Here’s another org comfortable folks in the Research Triangle (or anywhere, really) can write checks for: https://refugeecommunitypartnership.org/
They are a community of refugees (mostly Burmese, Hispanic, Afghan, Arab, and Congolese, but with a smattering of others) that originally started as a mutual-aid network. They remain community-led (as opposed to white-savior-led), but, ya know, money makes the world go ’round….
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/470928008
These guys need some help. “Conservatives” are using the power of the state to squelch them. It’s way beyond civil lawsuits. (They’re a 501(c)(3).)
«One of the incredible things that came out of the Paxton investigation or the lawsuits around that is there was this argument in court that his team was making that essentially amounted to the fact that if anybody in Texas reads a news article that has any effect on anything related to Texas, that they have the authority to go out there and investigate all the reporting leading up to it, the journalists, their notes, their research.»
«“The unfortunate reality is there’s a microphone connected to a computer that’s connected to the network,” says Nyx. “And there’s no software patching that will make that not possible to use as a listening device.»
(Courtesy of https://infosec.exchange/@josephcox/114993289485905184, via https://mstdn.io/@ApostateEnglishman@mastodon.world )
So, theoretically, we have laws in place that cell phone companies can’t triangulate your location unless it’s an emergency or there’s a warrant.
I’m assuming we have nothing like that in place for wifi and bluetooth, so, while you’re walking around with your radio-emitting device, you’re basically broadcasting your location.
Now, we have you walking around with your sound- and visible-light-emitting self, available for detection by any microphone- or pinhead-camera-equipped device, with the possibility of your voice and actions being monitored and acted upon.
Sounds great if you’re defending against “criminals”, but… really? We’re ok with conversations being monitored?
Of course not, but the tech isn’t going away. So, we get to write laws (like, say, THE FOURTH AND FOURTEENTH AMENDMENTS) and have judicial decisions (ha) support them. And after that: massive lawsuits. Class-action-type stuff.
So, as a vendor or a purchaser of said tech: think twice.
This is pretty cool. An effort to document quaint memorials from bygone days we’d rather not think about too much.
«The experiment failed because the students rebelled against farming fields side by side with enslaved labor and burned down the institution, killing a fellow student. This granite slab represents a failed institutional landscape of White privileged sons refusing to engage in farm labor. During discussions of moving the institution in the 1840s, future president McGlothlin stated the necessary move to a location with a “larger proportion of white people.” The institute would move to Greenville in 1850.»
https://locatinglegacies.org/s/hub/item/566
Would be neat to see this database expanded.
(via https://mastodon.social/@anterotesis/114875168821388417, boosted by @BRMiller@historians.social)
“I’m not sure who or what to blame for the poorly staged “I’m melting” moment.”
Ok, well NOW I’m looking forward to it.
(At DPAC, Durham NC.)
There’s a universal truth buried in here:
«Since the late tenth century, European churchmen had been fretting over what they could do to rein in the violence perpetrated by knights engaged in local feuds. The popes had direct experience of this through the Normans of southern Italy. But trouble was—or seemed to be—endemic. Two early attempts to impose Church discipline over unruly knights were known as the “peace movements”: the Peace of God (Pax Dei) and Truce of God (Treuga Dei). These were mass advocacy programs through which clergy tried to impress on fighting men the need to refrain from plundering churches, and killing, raping, maiming, or robbing civilians. Bishops tried to enforce the Peace by putting towns and regions under the Church’s explicit protection, and threatening God’s curse against trespassers who did their inhabitants harm. The Truce, meanwhile, named days and times of the year when fighting was forbidden.3 Both the Peace and the Truce of God proved widely popular among the common people, but they were not enormously effective. So among the many things that vexed Urban at the outset of his papacy was how to support moral censure with positive action.
Then, in 1095, an intriguing solution presented itself. In the first week of March, ambassadors from Alexios I Komnenos’s court in Constantinople appeared in the west.4 They tracked down Urban in the city of Piacenza, where he was holding an ecclesiastical council known as a synod. And they made him a proposal. According to the German chronicler Bernold of St. Blaisen, they “humbly implored the lord pope and all Christ’s faithful people to give [the Byzantines] some help against the pagans in defense of the holy Church, which the pagans had almost destroyed in that region, having seized that territory up to the walls of the City of Constantinople.”»
– Powers and Thrones (Dan Jones)
https://bookshop.org/ebooks/quotes/62d88b8f-2c22-4ad5-b27a-14f655d1cb7a
Every Western (movie) starts with the townspeople trying to enforce their rules against guns in town.
So here’s the truth: violent, armed men are not popular. They’re not the heroes.
Also: all that “Deus vult” horseshit is (excuse me, was) just an excuse for said armed, violent men. The First Crusade was just a way to ship those guys off, away from “here”, wherever “here” was.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/caracas-on-the-potomac
«From here on, I’m going to be paying a lot more attention to private surveys. And when they tell a different story from the official numbers, there will no longer be a reason to take the official data more seriously.»
I’m sure Susan Collins and other sober Republicans have concerns.
https://www.newsweek.com/zohran-mamdani-has-17-point-jewish-voter-mayoral-race-lead-2106305
People need to just chill about Mamdani. The Democrats of NYC chose him, and that’s that.
Would Dems of any other city choose a similar candidate? Who knows? But whoever they were to choose (hypothetically) would be the right choice for their location.
https://newrepublic.com/article/198613/trump-epstein-fiasco-democrats-new-weapon
“What good does it do to keep fighting losing battles?”
Well…
«“The courts can screw around with this, but it would clearly be saying, ‘We don’t care about the law,’” Ornstein told me. “Every time we can shed light on the unwillingness of John Roberts and the Supreme Court to do anything about Trump’s lawlessness, the better off we are, even if it’s far from ideal.”»
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/durham-county/article311494896.html
«Sterling Bay bought Heritage Square at 606 Fayetteville St. for $62 million three years ago and wants to redevelop it into a life sciences campus with a 325-unit, high-rise apartment building. Originally, the proposal featured an underground parking garage, but the discovery of bedrock beneath the property last year prompted Sterling Bay to seek a zoning change.»
How do you “discover” bedrock under a piece of property after you buy it? (I.e., how do you not know what you’re buying?)
(I guess, after that kind of money has changed hands, that property’s getting developed, no matter what.)
«The company also promises that the project will bring 1,500 jobs with average salaries of $80,000, and investment to both the city and the Hayti neighborhood, which was devastated by the construction of the Durham Freeway, or N.C. 147, in the late 1960s.»
History.
«According to researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill, the temperature in Hayti is up to 7 degrees hotter than anywhere else in the city, a result of development and the construction of the Durham Freeway.
…
“One of my friends’ family sold their home for somewhere between $75,000 to $100,000; they thought they were getting a really good deal,” she said. “That same house was torn down and rebuilt and is now worth $600,000.”»
White flight, pave the city, gentrification, is that the right sequence?
«“Nobody is opposed to redevelopment, but on the backs of a community that has already been disinvested in and is vulnerable, it’s just not the right thing to do,” Scott Neville said.»
The aforementioned $62 mil says something’s gonna happen.
Here, Read This 