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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
kellyannecontent
berniesrevolution

When people think of hotbeds of political creativity and cutting-edge progressive policy ideas, Mississippi is not often the place that comes to mind. But last week, 16 women in public housing in Jackson, Mississippi, each received a check for $1,000—the first of 12 monthly payments they’ll receive through a guaranteed-income pilot project called the Magnolia Mothers Trust. The project is a direct refutation of America’s punitive approach to welfare policy and the racialized narratives that created and sustain it.

Jackson is also home to Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, who, following his election in June 2017, famously promised to take on oppression in ways that will make Jackson “the most radical city on the planet.” In a city that is more than 80 percent African-American, with a poverty rate near 30 percent as well as a shrunken tax base and limited state support, Lumumba has his work cut out for him.

Last week I was in the city to meet the participants in the pilot project, and to speak with the mayor. We discussed his views on guaranteed income, poverty, race, and his assessment of his job a year and a half into his first term. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.


Greg Kaufmann: 

In discussing the new guaranteed income pilot in Jackson, you recently told Essencemagazine that “poverty is the worst form of violence” and “we cannot afford to recycle the same economies of humiliation.” Can you talk a little bit about these two ideas?

Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba: 

Poverty being the worst form of violence is ultimately the place that Martin Luther King Jr. came to when he saw that a lot of his efforts towards addressing social issues were limited in that we weren’t talking about how people share goods, resources, and power. If you can’t really get to that place, then ultimately [solutions are going to come up short]. On issues of race, for example, it’s more than a question of color—it’s a question of ideas. What are the worst ideas and what are the best ideas? And one of the worst ideas is that you can be exploitative of anyone. The result is that we have mothers, for example, who can’t accommodate their and their children’s basic needs, and this leads to these cycles of humiliation where you see poverty, you see blighted communities, you see a high crime rate, poor-performing education—you see all of these things that stack one on top of another and lead to depressed communities.

Greg Kaufmann: 

In contrast to economies of humiliation, you’ve talked about building a “dignity economy.” What is a dignity economy?

Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba: 

A “dignity economy” is an economy that focuses on the inherent dignity of everyone. This discussion about guaranteed income is not new to me, and I was delighted to see that Springboard to Opportunities was bringing it to [Jackson]. It is something that has been explored in other countries, and there has been some demonstrated success, and where we see glaring inequity in our society we would be foolish not to find every possible mechanism to address it. But this is just one mechanism, and I am not ignorant of the limitations that exist there. Ultimately, we want people to be able to live the self-determined lives that they want and need. How do we become more self-determined, more self-sufficient? How can we control our education, control the infrastructure problems in our community, support our parents and our mothers and children in every possible way?

(Continue Reading)

Source: berniesrevolution

A scarf knitted by a German woman to document her frustrations with frequent train delays has sold for €7,550 (£6,720) on eBay, as the country’s biggest railway company announces plans for a punctuality tsar.

The “rail delay scarf” came to prominence when Sara Weber, a journalist, posted a photo of it on Twitter earlier this month. Her mother, a commuter in the Munich area, knitted two lines a day in 2018 to represent how long she was delayed for, she explained.

The scarf is colour-coded: grey wool meant her delay had been less than five minutes, pink signified delays of between five and 30 minutes, while red meant she was delayed for more than 30 minutes or had been delayed both ways.

“In the spring, everything was OK. Lots of grey and pink,” Weber wrote. “Then for a while it was all red: rail replacement traffic throughout the summer.”

The scarf, approximately 1.5 metres (4.9ft) long, represented many Germans’ frustrations with train delays, despite their country’s reputation abroad for efficiency and punctuality.

Source: theguardian.com transportation public transport
npr
kenyatta

The administration has maintained that the citizenship question was added because the Justice Department wants to use the responses to better enforce Voting Rights Act provisions that protect racial and language minorities from being discriminated against.

The lawsuits’ plaintiffs, however, have argued that the administration has been misleading the public. Ross, the plaintiffs insist, misused his authority over the census and, by adding the citizenship question, discriminated against immigrant communities of color. Research by the Census Bureau suggests asking about citizenship status in the current political climate will scare households with noncitizens from participating in the head count. That, in turn, could jeopardize the constitutionally mandated head count of every person living in the U.S.

Context via Vox

[The census] is crucial because it serves as the basis for the apportionment of all 435 seats in the House of Representatives. That means that the number of seats a state has in the House, and, by extension, the Electoral College, is determined by its share of the population as counted by the census.

For example, between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, Florida gained nearly 3 million residents. This gave the state two more seats in the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, New York’s population stayed steady, falling behind many other states that grew, so it lost two seats.

In addition, the census data is used to figure out how the federal government will distribute funding for programs ranging from highway construction to food stamps to Pell Grants.

And this process counts citizens and noncitizens.

Source: NPR 2020 census
guygirder
captainsnoop

i feel like counter-trolling is an essential skill that kids online aren’t learning and it’s kinda worrying

like back in my day, the day of online forums, learning how to trick someone in to getting themselves banned was an essential skill. if you could tell someone was a chud, you would ask them short, leading questions and watch them get frustrated and post longer and longer rants until they said something that would catch a mod’s attention and get them banned and/or at least publicly humiliated. 

and guess what? that’s the exact same tactics the alt-right use now. these people are exclusively acting in bad faith. every interaction these people post online is done with the intention of getting someone to respond to them so they can screenshot the massive paragraphs of text and laugh

so, what’s the solution?

dare ‘em to post dick pics.

don’t acknowledge the content of the stuff they post. if you see someone trying to engage you in bad faith just dare them to post pictures of their penis until they either get frustrated and leave or get frustrated and do it. either way they lose. 

this is the tactic used by the fans of a podcast (that i haven’t listened to) called the Chapo Trap House, and 4chan’s /pol/ users fucking HATE them. they hate Chapo Trap House and think they’re crazy because Chapo Trap House fans refuse to engage in meaningful debate and repeatedly demand dick pics. they get frustrated and leave. it works. 

mr-elementle

Some of you never used your position as a mod on an a series of unfortunate events forum to get a racist troll to post evidence of their tax fraud and it shows

actualaster

…that second comment is oddly specific and I’m a little scared

Source: captainsnoop

As farms have found themselves scrutinized for their practices, there’s been a legislative desire to cover questionable actions under the protective garb of opacity. Ag lobbyists have successfully pushed for laws criminalizing the exposure of facts. As a bonus, they’ve also secured legislation labeling animal rights activists and others concerned about farm animal well-being as “terrorists.”

The victories have been short-lived. Anyone not completely consumed by self-interest would recognize the laws violate the First Amendment by preventing fact-gathering or dissemination of observations by those who’ve bluffed their way onto farms precisely to uncover abusive practices. Courts are overturning these laws, but that’s not stopping anyone from writing new ones just as unconstitutionally sound. Fortunately, a recent federal court decision [PDF] adds to the ammo opponents of these laws can use to bring them down. (via Courthouse News Service)

Iowa’s “ag gag” law was a direct response to criticism of farm practices – criticism driven by undercover investigations by journalists and activists posing as farm employees. State legislators had a host of bad reasons for the law – all of them dancing around the actual reason: to prevent criticism of farm practices.

[…]

The court says that even if it buys the government’s arguments for the enactment of the law, it’s stated reasons (which ignore the desired side effect of preventing the public from learning about the industry producing its food) aren’t enough to justify this intrusion on First Amendment rights.

Source: techdirt.com whistleblowing farming

Chinese microblogging service Weibo aims to discourage fake comments and reposts on its platform by limiting its count of the total number of interactions such as shares to 1 million.

The platform will show a maximum figure of “1 million+” when reposts and comments exceed that amount, the company wrote in a report. The social media platform said the effort aims to “build a virtuous ecosystem for content and connections,” and applies to all accounts except those owned by government bodies and media outlets. The system will come online at the end of January.

The move takes aim at the country’s “water army,” shuijun in Chinese, referring to paid posters who flood social media platforms with reposts, biased comments, rumors, and gossip. It also targets click farms, which feature thousands of smartphones that inflate interaction metrics.

Source: technode.com weibo social media influence

Kids aren’t losing themselves in their devices, but potentially finding themselves. What’s more, they’re doing exactly what generations of kids have long done: Immersing themselves in the toys and objects of the moment that reflect the society they inhabit, and which will help prepare them for the future.

Source: qz.com

“Even though bots are abstract entities, we might think of them as having free speech rights to the extent that they are promoting or promulgating useful information for the rest of us,” Sacharoff says. “That’s one theory of why a bot would have a First Amendment free speech right, almost independent of its creators.” Alternatively, the bots could just be viewed as direct extensions of their human creators. In either case – whether because of an independent right to free speech or because of a human creator’s right – Sacharoff says, “you can get to one or another nature of bots having some kind of free speech right.”

[…]

Sacharoff believes that the issue of bots and their potential First Amendment rights may one day have its day in court. Campaigns, he says, will find that bots are helpful and that their “usefulness derives from the fact that they don’t have to disclose that they’re bots. If some account is retweeting something, if they have to say, ‘I’m a bot’ every time, then it’s less effective. So sure I can see some campaign seeking a declaratory judgment that the law is invalid,” he says. “Ditto, I guess, [for] selling stuff on the commercial side.”

In First Amendment cases, a court would consider whether there is a compelling reason to limit the scope of a person’s speech. In the case of electioneering social-media bots, the sanctity of elections would probably suffice, Sacharoff says. But then a court would weigh whether the anti-bot law is too broad or even effective. “If you can accomplish the same goal some other way, or if this law doesn’t accomplish the goal, then the court will say, ‘We’re going to strike it down. Sure this is a good, worthy goal, but this law just doesn’t advance it.’” Sacharoff says. “So it will be very fact specific.”

Source: thebulletin.org twitter bots social media propaganda public good
humansofnewyork
humansofnewyork:
““I was only sixteen when I got pregnant. I was so disappointed in myself. I thought I’d end up like one of those pregnant teens on Maury. I did finish high school, I will say that. But afterwards I had no good options. My family...
humansofnewyork

“I was only sixteen when I got pregnant.  I was so disappointed in myself.  I thought I’d end up like one of those pregnant teens on Maury.  I did finish high school, I will say that.  But afterwards I had no good options.  My family didn’t have money.  My son’s father wasn’t around.  It was on me to do something.  So I joined the Navy.  I was basically gone for the next six years.  I had to leave my son with my parents.  It was an extremely hard decision.  But anything I did was going to look bad, if I had stayed behind, I would have just been a bum ass ‘project girl’ with a kid.  I had to provide.  And I was still a kid myself, so I needed experience.  When I came home for good, my son was seven years old.  He lives with me now.  We’re working on it.  I’d love for him to be a ‘mama’s boy,’ but in a lot of ways he’s still closer to my parents.  He gives them random hugs and kisses.  I have to ask for mine.  So we’ve still got a ways to go.  But I used the GI Bill to get a bachelor’s degree.  And I’ve got a job where I make real money.  I’m proud of myself.  I work in a place that I never could have imagined when I was sixteen.  I have ‘work friends.’  I spend my day with people who are motivated to be better, not just in work, but as people.  I’m doing well.  And considering how I started, that’s an amazing thing.”