[Plura-list] Constitution Illustrated; My HOPE 2020 talk; Replace the police

Mon Jul 27 13:30:31 EDT 2020

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Reminder that I'm doing a keynote tonight at the Midsummernight Con at
1745h Pacific/2045h Eastern: https://absoluteappsec.com/cons/midsummer-2020/

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Today's links

* Constitution Illustrated: R Sikoryak's amazing chameleon take on the
US Constitution.

* My HOPE 2020 talk: Trying out my "grand unified theory."

* Replace the police: 10 steps to improve safety by reducing dependence
on police.

* NYPD disciplinary records: Propublica has the receipts..

* New podcast episode: Part 11 of "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves
Town."

* Finger-mounted crossbows: For your cuke-slaying needs.

* This day in history: 2010, 2015

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing
projects, current reading

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🛀🏿 Constitution Illustrated

Cartoonist R Sikoryak is not like any other: in addition to his own
style, he is an uncanny mimic, capable of conjuring up the styles of
hundreds of other creators with eerie versimilitude.

This is no mere party trick. Sikoryak has turned this gift into a novel
and distinctive form of narrative nonfiction. In TERMS AND CONDITIONS,
Sikoryak renders the entire text of the Itunes EULA as a graphic novel,
in the style of dozens of artists.

https://boingboing.net/2017/03/03/compliance-is-mandatory-resist.html

Ts&Cs;' conceit is that each page is rendered in the style of a
different, beloved creator, and populated by a stylized Steve Jobs
figure (again, in that creator's distinctive character-design style) who
hops from panel to panel, emitting speech bubbles.

Through these bubbles flow the text of the Itunes EULA, a sprawling
garbage-novella of cod-legalese that is somehow, alchemically,
transformed into a work of legitimate art - some of the worst prose in
history made into a superb graphic novel.

Sikoryak's back with another nonfiction graphic novel pastiche involving
a very different text: CONSTITUTION ILLUSTRATED gives the Ts&Cs;
treatment to the US Constitution, widely hailed for its soaring prose
and its cunning institution design.

https://drawnandquarterly.com/constitution-illustrated

And while Sikoryak once again cycles through dozens of creators' styles,
a page at a time, for each clause, amendment and annotation, this time
he matches the art to the text, using it to illustrate, illuminate,
juxtapose and critique the Constitution.

I was thrilled so see some of my absolute favorite artists represented
in this volume: Nicole "Sylvia" Hollander; Scott "Understanding Comics"
McCloud; Dana "Heavenly Nostrils" Simpson; Garry "Doonesbury" Trudeau;
Lynda "Ernie Pook" Barry; and so many others.

This is a golden age of nontraditional constitutional scholarship,
because it is a dark age of once-in-a-century constitutional crises.
Constitution Illustrated joins a canon that includes Ken White's Make No
Law:

https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/make-no-law/

Or Roman Mars's "What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law":

https://trumpconlaw.com/

And Radiolab's incredible More Perfect:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolabmoreperfect/season-one

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🛀🏿 My HOPE 2020 talk

Last weekend, I gave a remote keynote talk for 2600 Magazine's HOPE2020
conference. As I mentioned in the announcement, the talk was a
completely new one for me, representing a serious shift in my thinking
on tech and human freedom.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/24/software-is-cake-too/#icing

The HOPE folks put the talk online and I just watched it again and I
confess to being almost indecently pleased with how it worked out.

https://archive.org/details/hopeconf2020/20200725_1600_Keynote_Cory_Doctorow.mp4

The talk was a read-aloud of my next Locus Magazine column - the
longest, most in-depth column I've written in the decade-plus I've been
writing for them. The text will be online in ~6 weeks.

BTW, that's not a Zoom background: it's the bar we built in the backyard
during the plague. It's super cool.

https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=date-taken-desc&safe;_search=1&tags;=tikibar&user;_id=37996580417%40N01&view;_all=1

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🛀🏿 Replace the police

"Abolish the police" doesn't mean abandoning public safety: it's about
replacing armed police officers with public services that perform the
same safety roles. Writing in the The Appeal, Alex Vitale sets out 10
ways we can (and should) replace the police.

https://theappeal.org/10-ways-to-reduce-our-reliance-on-policing-and-make-our-communities-safer-for-everyone/

I. Mental health/social workers respond to crises

Don't send cops to deal with people having mental health crises. 25% of
lethal cop encounters are with people experiencing mental health crises.
Not to put to fine a point on it, but this is nuts.

https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/overlooked-in-the-undercounted2/

II. Violence interrupters to reduce gun violence

Violence is an epidemiological crisis. The overwhelming evidence is that
contact tracing and other public health intervention reduces gun
violence (cops do not).

https://johnjayrec.nyc/2017/10/02/cvinsobronxeastny/

III. Unarmed traffic patrols

Cops pull brown people over as a pretext for racist interrogations and
searches that often turn violent, even lethal. You don't need a gun to
tell someone to fix their tail-light or to get a wreck out of traffic.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/us/berkeley-ca-police-department-reform.html

IV. Civilian control of crime lab

Junk science = junk policing. Bad crime-labs are at the center of so
many wrongful convictions, and the evidence supports this. Forensics
should be a neutral fact-finding exercise, not cover-your-ass
science-washing.

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2010/oct/15/crime-labs-in-crisis-shoddy-forensics-used-to-secure-convictions/

V. Fund better and safer transit service

Starved and failing transit systems are not improved by diverting
hundreds of millions from service to policing. And (no surprise) the
majority of violent police encounters on transit target people of color.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-metro-transit-police-20170223-story.html

VI. School wellness centers

Your kid's school doesn't need armed cops, it needs specialists in
"mental health, restorative justice, de-escalation, and building
positive relationships with their students." They work. Cops don't.

https://www.minnpost.com/education/2020/06/no-police-in-schools-this-minnesota-district-committed-to-an-alternative-four-years-ago/

VII. Dispute resolution experts for neighborhood/domestic disputes

In some places *half* of policing is domestic/neighborhood. Back-fence
shouting matches don't need armed cops, they need crisis response units,
which are cheaper AND more effective.

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2020/06/theres-already-an-alternative-to-calling-the-police/

VIII. Support, not police, for people experiencing homelessness

Armed cops don't fix homelessness. Homes do. In PDX, half of arrests are
for homelessness! Send medics and social workers, and spend the rest of
the money on homes.

https://portlandstreetresponse.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Portland-Street-Response-%C2%A9-Street-Roots.pdf

IX. Integrated crisis centers

Don't send cops to drag people in mental crisis to ERs. Open "integrated
crisis centers" instead, trained to address addiction and mental health
issues.

https://riinternational.com/latest-posts/crisis-care-now-delaware-leads-with-recovery-response-center-grand-opening/

10. Trained civilians for property offenses

George Floyd was accused of passing a bad $20 bill. You don't need armed
cop for that - or to fill in a report for a stolen bike or a broken
window. These are administrative matters, not war-zones.

https://www.nola.com/news/crime_police/article_47cc16f9-0f96-576e-9972-7e9c4ba54d3f.html

The thing about these measures is that they're not just "alternatives to
policing" - they are *cheaper, more effective* alternatives. Policing
advocates say they care about public safety? Fine. Do this.

Vitale runs Brooklyn College's Policing and Social Justice Project. He's
got a whole book on this stuff, the pithily titled "The End of Policing."

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing

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🛀🏿 NYPD disciplinary records

You know that thing where some people say policing is systemically
rotten and others insist it's "just a few bad apples" (dude, "one bad
apple spoils the bunch!"). If only there was some way to empirically
resolve this dispute!

Turns out, there is. For decades, the discipline records of #NYPD
officers were a secret, thanks to state law 50-a. That was repealed
after the murder of George Floyd, in response to the Black Lives Matter
uprising.

Now, Propublica has organized these records in a searchable database:
"The database lists active-duty officers who’ve had at least one
allegation against them substantiated by the CCRB: That’s about 4000
officers out of the 36000-member force."

https://www.propublica.org/article/nypd-civilian-complaint-review-board-editors-note

Propublica's release comes as other entities with access to the data-
the NYCLU, the CCRB and the city - have been barred from publishing the
same data after a temporary restraining order following a suit by the
police union (they forgot to name Propublica in the suit!).

Propublica is not publishing the full database: they have confined
themselves to *substantiated* claims that were upheld by the CCRB, a
limited, anemic agency that doubtless misses countless instances of
wrongdoing (they investigated 3000 cases in 2018 and substantiated 73).

Even that subset is grotesque - and militates for forcing the NYPD to
fulfill its legal obligation (routinely flouted) to cooperated with CCRB
investigations: "I exonerated tons of cases that involved awful
conduct...It’s kind of haunting. -Former CCRB investigator Dan Bodah

Some stats:

* 303 officers have 5 or more substantiated allegations and are still on
the job

* 5000 substantiated instances of "physical abuse"

* 2000 "frisk"s

* 600 "gun pointed"s

(Image Teresa Shen, CC BY
)

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🛀🏿 New podcast episode

My latest podcast installment is up! It's the eleventh part of my
reading of my 2006 novel SOMEONE COMES TO TOWN, SOMEONE LEAVES TOWN, a
book Gene Wolfe called "a glorious book unlike any book you’ve ever read."

https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/07/27/someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-part-11/

This week's reading includes the infamous "thumb" scene, inspired by
David Nickle's 1996 story "The Unshackling of Thumbs."

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1222149

Also new this week: I THINK I've fixed the bug that prevented the
episodes from sorting correctly in Itunes (thanks Lee McGuire!)

Here's the previous installments in the reading:

https://craphound.com/podcast/?s=%22someone%20comes%22

Here's the direct MP3 link, hosted by the Internet Archive (they'll host
your stuff for free, forever, too!):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_352/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_352_-_Someone_Comes_to_Town_Someone_Leaves_Town_011.mp3

Here's the podcast feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

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🛀🏿 Finger-mounted crossbows

Craft Workbench is a mysterious, just-created Youtube channel with a
strong debut: an Assassin's Creed finger-mounted crossbow that fires
toothpicks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E-XgVBs_Jk

Come for the spectacle of a teeny weeny crossbow, stay for the comic
spectacle of cucumbers being slain by high-speed toothpicks!

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🛀🏿 This day in history

#10yrsago What "curated computing" can and can't deliver
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jul/27/curated-computing-environment-apps-choice

#5yrsago Satanic Temple required protesters to pledge their souls to
Satan as condition of entry
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2015/07/26/to-weed-out-protesters-at-last-nights-event-the-satanic-temple-had-attendees-transfer-their-souls-to-satan/

#5yrsago When it comes to censorship, WordPress has your back
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/so-far-wordpress-denied-43-of-dmca-takedown-requests-in-2015/

#1yrago Germany's powerful IG Metall trade union is organizing Youtubers
to force Google to play fair https://www.fairtube.info/en/

#1yrago Irish islamaphobe condemns Halal grocery as evidence of creeping
islamification, is subsequently forcefully reminded of the global
proliferation of Irish pubs
https://twitter.com/tom_usher_/status/1154774594118664193

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🛀🏿 Colophon

Today's top sources: Kottke (https://kottke.org/), Boing Boing
(https://boingboing.net/).

Currently writing:

* My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and
reconciliation. Friday's progress: 517 words (41820 total).

Currently reading: Anger Is a Gift by Mark Oshiro

Latest podcast: Full Employment:
https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/07/13/full-employment-2/
ent-2/">https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/07/13/full-employment-2/

Upcoming appearances:

* Keynote, A Midsummer Night's Con, Jul 27,
https://absoluteappsec.com/cons/midsummer-2020/

* Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars? Public Transit in the Age of
Google, Uber, and Elon Musk, Aug 4,
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/public-transit-in-the-age-of-google-uber-and-elon-musk-tickets-114353753154

* Virtual event with Christopher Brown for his novel "Failed State," Aug
12,
https://www.bookpeople.com/event/virtual-event-christopher-brown-failed-state

Latest book:

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

Upcoming books:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
That means you can use it any way you like, including commerically,
provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link
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basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla* -Joey "Accordion Guy"
DeVilla

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