chaps

So you're saying we're all fucked and there's nothing we can do?

You expect way too much of journalists. Mostly rightfully so, but -- it's not really possible for journalists to publish everything they know. Going through the editing, investigation, cuts... it's just not tenable.

If I was posting in a thread about an article responding to that article, then yeah -- I'd read it. But we're not.

Why didn't you bother to read it but still think they have no sense?

ZK. Maybe it's better these days.

It's really unfortunate that it's as good as it is because awful players (racists, cheaters, tactical pausers) really ruined the community.

There is such a thing as meaningful work. Just, you need to leave the corporate world and accept an 80% paycut.

...and people like you are exactly the reason why I left the industry. Holy fuck man, it's okay to be something other than a worker bee.

Sure, if you consider "work" to be the end-all-be-all. I "phoned it in at work" for a while and it was one of the best things I did for myself. But the reason was mostly that my evenings were spent working on learning data analysis and working on bunches of civics-oriented projects and FOIA litigation. I did eventually leave to find more meaningful work in a different career. But "phoning it in" is what enabled me to eventually leave.

  risks you take when you commit a crime worthy of jail.

A friend's mom went to jail for having too many dildos in her purse. Do you count her in this?

I think you have a significantly narrower view than them. Consider someone moving to a new city or someone getting out of jail. It takes time to do the networking you're talking about. People need to eat and networking doesn't fill your stomach.

Changed to dropbox! not sure what that was about.

(In case I never get to it, here's 2,300 pdf pages of email metadata of the White House OMB I received from FOIA litigation: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/95qlfrsr8a9241vdw590x/Chapman...)

Ended up not running the script and ran a tool specifically meant for that purpose.

Oh I won that case! I need to write about it...

Been there with a 33M cost estimate [1]. If the requester is reading this -- hold them to it and request a much smaller but still significant amount of records. Use that as the foundation for "how much time it actually takes". Another option is to get clever with helping them with means and modes of review/redaction. This is how I got the email metadata for 6M emails from Houston for example.

Another example from Vermont's governor's office: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/vermont-80/email-metadata-55744...

Happy to help more but I'll probably be unavailable tonight.

[1] https://mchap.io/that-time-the-city-of-seattle-accidentally-...

Sadly, yes they kinda are. Government agencies regularly buy feeds of this data for traffic/safety analysis. In the eyes of a lot of people working on these systems, it's often very much life or death because not doing analysis on it means more vehicle deaths. When I've talked to the folk who've worked on these systems, they entirely believe that the data is anonymous, so they don't see it as a privacy infringement.

Sometimes it's helpful to write things or say things out loud even if they're obvious. Like my comment right now.

We don't. Because they left it vague. It reads like something a lawyer would write to be factually true but empty in any meaningful way.

  "When attempting to get information from the Census Bureau, for instance, AI agents used tools reserved for software developers to access it, the company said. "

What. Tons of people use tools to access Census Bureau data. They have a widely used API that people have built tools on top of like https://github.com/datadesk/census-data-downloader

lol zing i don't even have a car

Thanks for joining me on this ride. Have a good one.

What I'm not really understanding is why "a bit overhanded" is a small throwaway point. Speaking from Chicago where we have very notorious public speakers at city council and it's one of those that's-just-what-happens things. I've also done a fair amount of research/reporting on criminal courts where the idea of arresting someone for giving the middle finger to city council absolutely fucking floors me. So a lot of my questions are oriented around trying to understand why getting arrested is such a (seemingly) small deal.

- Do you think Springfield could have handled the situation better without arresting her?

Not setting up a trap, I'm just genuinely interested in where you're coming from because, frankly, I don't get it. Sorry you've had bad experiences on the internet and thanks for your patience.

Why do you think your public comment was ineffective?

Got it. Couple more questions:

- Have you ever spoken at a public meeting? How'd your experience go?

- Do you think the person thought they had zero possibility of getting arrested for that?

Just trying to gauge what your experience is with law enforcement. You seem interested in having a facts based conversation so I think it's important to understand where you're coming from first.

Do you think all forms of civil disobedience are worthy of arrest? Asking genuinely.

Out of curiosity, have you ever been arrested?

I care about preventing the proliferation of flock cameras (and more) and I do not hate this woman's actions even one bit.

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm talking about! It's a very specific visualization where it comes and goes and feeds into itself. It's really cool. The brightness you're talking about is legit. It's fun to play with bringing that in and out.

A thing that seems to kinda trigger the visualizations I've experienced is to focus on where those blueish blobs disappear into nothing. For me, that looks like an intense brightness kinda sorta collapsing into the center of my vision which happens again starting from the edges of my vision. In a way it feels like I'm watching some low level neuron activity.

But if I close my eyes and try to force some sort of visualization, it doesn't happen until I slow down and just pay attention to that middle point between my brain and my vision. Not really a meditator, but I've experienced it the strongest when I'm about to fall asleep.

Once I'm in that headspace, I can keep it going until I see those wild, megalithic visualizations.

Years ago while working as a contract sysadmin for a clearing firm, a coworker made an overbroad puppet change that changed every server's time zone from UTC to CDT. The only thing I heard about it was from a text from an old colleague/friend who was troubleshooting why their clearing reports were all off by five hours. I still chuckle at that random text.