That's what Google's press-release claimed, anyway. But when two groups of experts actually pulled a representative sample of these "new materials" from the Deep Mind database, they found that none of these materials qualified as "credible, useful and novel":

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00643

Writing about the researchers' findings for 404 Media, Jason Koebler cites Berkeley researchers who concluded that "no new materials have been discovered":

https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/

The researchers say that AI data-mining for new materials is promising, but falls well short of Google's claim to be so transformative that it constitutes the "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge" and "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity."

AI hype keeps the bubble inflating, and for so long as it keeps blowing up, all those investors who've sunk their money into AI can tell themselves that they're rich. This is the essence of "a bezzle": "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

Among the best debezzlers of AI are the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy's Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, who edit the "AI Snake Oil" blog. Now, they've sold a book with the same title:

https://www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-snake-oil-is-now-available-to

Obviously, books move a lot more slowly than blogs, and so Narayanan and Kapoor say their book will focus on the timeless elements of identifying and understanding AI snake oil:

In the book, we explain the crucial differences between types of AI, why people, companies, and governments are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can’t fix social media, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. While generative AI is what drives press, predictive AI used in criminal justice, finance, healthcare, and other domains remains far more consequential in people’s lives. We discuss in depth how predictive AI can go wrong. We also warn of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies.

The book's out in September and it's up for pre-order now:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/ai-snake-oil-what-artificial-intelligence-can-do-what-it-can-t-and-how-to-tell-the-difference-arvind-narayanan/21324674

One of the weirder and worst side-effects of the AI hype bubble is that it has revived the belief that it's somehow possible for giant platforms to monitor all their users' speech and remove "harmful" speech. We've tried this for years, and when humans do it, it always ends with disfavored groups being censored, while dedicated trolls, harassers and monsters evade punishment:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/como-is-infosec/

AI hype has led policy-makers to believe that we can deputize online services to spy on all their customers and block the bad ones without falling into this trap. Canada is on the verge of adopting Bill C-63, a "harmful content" regulation modeled on examples from the UK and Australia.

Writing on his blog, Canadian lawyer/activist/journalist Dimitri Lascaris describes the dire speech implications for C-63:

https://dimitrilascaris.org/2024/04/08/trudeaus-online-harms-bill-threatens-free-speech/

It's an excellent legal breakdown of the bill's provisions, but also a excellent analysis of how those provisions are likely to play out in the lives of Canadians, especially those advocating against genocide and taking other positions the that oppose the agenda of the government of the day.

Even if you like the Trudeau government and its policies, these powers will accrue to every Canadian government, including the presumptive (and inevitably, totally unhinged) near-future Conservative majority government of Pierre Poilievre.

It's been ten years since Martin Gilens and Benjamin I Page published their paper that concluded that governments make policies that are popular among elites, no matter how unpopular they are among the public:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

Now, this is obviously depressing, but when you see it in action, it's kind of wild. The Biden administration has declared war on junk fees, from "resort fees" charged by hotels to the dozens of line-items added to your plane ticket, rental car, or even your rent check. In response, Republican politicians are climbing to their rear haunches and, using their actual human mouths, defending junk fees:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-12-republicans-objectively-pro-junk-fee/

Congressional Republicans are hell-bent on destroying the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's $8 cap on credit-card late-fees. Trump's presumptive running-mate Tim Scott is making this a campaign plank: "Vote for me and I will protect your credit-card company's right to screw you on fees!" He boasts about the lobbyists who asked him to take this position: champions of the public interest from the Consumer Bankers Association to the US Chamber of Commerce.

Banks stand to lose $10b/year from this rule (which means Americans stand to gain $10b/year from this rule). What's more, Scott's attempt to kill the rule is doomed to fail – there's just no procedural way it will fly. As David Dayen writes, "Not only does this vote put Republicans on the spot over junk fees, it’s a doomed vote, completely initiated by their own possible VP nominee."

This is an hilarious own-goal, one that only brings attention to a largely ignored – but extremely good – aspect of the Biden administration. As Adam Green of Bold Progressives told Dayen, "What’s been missing is opponents smoking themselves out and raising the volume of this fight so the public knows who is on their side."

The CFPB is a major bright spot in the Biden administration's record. They're doing all kind of innovative things, like making it easy for you to figure out which bank will give you the best deal and then letting you transfer your account and all its associated data, records and payments with a single click:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

And now, CFPB chair Rohit Chopra has given a speech laying out the agency's plan to outlaw data-brokers:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/prepared-remarks-of-cfpb-director-rohit-chopra-at-the-white-house-on-data-protection-and-national-security/

Yes, this is some good news! There is, in fact, good news in the world, bright spots amidst all the misery and terror. One of those bright spots? Labor.

Unions are back, baby. Not only do the vast majority of Americans favor unions, not only are new shops being unionized at rates not seen in generations, but also the largest unions are undergoing revolutions, with control being wrestled away from corrupt union bosses and given to the rank-and-file.

Many of us have heard about the high-profile victories to take back the UAW and Teamsters, but I hadn't heard about the internal struggles at the United Food and Commercial Workers, not until I read Hamilton Nolan's gripping account for In These Times:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/revolt-aisle-5-ufcw-grocery-workers-union

Nolan profiles Faye Guenther, president of UFCW Local 3000 and her successful and effective fight to bring a militant spirit back to the union, which represents a million grocery workers. Nolan describes the fight as "every bit as dramatic as any episode of Game of Thrones," and he's not wrong. This is an inspiring tale of working people taking power away from scumbag monopoly bosses and sellout fatcat leaders – and, in so doing, creating a institution that gets better wages, better working conditions, and a better economy, by helping to block giant grocery mergers like Kroger/Albertsons.

I like to end these linkdumps on an up note, so it feels weird to be closing out with an obituary, but I'd argue that any celebration of the long life and many accomplishments of my friend and mentor Anne Innis Dagg is an "up note."

I last wrote about Anne in 2020, on the release of a documentary about her work, "The Woman Who Loved Giraffes":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg

As you might have guessed from the title of that doc, Anne was a biologist. She was the first woman scientist to do field-work on giraffes, and that work was so brilliant and fascinating that it kicked off the modern field of giraffology, which remains a woman-dominated specialty thanks to her tireless mentoring and support for the scientists that followed her.

Anne was also the world's most fearsome slayer of junk-science "evolutionary psychology," in which "scientists" invent unfalsifiable just-so stories that prove that some odious human characteristic is actually "natural" because it can be found somewhere in the animal kingdom (i.e., "Darling, please, it's not my fault that I'm fucking my grad students, it's the bonobos!").

Anne wrote a classic – and sadly out of print – book about this that I absolutely adore, not least for having one of the best titles I've ever encountered: "Love of Shopping" Is Not a Gene:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/04/love-of-shopping-is-not-a-gene-exposing-junk-science-and-ideology-in-darwinian-psychology/

Anne was my advisor at the University of Waterloo, an institution that denied her tenure for fifty years, despite a brilliant academic career that rivaled that of her storied father, Harold Innis ("the thinking person's Marshall McLuhan"). The fact that Waterloo never recognized Anne is doubly shameful when you consider that she was awarded the Order of Canada:

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/queen-of-giraffes-among-new-order-of-canada-recipients-with-global-influence

Anne lived a brilliant live, struggling through adversity, never compromising on her principles, inspiring a vast number of students and colleagues. She lived to ninety one, and died earlier this month. Her ashes will be spread "on the breeding grounds of her beloved giraffes" in South Africa this summer:

https://obituaries.therecord.com/obituary/anne-innis-dagg-1089534658

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/2024/04/13/goulash/#material-misstatement

Image: Valeva1010 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hungarian_Goulash_Recipe.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

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