[Plura-list] Public domain songbook; Santa Cruz bans predictive policing; Snowden on tech's Oppenheimers; How Hump! went online

[Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

* Public domain songbook: 348 popular songs with modern and traditional
harmonization for both study and performance.

* Santa Cruz bans predictive policing: Predpol's home town!

* Snowden on tech's Oppenheimers: Better to heed reservations than be
haunted by regrets.

* How Hump! went online: Dan Savage on adapting dirty movie throwbacks
to a pandemic world.

* This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019

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

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🧕🏿 Public domain songbook

In The Public Domain Song Anthology, leading jazz repertory experts
David Berger and Chuck Israel assemble "348 popular songs with modern
and traditional harmonization for both study and performance."

https://aperio.press/site/books/10.32881/book2/

"This anthology is the first of its kind and is free for students and
performers to use, adapt, remix, and share. The songs, many of which are
at risk of being forgotten, are free of copyright and are available in
multiple formats to promote greater usage and dissemination."

You can get the music as PDFs, Sibelius files, or in XML.

https://aperio.press/site/books/10.32881/book2/download/3111/

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🧕🏿 Santa Cruz bans predictive policing

Predictive Policing systems don't predict where crime will happen - they
predict where the police will look for crime (that is, it predicts
police, not criminals, and it gets to cheat because cops are required to
follow its predictions, making them self-fulfilling prophecy).

Santa Cruz is a superspreader of the predictive policing junk-science
epidemic, home to the HQ of Predpol, the secretive police profiteers who
have marketed their tools to small towns, big cities, even campuses.

https://boingboing.net/2018/10/30/el-monte-and-tacoma.html

That's why it's so significant that the City of Santa Cruz has banned
the use of predictive policing tools - whether Predpol's or its rivals:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-police-tech-trfn/california-city-bans-predictive-policing-in-u-s-first-idUSKBN23V2XC

"Understanding how predictive policing and facial recognition can be
disportionately biased against people of color, we officially banned the
use of these technologies in the city of Santa Cruz." -Mayor Justin
Cummings

It's a pretty bad look when your product - your whole product *category*
- is banned by the city in which your multinational firm is headquartered.

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🧕🏿 Snowden on tech's Oppenheimers

In Vice's "Surveillance Pandemic," Edward Snowden, Naomi Klein , Jacinta
González and Edward Ongweso Jr discuss the use of surveillance
technology to neutralize the Black Lives Matter uprising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLTXwUwRRlo

One of the more compelling moments in the discussion came when Snowden
talked about the complicity tech workers have in the use of their
creations to surveil human rights activists in order to perpetuate
systemic racism and violence.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxqx8q/snowden-tech-workers-are-complicit-in-how-their-companies-hurt-society

Snowden's uniquely suited to speak to this issue, given that he risked
his life and ended up in permanent exile when his conscience demanded
that he reveal the scope of NSA surveillance to a team of investigative
journalists.

Tech has been rocked by a yearslong series of mounting worker uprisings,
in which workers have demanded that their employers address the impunity
powerful men enjoy when they sexually assault and harass women in the firms.

Workers rose up against supplying machine learning tools for military
drones, providing surveillance and analytics to ICE, building
censored/spying search tools for China, supply facial recognition to law
enforcement, and providing a platform for Trump's threats and lies.

Other causes include environmental justice and sustainability,
solidarity with low-waged warehouse workers, tech's funding of racist,
sexist, homophobic and transphobic politicians, and so on.

These uprisings are significant because of the incredible labor shortage
in some tech disciplines, which gives tech workers rare leverage over
their employers. In some cases, if a specific tech worker refuses to
build something, it will not get built.

Snowden: "The reality is all work is political work. We’re all
confronted with choices about how our labor is used, how we direct that,
who we are really serving, who we’re working for and who benefits from
the labor of our lives."

Of course, tech has a long tradition of dire regrets that come too late.
The canonical example is Oppenheimer, who watched the first nuclear
explosion with dread, intoning, "I am become Death, the destroyer of
worlds."

Oppenheimer spent the rest of his career arguing against indiscriminate
nuclear weapons development, but his campaign would have been much more
effective if it had started BEFORE he led the charge to develop the A-bomb.

Snowden: "Engineers like to believe that they’re like scientists, what
they do is something that is pure, and they’re just trying to get the
rocket up. Where the rocket comes down is not their department."

(A Tom Lehrer reference!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V7me25aNtI

He went on to describe something akin to my idea of the "Shitty
Technology Adoption Curve" - the way bad technology ascends a privilege
gradient that may start with asylum seekers, prisoners or children, but
it ends up encompassing everyone.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/20/pluralist-a-daily-link-dose-20-feb-2020/#privilegegradient

"These technologies were forged in the war front but they have a way of
moving to the home front and they’re used against the disenfranchised,
they’re used against the people with the least, they’re used against
vulnerable minorities, and then they’re used against everyone. Even if
you feel like this doesn’t affect you personally, it does and it will in
time."

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🧕🏿 How Hump! went online

Hump! is Dan Savage's's "dirty little film festival" featuring short
pornographic movies made by amateurs. They run the range from hilarious
to sexy to weird to indescribable, and are universally delightful.

https://humpfilmfest.com/

Savage created the festival in a bid to preserve the dirty movie
experience of yore in which you could only see a porno in a room full of
strangers.

To reassure the filmmakers that they wouldn't be compromised by their
contributions, the films only play in movie theaters where mobile phone
use is totally banned. In 15 years, not one of the films leaked online.

But with the lockdown, Hump's tour was cut short, and Savage tried
something new: he wrote to his filmmakers to see if they'd consent to
having their videos streamed online. He got many takers, and the
festival moved online.

It was such a success that Savage contacted the audience's favorite
filmmakers from the entire run of the festival and created a new
anthology series: HUMP! Greatest Hits, Volume 1.

https://btt.boldtypetickets.com/events/107433970/hump-greatest-hits-volume-1

In an interview with Sam Machkovech for Ars Technica, Savage describes
the cultural shifts to which he attributes the willingness of filmmakers
to appear in an online festival:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/06/dan-savages-first-online-only-hump-yeah-its-porn-but-theres-more-to-it/

"In a world of sites like OnlyFans, and the creeping, dawning awareness
that all of us have dirty sex—and maybe even dirty video clips we share
with friends and lovers in circulation out there, as part of the
permanent record—the stigma is less if someone were to be outed."

We had a date-night outing to Hump in 2019 and it was fantastic.
Machkovech likens it to a midnight screening of Rocky Horror, which is
fair enough. But the part that was most striking is the part that Savage
himself emphasizes: exposure to stuff that is both deeply personal and
totally unlike the work you'd seek out on your own.

"At first, all they can see is what's not theirs. Not my preferred kind
of partner, not my gender, not my kinks. But in a moment, they go from
not seeing what's theirs to recognizing what's the same. Gender
differences, kinks—they're all a thin veneer laid upon everything we
have in common: desire, passion, vulnerability, a sense of humor, and a
desire for connection and intimacy. All of that is the same. After the
five-to-six film mark, you see that shift. No matter how off-the-wall
the next film is, everyone's cheering for each film. It becomes this
celebratory, affirming vibe. You're shielding your eyes at first, then
you're watching and cheering at the same content."

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🧕🏿 This day in history

#15yrsago Hilary Rosen: Killing Napster didn't bring market control
https://web.archive.org/web/20050910130701/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hilary-rosen/the-wisdom-of-the-court-_b_3259.html

#10yrsago Stiglitz: spending cuts won't cure recession
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/osbornes-first-budget-its-wrong-wrong-wrong-2011501.html

#5yrsago CNN mistakes a Pride Parade flag covered in dildos for the ISIS
flag https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cnn-mistakes-sex-toy-flag-805574

#1yrago Rage Inside the Machine: an insightful, brilliant critique of
AI's computer science, sociology, philosophy and economics
https://boingboing.net/2019/06/27/rage-inside-the-machine-an-in.html

#1yrago Internet users are wising up to persuasive "nudge" techniques
https://behavioralscientist.org/consumers-are-becoming-wise-to-your-nudge/

#1yrago Congress orders Ajit Pai: hands off San Francisco's broadband
competition law
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/06/house-votes-to-block-ajit-pais-plan-to-kill-san-francisco-broadband-law/

#1yrago A "Fake News Game" that "vaccinates" players against
disinformation https://www.getbadnews.com/#intro

#1yrago NYC Mesh, a neutral, nonprofit meshing ISP, dramatically expands
access in Brooklyn
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paj8z8/a-diy-internet-network-has-drastically-expanded-its-coverage-in-nyc

#1yrago Robert Reich backs Elizabeth Warren's plan to break up Big Tech
https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/robert-reich-why-we-need-to-break-up-big-tech/

#1yrago How Memphis's Methodist University Hospital, a "nonprofit," sued
the shit out of its Black, poor patients while raking in millions and
paying execs more than a million each
https://www.propublica.org/article/methodist-le-bonheur-healthcare-sues-poor-medical-debt#163801

#1yrago Hong Kong protesters repeatedly blockade police HQ, demanding
release of people arrested at #612strike demonstrations
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3016238/hong-kong-police-under-siege-again-protesters-surround

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🧕🏿 Colophon

Today's top sources: Fipi Lele, Naked Capitalism
(https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/).

Currently writing:

* My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and
reconciliation. Friday's progress: 559 words (32358 total).

* A short story, "Making Hay," for MIT Tech Review. Friday's progress:
304 words (3922 total)

Currently reading: Goliath, Matt Stoller.

Latest podcast: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 07)
https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/06/22/someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-part-07-2/

Upcoming appearances:

* 'What Big Tech does to discourse, and the forgotten tech tool that can
make tech less big', Jul 1, Oxford Internet Institute
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/6015930181073/WN_MnlH5x2XTRqiKKmhU0QPAg

* In Conversation with Hank Green, Jul 10,
https://www.magersandquinn.com/product_info?isbn_id=26578312&products;_id=163359157

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book
about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-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.

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

"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

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

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