Notices by Emmett O'Connell (emmettoconnell@mas.to)

Everyone blames being constantly online on the decline of teen mental health (though the evidence is spurious) and we take the phones away from kids. But we just watched a Facebook "friend of a friend" rumor post go from small town Ohio to upending the presidential campaign and no one it taking phones away from Xers and Boomer.

I feel this piece in my bones. We've ceded so much time and space to cars.

Cars Have Fucked Up This Country Bad
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/cars-have-fucked-up-this-country

If we have ceded so much of our lives to cars, this is the way out.

Rebuilding our car centric neighborhoods for living. Breaking down single family homes into multifamily, reclaiming lawns withs ADUs.

Breaking down multi lane stroads with bike and pedestrian infrastructure

Building housing on parking lots

Allowing commercial spaces in densifying single family neighborhoods

Is Infill Microhousing the Solution to High Homelessness Rates?
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/9/5/is-infill-microhousing-the-solution-to-high-homelessness-rates

I wrote a new blog post wrapping together some current policy proposals in the PNW using exile as a public safety tool and our regional history.

The idea of exile, that we can force certain people not to be here, is a common thread in the Pacific Northwest for a long time. Still, it doesn't do what we expect it to do and always signals we're missing the bigger problem.

https://olympiatime.com/2024/09/03/exile-ourselves/

#washingtonstate #pugetsound #olympiaWA #olympiawashington #olywa #seattle #tacoma

This assistant chief of the Seattle Fire Department manipulated events to package up narratives for conservative content creators. Which is pretty surprising on its own, but begs the question of how many conservative content creators use people like this?

https://publicola.com/2024/08/30/top-fire-official-helped-concoct-hoax-against-department-targeting-woke-policies-like-vaccine-mandate/

After testifying in support of a subminimum wage bill, Ali Ghambari, owner of Cherry Street Coffee House, temporarily closed one of his stores because five workers quit, five others walked out. 18 staff members—about three-quarters of the service team—have organized and issued a list of demands.

https://www.thestranger.com/news/2024/08/29/79669710/workers-shut-down-a-cherry-street-coffee-house-location-after-owner-advocates-for-subminimum-wage

"...lack of child care in the state costs families and employers billions of dollars annually. Employee turnover and absenteeism and lost family income associated with child care cost about $6.9 billion last year, or around $870 per resident."

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/nearly-40-of-wa-parents-quit-work-or-got-fired-after-having-kids-survey-finds/

It will turn out that AI deepfakes will matter less. What will matter more is that their very existence will allow people to discount probably true things.

"Scholars who study deepfakes have pointed out that the existence of the technology means people can try to claim authentic videos and photos are fake. Back in 2018, law professors Robert Chesney and Danielle Citron even coined a term for this phenomenon, calling it, “The Liar’s Dividend.”"

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/14/nx-s1-5072687/trump-harris-walz-election-rally-ai-fakes

Washington State can have a new flag too!

Read my white paper thing in a Washington State Flag Commission!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/193IpZzI3exawhjn2FNpPB5SFQRoQBS5bA8hb3D0pGuA/edit?usp=drivesdk

"But as it turns out, the parents most likely to apply for these vouchers are the ones who were already sending their kids to private school or homeschooling. They use the dollars to subsidize what they were already paying for."

School Vouchers Were Supposed to Save Taxpayer Money. Instead They Blew a Massive Hole in Arizona’s Budget.
https://www.propublica.org/article/arizona-school-vouchers-budget-meltdown

Open question for people who say "sportsball," why do you have to yuck someone's yum?

Just to show July 5 is not normal, air quality wise. https://secure.pscleanair.org/airgraphing

Happy Fifth of July Puget Sound Smoke Storm y'all

My favorite Olympia take this week is being conservative about restaurants that went out of business. The Reef couldn't make enough money, they closed down. Now someone reopens it, apparently after thinking about what kind of restaurant would work in that space and people are mad.

It isn't the same because things change. That's the nature of things.

If we're going to engage in the moral panic around phones and social media platforms for our kids, let's all admit that we're addicted too. And that being raised by social media addicted parents has its impacts.

And that our government institutions, schools and otherwise, are also addicted. We're convinced we can't get "the word out" without these platforms either.

Kids can see hypocrisy and we should just know this is going to be a fight.

We need to give cars less agency in traffic deaths.

Two articles involving traffic deaths in western Washington, two articles that give too much agency to the vehicles and not the people driving them.

It was the people that killed other people, not the cars.

1/

"In study after study in city after city around the world, researchers have found that merchants exaggerate the share of patrons who arrive by car and undercount those who walk, bike, or ride transit. Those misperceptions lead them to oppose transportation reforms that would limit the presence of cars and make urban neighborhoods cleaner, more pleasant, and less polluted — and would likely increase spending at their business, too."

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/354672/hochul-congestion-pricing-manhattan-diners-cars-transit

@dangillmor I was *just* poking around activitypub projects trying to figure out what collection could be put together to start a local alternative to FB and Reddit local subreddits.

So no actual advice but just acknowledging this is an important discussion

Unlike the JCPA, which fundamentally attacks the good of the internet and props up failing hedge fund owned media giants, taxing internet advertising goes right at the flaw in programmatic advertising and uses it to fund journalism.

https://www.freepress.net/blog/why-california-lawmakers-should-tax-ads-fund-local-journalism

@mattly @natebowling awesome! What I was thinking about doing was sorting the corporate owned homes by subdivision, then taking the acerage of the subdivision and the subset corporate owned and coming up with a list of neighborhoods with the highest % of corporate ownership. Which now that I think about it, I can probably do in a spreadsheet, but I'd like to think about other approaches