Disproportionate police violence/disruption impacts ability for minorities to amass wealth which is now a requirement for access to housing, thus housing crisis is a policing issue.
Disability ethics, intersectionality, and AI bias: 3 dead disabled people. Abdicate responsibility for efficiency. Comparison to Jinns. The purpose of a system is what it does. King Solomon says to cut the baby in half, and AI is like a Jinn or Solomon, does exactly what you ask it to even if you don't understand, if it says to cut a baby in half we say okay because we don't want to handle the responsibility. Solomon and the Jinn story: Solomon demonstrates foolishness by his blind obedience to an authority he does not understand. Ask the better question. Who is real mother->who cares for the child, which is the real flower->which flower sustains nature, how powerful are you->what keeps us safe?
Can we use AI to identify the mechanism that is killing disabled people? Can we use it to dismantle that mechanism? What do we do about society consistently asking the wrong questions? What can we do as individuals to push against unethical pushes? Try to support it with ethics and science, point out that it's publishable. Can we change peer review processes to incentivize ethical considerations? IRB is not enough. Address possible ethical consequences of the research the same way we evaluate limitations. Can't evaluate ethical implications if you don't have direct experience with the affected group, example ACM futures academy 12 authors call for ethics in peer review (TODO: get the reference). We're just trying to not die. (power to live movement, fires in California) (pods during covid were invited by disabled people and the normies took it and made it weird) (failure to identify citizen science initiatives when they're not launched by academics).
How students learn Clue students in to what material they need to process into their working memory. Help them practice retrieving it from long term memory. 6 factors for significant learning potential: learning how to learn (effective, while paying people to learn isn't), caring (if they perceive you care about them, they'll show up), human dimension (sometimes people have things going on in their lives), integration (connect it to other stuff they already know), application (real world uses for the information), foundational knowledge (useful for chaining). Learning styles only work when domain-appropriate (kinesthetic learning for bicycle riding). When presenting a journal article or similar method->result, don't give both at once, let students examine the situation and write down their own expectations, then share the result so that there can be clear confirmation or contradiction. Effort-based reinforcement is more likely to result in future hard work than "wow you're so smart!" "Which penny is the right design" question, lots of variation as individuals, but most converged on the correct answer when working in a small group, thus small group work is valuable(?), also knowing it's size and copper is enough to distinguish it from other coins, but experts are familiar with the details. The decision about how many details are important rests with the recipient of the information, so cue them up with an accurate expectation of the level of detail needed to be successful. Be careful about saying "oh you can just look up the details, let's focus on the concepts" because without the details, there's nothing to anchor to, and it can be easy to assume foundational knowledge that the student doesn't have. Tests should have foundational knowledge questions as well as analysis/synthesis questions; the former indicate foundational knowledge but the latter indicate understanding of the material. You can work really hard at memorizing for the first type of question. Good indicator of whether it's a knowledge or understanding problem (or application problem?) "What do you think about the material?" is a good question for checking whether understanding is happening (in a conversation, and apparently on tests/homework), "what was I going for, here? What was I trying to teach you with these particular questions?" Study x4, study x3 + 1 quiz, study + quiz x3, short term SSSS wins, but 1 week later SQQQ wins in terms of material retention. "In one sentence, summarize what we learned today."
hierarch and power imbalance
I've been thinking about hierarchy and power structures lately. This is not an area I'm well versed in. A lot of the stuff I've read, including stuff from Conflict is not Abuse to Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis and the Next and Minimum Viable Organizations, talk about power imbalance inherent in hierarchical structures, how people need to feel valued and able to contribute in ways that work for them, concerns about leader burnout and so on. That has mostly centered the work of mutual aid groups, but the same concepts apply when talking about co-op worker-owned businesses. I see a lot that diversity of leadership responsibility and keeping power low in a hierarchy (or not having a hierarchy at all) is the best path forward towards equity-centered organizing. They talked about it in my Library Management course, referencing Laloux's work in Reinventing Organizations. And I've started moving my own first aid organization more in this direction, in part because I'm experiencing burnout in my leadership role there.
But conversely to this, I've never been part of an organization that operates in a truly non-hierarchical way. Not in the business world, across 14 companies including one where I was one of two people at the company. Not in my work in medicine, despite regularly practicing inter-agency cooperation and working with other groups on scene. Not in my volunteer work, where our organization has leadership roles (to handle accounting and insurance) and mentoring roles and QA roles, where things are more distributed than anywhere else I've been but we still adopt that hierarchy that's baked into EMS (and we have a lot of vets who crave chain of command). We follow NIMS, developed by FEMA for managing disasters, which is extremely rigidly hierarchical. And it does seem like there's value in having one person make a decision sometimes.
Reading https://twit.social/@MisuseCase/112039600052899311 highlights some of the concerns I hadn't articulated before. As an autistic, I am hard wired to not give people respect just because of their position in a hierarchy. That inherently doesn't make sense to me. When I'm applying to a new job, one of my interview tasks is to understand why I should respect the person who's interviewing me, who presumably would be in a higher position of authority than I would if I took the job. If I don't understand why that power imbalance should exist, I find it nearly impossible to respect it. And I have doubts about the veracity of any claim an organization makes that it's hierarchy-free or truly anarchic. Maybe it's because I've never experienced such a group that I can't imagine how it could be true. Maybe it's because when I join a group that I think is structured that way, I feel the need to contribute, and that gets rewarded with responsibility and authority I didn't ask for. Maybe it's internalized capitalism.
I know there are a lot of organizations that aim for consensus, like the Quaker business method, that try to provide equal voice in decisions while still having some amount of leadership. I'm not sure where they fit into this idea I'm trying to describe. I'm hoping that someone can read through the mess above and distill something useful to help me reframe it all in a context that is more cohesive.
Interpreting research results
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2938757/ talks about aOR (adjusted odds ratios). aOR = ad / bc, where:
- a = Number of exposed cases
- b = Number of exposed non-cases
- c = Number of unexposed cases
- d = Number of unexposed non-cases
aOR is used to predict outcomes, "Thus, the odds of persistent suicidal behavior is 1.63 higher given baseline depression diagnosis compared to no baseline depression."
TODO: what is a confidence interval, null hypothesis. Different types of metastudies? p values. Four basic statistical tests and when to use them. number needed to treat (NNT)
LaTeX
Is it worth it? Do I care? Can I convert to epub easily somehow? What's the point of writing things in latex if I just want epub output and not to print things?
Writing openings
Sell them on the article with the first sentence. Not necessarily your thesis, but start with something that indicates to the user it's going to be relevant to them so that they'll make it far enough to read your thesis. "Openings need tension – paradoxes, unanswered questions, and unresolved action. Good openings propose problems, pose questions, drop you into an unfinished story, or point at fundamental tensions within a topic." https://maggieappleton.com/openings Identify a change that has occurred to the status quo or a problem that exists, explain its consequences to an interested audience, and then identify/discuss/spitball solutions. If the problem isn't compelling enough, ask "so what?" a few times.
Writing sophistication level, use of jargon, latin/greek
Gotta be careful about this. If you have to use latin terms for something because it's medicine formal writing, maybe okay. But even experts can appreciate plain-spoken writing, especially about complicated topics. If there's a way to express something more simply, so that it can be understood by both experts and laypeople without sacrificing concision, that's probably a good idea.
Literature reviews
Reflect on my own experience having just done one.
Atheopaganism
Wheel of the year, non-time-based celebrations. Wake for my marriage for instance. Yule and my notes on the wheel of the year.
Thoughts on preparedness as a byproduct of activism
If the world were ending tomorrow I would plant a tree today
I want to learn about de-escalation and meeting facilitation
Using nonviolent communication as a active listening technique
It's the climate collapses going to wreck all of our existing social and economic systems in the next 5 years, is grad school really the best thing for me to spend my time on?
We saw with the Black Panthers breakfast program that the government doesn't like competition for things that it ought to be responsive so perhaps one avenue of change would be to produce something in an decentralized fashion and have the government co-opted.
Margaret was at a protest and saw the police retreat, and even though she did not achieve the speech at goals of the action, that feeling of agency helped continue to motivate her to make activist choices.
Book called no spiritual surrender
If I were running a food bank, and kit became someone who regularly came there how would I handle that? I need to be able to take care of people I don't like, but she is actively dangerous to me.
If Margaret was a general, the military apparatus would still be fundamentally broken and incapable of doing good things.
It doesn't matter what people you put inside the machine. Machine is designed into a press. So why do I keep thinking that I can convince the government to solve problems for me?
The work we do is not intended to be a solution, certainly not a final one. We may never know if the resistive actions we take will have their intended consequence because of the long-term that power struggles can play out over. The goal is not to feel good, take a single action and post it on instagram. Recognizing the enormity of the problem and sitting in it can lead to better perspectives and better solutions. Trying to find a way to feel good and immediately solve problems is escapism that prevents us from seeing the problem as it truly is.
We go back party for your students will be different than the go-bag party for your block, or your coworkers. Educational opportunities for first aid and preparedness skills, and handsome have a direct impact. Opportunities to self organize at these events. Giving people a Hands-On job makes them more invested and satisfied in the outcome. People want to be involved rather than just sitting and watching watching
Disaster fatigue; what is it, and what do we do about it
When the problem is too big, people shut down and reject it. We can't think about it. Strong parallels to PTSD trauma.
Look up better ways to take notes on mobile for my reading / writing inbox
Sentient vs sapient
Throwing food at a painting is not the kind of activism that invites more people to participate.
What are horizontal tactics?
Look up generator shares
How can I implement harm reduction so that people could shelter in my house during a power outage assuming I still had a generator to run my heat?
Listen to the introduction of the book breaking together
Discussion of the near-term significant impacts of climate change in speculative fiction is problematic in the publishing model because publishers want stories to have a shelf life of more than 2 years.
The title is climate disaster is here in the state will never save us
Look at strangers in a tangled wilderness and the spectacle as other potential podcast subscriptions
Single person library notes
Strategic Planning for a Single-Person Medical Library
We assert libraries provide value, but when people think everything can be found on the Internet, how do we show evidence of value? This is especially important for small libraries. The library needs to be positioned as an essential service for the operation of the organization rather than an add on. Strategic planning can help achieve that. Instead of starting at current and identifying ways to progress from here, identify the integral end state desired and do strategic planning to get there. Start from goal and work backwards. The plan must center the values of the served organization, not necessarily the values of the library. Values are a better target than objectives which can change too frequently. With org values identified, draft library goals to move library in parallel with org, relate them to the values so it's clear why they're important. Document progress towards goals. Circulation statistics, special projects, classes offered, etc. show alignment with values, document relevancy of efforts, justification for continued investment. Those documents are submitted to admin, goals and metrics etc are reevaluated periodically, objectives on a three year timeline.
Honestly this is just generic strategic planning that would be true of any organization. I'd like to read something more specific to single-person librarianship, like Managing the One-Person Library by Larry Cooperman.
Garden notes
A typical educated person will think of something interesting to write about around once a week. https://gwern.net/about#confidence-tags (link this in digital garden page?)
Heirloom Traditions pilot notes
Listening to podcast pilot episode of heirloom traditions Guest is talking a lot about his community engagement efforts. He has access to land that he's using to produce food for his family and community. Accidental connection with a librarian when he went in to do an exchange with the seed library, had opportunity to partner with them to send fresh produce with the bookmobile to school bus stops so kids can take home food and books. Community garden with elementary schoolers learning how to start seeds and then some of them get planted in their section of the community garden.
He's advantaged with land he can grow on and structures that a lot of people don't have, and that's been an important aspect of what he's been able to do community-wise. Harder to engage with people at other scales, how do I grow sweet potatoes on a balcony. Giving people opportunities to learn about these skills is what he wants to do things on his community farm.
Different upbringing comes with different skill sets, growing up in the depression learning to cook. Growing up on a farm learning to seed start.
Community canning practice, bring your own food and learn how to can it safely.
Community means different things; the people who you could reach if snowed in, the people you could reasonably see same-day, the people would come from further away if you needed help, the people who will always be online friends. You can rely on these different levels of community for different things; the online group is going to be great for book recommendations but probably can't bring you water if your supply goes out.
Celebrate the small wins.
Read Defying Doomsday crip fic anthology
Grounded in Community article notes
https://lrhodes.net/writing/groundedness-networked-community
Flight from Twitter is often based on values. Identify your values so you can pick a better alternative. Author examples: data privacy, small tech/environmental impact, community and trust, information source transparency, open Web interoperability, accountability. When evaluating alternatives, don't just look for a Twitter clone. And don't blindly assume mastodon is going to give you these things either. Activity pub means you can talk to non mastodon but also means some mastodon servers are not reachable. Is this good? It sure confuses a lot of people who sign up.
You can't sign up for mastodon and that should just be a feature of what instance you join. Talk people into joining an instance instead?
Twitter (the company) could, in principle, license Twitter (the software) so that independent operators could run it on their own servers in parallel with Twitter (the domain).
Separate the provider from the software. That's essential for decentralized. But is that enough? Running the code on your own box is one thing, decentralized authority in operation is another, and same for authority over the codebase
Lack of feature parity. Features on Facebook have to be good for users enough to use them and stay but good for Facebook in terms of data mining and profit. Mastodon doesn't have some "convenience" features because they're hard to implement over AP, or don't fit the values, or have no profit generation to offset their cost. Trying to create feature parity misses the point. There is an enormous possibility space to explore when a feature doesn't have to generate profit. Also recreating corporate features just makes it easier for corporations to coopt. Core thesis? Grounding is important aspect of community membership. Reddit accounts exist at the platform and connection to community is a subscription flag. Subscription is different from belonging. Subscription depends on the platform to continue allowing access to communities, and managing the connections between them. And platforms often fuck that up for profit reasons.
Eg siloing people in echo chambers to increase division By grounding your account in an instance, you are asserting membership there. When you share your handle with people or your post gets federated to another instance, it has your user name at your instance. Mastodon/fediverse no longer controls that membership, nor do they get to decide which other communities you federate with. This is not sufficient for real community building, but the author asserts it is a necessary condition for real community building. It also reframes account migration to be more analogies to real world communities. You can leave a community by migrating your account. Does bluesky really harvest all data for profit from all instances? Black box algorithm feeds?
The "just a node in the network" idea that masto instance exist to access the whole fediverse and any moderation or defederation will necessarily undermine that goal. But an instance membership allows for instance only timelines for internal discussions about community topics and subverts the just nodes idea nicely when effort is made to curate local community. In group and out group can be defined and both be valuable. Instance based community helps with local authority structures, sharing server costs, facilitating irl local efforts without outside influence. The decision to federate becomes one based on community values instead of access to the entire fediverse Limiting audience and increasing discoverability within the community is also beneficial. No more shouting into the void in hopes someone sees your tweet. No more missing interesting posts from interesting people because you didn't know to subscribe to them.
I can think of a number of servers where the local rules and policies articulate a reasonably clear ethos, but maybe the message that “we are not a neutral conduit to the network” is left a little too implicit. Servers should have a strong idea of what relation they hope to build to the rest of the fediverse, express it clearly to their members, and moderate accordingly. They should spell out to prospective members what criteria that use for applying moderator actions to other servers, and make it clear how those policies condition their access to other parts of the network
Being grounded in an instance community means people have more stake in moderation and administration, care more, more likely to be upset. Which means we have to be better listeners, better at deescalating, better bridge builders. Giant centralized nodes will be ripe for corporate acquisition. Single points of failure. By creating instances for small groups and communities, we diversify the network and make it harder to coopt.
Add additional thoughts about multifaceted identities, the conflict with instance-based community identity grounding, and possible tech alternatives. Communities need to define their borders, manage their members, define policies around member behavior and federation and so on. Individuals need to be recognized as belonging to multiple communities, which they can join or leave at will (within the limits defined by the community for joining). Users need to be able to define the scope of their audiences, whether that's instance-only or public or to specific individuals or to "circles" or to a set of communities that they belong to.
What about other forms of pro-social media, like polis?
Collaborative reading
Have multiple people on a discord call? reading the same document at the same time but not talking, just annotating with something like hypothes.is. The annotations can become threaded discussions, and after annotation is roughly complete the call can commence full discussion.
Good option for an online study group, pick texts relevant to the group's interest, all read through and annotate and discuss. Write collaborative notes in a wiki explaining the consensus built around the work that was consumed.
https://maggieappleton.com/silentsessions https://maggieappleton.com/knowledge-hydrant https://www.industriallogic.com/papers/khdraft.pdf
DNP (Daily Notes Pages)
Is that what my writing inbox is supposed to be? Do I have a process for what to do with all of these ideas?
Don't shit where you need to critically think, as the old saying goes.
Pages that link here:
- ↤ root