I've been preoccupied with reading (as per usual) and focused still on the job hunt. I've also returned some time to playing video games! I also have some changing opinions on the current United States presidential race after reading some links and reflecting on my goals as well as that of the collective.

Reading

Prison By Any Other Name

This book was written by two abolitionists, one notably the EIC of Truthout. I'm finding this read to be more guiding and tangible for me than Prisons Make Us Safer. This is because it moves a bit from the introduction of aspects around the need for abolition and focuses on how existing companies, politicians and other institutions have a vested stake in maintaining these systems. It's also highlighting the lives of people who are forced to electronic monitoring (or EM) and the aggressive restricting that end up encouraging recidivism (the chances of re-entering jail or prison). It's hard not to see and get curious about the relationships of these companies mentioned to the industry I'm wading through.

Prisons Make Us Safer

I finished this book last week. It was written a year after Prisons By Any Other Name, both by the same author. I commend their ability to knock these stories out; they're not light and do a very difficult job of making plain institutional and commercial violence very plain. I want to write about this book because Law's done a great job of setting up common refrains for keeping prison infrastructure intact, like how it helps to keep children safe (it doesn't), how most people use abuse as an excuse to avoid jail (they don't), how prison is only an issue for men (it's really not), or how it's the most reliable way to keep us safe from rapists and murders (it's not). Each of these chapters bring you to talk about a point as to how these points go so popular and walks you through the lives of people impacted by these myths. It all returns to highlight one underlying aspect of society: that we are way more comfortable breaking up community than to work on healing or developing it.

You Exist Too Much

This book is one I'm returning to^[1]. Arafat brings us into the mind of a young adult struggling with a particular addiction and identity crisis of both romantic identity and that of being a Palestinian-American. There's moments where I learn quite a bit about what it means to hold this kind of dual identity from someone of a different (and more recently publicized) background. There's also the growth (or steps towards — I'm not done yet!) of the main character aiming to grow a sense of self outside of what ails them — understanding what does it really mean to be loved. Excited to see how this book ends but she needs to tighten up!

No More Heroes

I opened this book on a whim because something about deconstructing the role of saviorship in mainstream media came to mind and this book had the word mentioned in it when I was searching my to-be-read list. The foreword by Roxanne Ortiz blew me away:

The author correctly begins this book with the Christian Crusades in 1096, and jumping across the Atlantic in 1492, as the foundation for the founding of a Republic (the United States) to “rescue” the Native. The very origin story of the United States forms the core of the savior project. In November 1620, English religious dissidents (“Pilgrims”) landed on the shore of what is now Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Forty-one of the “Pilgrims,” all men, wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact, named after the ship they arrived on. Invoking God’s name and declaring themselves loyal subjects of the king, the signatories announced that they had journeyed to North America “to plant the First Colony” and did therefore “Covenant and Combine ourselves together in a Civil Body Politic” to be governed by “just and equal Laws” enacted “for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.” A decade later, when additional English settlers founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, they adopted an official seal designed in England prior to their journey. The central image depicts a near-naked native holding a harmless, flimsy-looking bow and arrow and inscribed with the plea, “Come over and help us.” Nearly three hundred years later, the official seal of the U.S. military veterans of the “Spanish-American War” (the invasion and occupation of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines) showed a dark, naked woman kneeling before an armed U.S. soldier and a sailor, with a U.S. battleship in the background. One may trace this recurrent altruistic theme into the early twenty-first century, when the United States still invades countries under the guise of rescue.

I'm definitely going to keep reading this after Black August.

Eventually, this will be a bit more dynamic of a space; something that has links that I find worth writing about on my site and linking those notes here. It's a bit annoying to pull it out of Obsidian from here. Yet another thing to work on!

• Inquest: Ferguson At Ten: This one was a hard read. Inquest did a great job of finding folks to help recap these moments. I think what's forgotten is the kind of administration we lived under, how much vitrol folks saw from the bipartianship committees and how almost nothing has changed to prevent these events from happening again.
• Salon: Noah Lyles' collapse underscores our collective COVID denial: I'm upset for Lyles and the fact that we, as a society, have invested more resources in pretending that COVID hasn't happened at all. We have learned very little socially from the impacts of past pandemics and are more focused on the performance of a functional society as opposed to working to keep the health of it up. The fact that in four years, 1.2 million Americans have died from it shows this indifference quite loudly — and that's what been reported as deaths from COVID. We don't need to rely on the state to take care of us, however. It's a lot easier when our tax dollars can go to care and not committing genocide.
• Comradery: Project Pages Update: Their first update in over a year(!), the cooperatively owned patronage platform is getting close to a beta release! I'm always eager to see folks explore this space.
• Truthout: Last Week, 9 in 10 Americans Had No Opinion of Walz. That's About to Change: 1 out of 10 is still around 30 million people in the United States. That aside, Truthout provided a pretty balanced report on Walz and a set of stances as to why folks should be interested in throwing their support behind him. Despite my stances on artificial harm reduction; I think that having folks we can push is important. Labor seems to agree, although some unions are being more pointed about the hypocrisy held by the state.
• Clear Thinking: Can astrologers use astrological charts to understand people's character and lives? Our new study put astrologers to the test: Astrology is something I have ... no real opinion on, to be honest. I try to understand it and have been combing over a book that Ra'il has suggested. I have friends who are practitioners and frankly, I have a bit more confidence in this, mainly because it requires to actually understand the person in question. However, this study does not help astrology as a concept (and flattens it - there's many different kinds of it) and shows some of the weakness of using empirical (secular) systems to define things that escape its measurements.
• Ra'il: Black August 2024: Speaking of Ra'il, here's their plan on observing Black August! They have a different approach than I, which I appreicate because it shows the need to break from any sort of uniformity on how this goes down. The tenants are clear; the people diverse and so the practices have to reflect that. If you haven't yet, I recommend subscribing to their Patreon to support their work and their newsletter.
• Prism Reports: Kamala Harris and the Erasure of Palestine: Something progressives and Democrats will repeat is the need for a "two-state solution", like the ones deployed in the United States and Indigineious nations that they've occupied. Harris is no different. Her background with Zionism is something I'm not too surprised about, in order to be a politican, you have to toe the line — no breaking from the talking points. One of those, for both Democrats and Republicans, is to see the complete eradication of Palestine from the map by way of the $800 billion+ US-sponsored genocide. The idea of "assimilation" is one that hits personally as the need for any non-Western European Anglo-presenting people to have everyone else adopt their identities, cultures, languages and lifestyles is something that still plagues us today. Now in the places where I live, I wouldn't be shocked if Harris does nothing to stop the increasing censure of free speech.
• Prison Journalism Project: On Burger Day in Prison, I Went Back for Seconds: This hit hard. As part of Black August, I'm fasting, a practice meant to demonstrate solidarity with prisoners due to the inhumane approach to care that they receive. But to hear that a burger, something I can order on my phone if I'm lazy or make myself if I go outside to get ingredients, is made into something of a "reward". To learn that the act of bartering is illegal in Florida prisons, a practice that economists love to tout as the crux of the evolution of their field also frustates me but doesn't surprise me. Prisons are designed to dehumanize. The author, who's incarcerated in Everglades Correctional Instution out here in Florida, writes a lot about food.

Writing

I wrote about feeling a bit drained about how politics online seems to devolve into mainly a praise of whoever s doing the least harm. Without objectivity, the nozzle of how much acceptable harm society seems to accept is growing. I also wrote about a want to reduce my primary use of the Fediverse. I used to post from my site and syndicate (using https://brid.gy) to other platforms. I think I'll work on bringing that back. I have a particular ambition in how I want to see that play out but it'll take time to design and actualize.

I wrote something about Livtet as well, with an interesting announcement at the end!

Coding

I did a lot of work around Livtet. Here's a short video of what it looks like:

I'm expanding the documentation and adding more things that can be worked on to hopefully encourage contributions. This project is really a passion one for me and if all goes to plan, it's something I think I can help build some sort of a community around.

Tangentially, I had a technical screen last week! I think it went well. I'm hoping for even better news by the end of the month.

Seeing

I took a shot inside a network switch I have strapped underneath my desk to give my laptop and home lab PC faster speeds as opposed to using WiFi. I used the wrong power cable for it and this explains why my laptop couldn't connect over Ethernet for some time. I'm confident that this is, as the kids would say, cooked, and there's no chance of me fixing this on my own without having some soldering equipment. Not the end of the world but I did like pulling better speeds.