Must Read: Copaganda by Alec Karakatsanis

The next post on AI is going to be about how it can embed false information in our collective consciousness. AI is not the only source of that problem.

In Copaganda: How the Police and Media Manipulate Our News by Alec Karakatsanis, one aspect of that issue is explored in illuminating ways.

There are many issues that can be worth exploring relating to modern policing and punishment. Karakatsanis touches on some of those, but the book has a focused mission, specific to reporting and how it shapes our conception.

I started following Karakatsanis about the time of the train thefts that are featured in the book, so there were things that were familiar.

There were also things that were unexpected; maybe you know that police have public relations people on staff, but could still be astonished by how many people and at what cost. That expense alone may be a reason why somehow every problem -- whether with crime or with police corruption and brutality -- somehow requires more money spent on police. 

After Derek Chauvin's murder of  George Floyd, "Defund the Police" became a slogan, though one that was not engaged with fairly.

Part of the reason for that is a general belief that even if there are problems with the police, there is no other way of dealing with crime. Much of that comes through the efforts of those PR specialists and their work with media.

In addition, (and going along with my obsession with dominator culture) I will say that the idea that the only thing we can do in response to perceived danger is to crack down and control is something that appeals to that mindset. 

Yes, the majority of the people who voted for this current administration embrace dominator culture pretty passionately already, but it is easy for even people who want something better to still not quite believe that it is possible.  

They take away imagination and hope. 

We have not arrived at that belief organically; we have been taught it with persistent reinforcement.

Those lessons are full of lies. 

Even when gross misrepresentations draw enough criticism to warrant a retraction, somehow the retraction isn't quite honest either.

That is demonstrated over and over again.

One of the most personal moments came when the book was covering two reporters who frequently misrepresent stories in favor of copaganda. It started to sound very familiar. I was going to look up one of them with a gut feeling that he might have been the one who kept arguing how badly Oregon's decriminalization of drugs had gone.

I didn't need to look it up; it was there on the next page. It was him and he did lie.

I know smart people who believed it.

(Also, while the New York Times being themselves came up a lot, the "best" was a citation of a WWII internee praising the experience.) 

A common tactic is stating things as fact without backup, like calling something popular unpopular.

For every oppressive idea there will be people loudly defending it, perhaps trying to compensate for how many people disagree.

It is not always easy to know that you are right or how many people are with you. That is a problem reinforced by the people in the best position to solve it.

I don't have a solution for that, but this book can help. It goes over one problem clearly, helps you know what to look for, and then provides resources.

It's a start. 

Garbage in...

There are things to say about the environmental impact of artificial intelligence and things to say about how it contributes to bad information, but first I want to point something out that relates to both.

First of all, while I do not personally use Grok, I do often see other people asking it for more information. One of the delightful things about that is that Grok often refutes right wing talking points.

There is one area where it is disappointing, in that when asked about environmental damage from AI -- and this is not just Grok, because it has to pull that information from somewhere -- the standard response is that while there is a toll, AI can help find solutions to combat climate change.

You can find projects where it says AI is helping, though there doesn't seem to be a big return on investment yet.

"Yet" is a key word.

So let's go to another recent exchange with a human, though not a great one.

https://www.space.com/astronomy/mars/eventually-all-life-on-earth-will-be-destroyed-by-the-sun-elon-musk-explains-his-drive-to-colonize-mars  

Elon Musk has explained his interest in settling Mars because eventually the sun is going to destroy all life on Earth.

Now, there were people mocking the quote out of context, thinking that he was talking about the sun eventually burning out, which will be a problem for life on Earth but would present the same problem for life on Mars.

What he was apparently referencing was the sun getting bigger until it is burning Earth. So this is something he projects for 450 million years away, as opposed to the estimated point 5 billion years away when the sun runs out of hydrogen and then expands, possibly only eating up Mercury, Venus, and Earth, but potentially also pulling in Mars. Which can potentially make it sound like he is talking about a real thing, but I don't think he has it right.

My point is that with that time scale, I don't think it matters. Given the damage that is being done and the rate at which it is being done, there will be too much destruction along the path to whatever hypothetical answers could be found.

We know enough to make things better now, and it will be done through people, not the pipe dreams of people who think they are smart because they were born rich and raised spoiled. 

So I leave you with Musk's AI company belching methane into an area that already leads in asthma hospitalizations without regulation, because it is "temporary":

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memphis-gas-turbines-air-pollution-permits-00317582 

Well, given the environmental damage in this case, perhaps I should not really leave before also mentioning the proposed ten-year moratorium on state regulation of AI:

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5314757-house-republicans-propose-ai-regulation-ban/ 

For art's sake

I want to go back and unpack the first irritated response:

I’m not stealing from artists. I’m having fun in a way that nobody’s losing a job. People using technology to eliminate jobs is a different story. Is photoshopping bad, too? You shouldn’t question my ‘goodness’, for simply using AI in a victimless manner.

AI "art" absolutely does steal from other artists, though not always obviously. 

The first AI comic I saw was using rendered images of Zendaya. A romance writer aggressively promoting her books on Facebook recently had a merman on the cover that was totally Jason Momoa. 

If you felt like the pictures of you in different decades or cowboy you didn't really look like you, that may just mean that there was not a close match in the images that were being harvested. 

Okay, photos of famous people get used; so what?

There's a ton of ethical issues in that question that I am not getting into today, focusing on the production itself. 

There is a good chance that these are not photos of the actual actors, but artwork that other people did of them. Those images are then harvested from somewhere like DeviantArt. 

Were they going to earn money for turning Jason Momoa into a merman? Maybe not, and maybe not enough to live on, but the artwork can be monetized. Some professional artists do use art sites as one point of sale, and then find their images stolen. That used to mainly happen with T-shirts, but there are many other options for stealing now.

As it is, there are repositories of images out there that can be used with the artists' (including photographers) permission, including https://creativecommons.org/.

Part of that inclusion is that it specifies what uses are permitted and under what conditions. Maybe you can use it without fee as long as your use is non-commercial but it requires attribution. Therefore, if someone else sees it and wants to use it commercially, they know whom to ask for permission. 

Something you are doing for fun might affect someone else's ability to be compensated for work. Should that matter for art, which we do for love?

There are some problems if we don't.

One overarching principle that I will keep coming back to is this big circle of devaluing people. 

Yes, you do have studio heads (who make lots of money) questioning the value of writers and artists and even actors because they no longer believe it's necessary. It is easy to draw the connection to job elimination there, as well as the decline in innovation and quality of the entertainment.

It may be harder to connect when whipping up an AI image for the cover of your romance series where lords of the sea find love and passion with human women who have had a hard time with land-dwelling men. However, it's not that no one provided work for the covers; it's that you are using that work without any recognition or caring for that contribution.

Now, I have seen some pretty cheesy romance novel covers done with Photoshop, but yes, from an ethical standpoint I would have to say that was better.

I have self-published novels. None of the covers are great, but I didn't steal. That's worth something to me.

Besides, there are artists out there who might help you for a small amount, thus helping both of you. That's something that can happen but is becoming progressively easier not to think about. 

When AI keeps stealing (they sometimes dismiss it as "theft from the commons" which opens up a whole new can of worms about how we got to the problems that we have today), there is someone making a profit. 

Maybe it's not you, but are you still abetting it?

The scuffle

Last July I saw a tweet from an improv comic I liked, encouraging his followers to use AI to make fake movie posters.

I thought I was being gentle -- maybe even a little flattering -- in my response:

AI generation used vast amounts of energy, contributing to climate change, and steals from actual artists. I think you are too good a person to encourage that. 

That was not appreciated.

I’m not stealing from artists. I’m having fun in a way that nobody’s losing a job. People using technology to eliminate jobs is a different story. Is photoshopping bad, too? You shouldn’t question my ‘goodness’, for simply using AI in a victimless manner.

Now, I was not able to find all of the exchange. I can see that his original post was deleted, and I could not find the one where he suggested that I unfollow him instead of ruining everyone's fun. 

If he deleted that, it would still not have deleted my replies, so I am not sure what happened, except that it has been several months.

Anyway, I am going to share the posts that I could find. If it were not clear, I am going to spend a few posts preaching against AI.

I do remember replying with an article on the Nizhoni issue and one on the climate destruction. I don't see the reply that obviously what the Dutch company was doing was wrong, but that what he was asking for wasn't anything like that, because it wasn't commercial. 

Then, I guess to address the climate change issue...

You might also want to stop eating almonds, avocados, and toss out anything you own that was manufactured under untenable and underpaid overseas working conditions. Then, I will stop making silly pictures on my iPad.  

 

(Then there were emojis for peace and love, but I don't believe they were sincere.) 

I did reply to that.

I don't eat almonds, not because I think completely ethical consumption is possible under capitalism, but because I can still try and do better. Almonds overtax water and pollinators, so I don't use them. 

Not included in my reply is that I completely avoid avocados because I think they are disgusting. 

Of course, that could have looked like I was avoiding that issue because I was a hypocrite on something I really liked. In fact, I am. I tried giving up ramen because they generally involve palm oil. Palm oil is not harvested responsibly which damages orangutan habitat. I backslid on that one.

 

Regardless, I do try and be more conscientious, believing that my actions might make a difference and not wanting to support destruction. 

 

I don't do it perfectly, which is probably not possible at this time, but I try.

 

He was using it as a "gotcha" but it didn't really work; that's when he suggested I quit following him, which I did.

 

I did not see that the original post was deleted until I was trying to find the thread for this post, so I don't know when it happened. Maybe he did change his mind, despite being irritated.

 

AI is terrible for the environment, artists, law... people in general, really. More on that later.

 

With the post on cryptocurrency, there were indicators that people might get involved with it for reasons of greed; maybe hoping to get rich quickly, maybe hoping to defraud lots of people. There was probably still an element where for some people it was new and different, therefore exciting.

 

There is greed involved in the pushing of AI, but the big problem is the people for whom it just seems fun, interesting, and cool.

 

My goal over the next few posts is to make you hate AI as much as I do. 

Without knowing who will read this, it is highly possible that you have used AI to see how you would look in different decades or get questions answered or even to get work done.

 

I am not saying that makes you a bad person. I could be saying that as you become more aware of its harmful effects, that your desire for good will make you feel like you should stop.

 

At least consider it.

 

That only leave the obvious question of "who", and I feel a little bad about that, especially seeing that the post was deleted. 

 

"Improv comic" could easily direct people to Whose Line is it Anyway? and then it seems even more important to identify, because there are many of them who have been so consistently fair and good-hearted in their interactions and the causes they support, that I would not want anyone to think it was them.

 

But hating Trump doesn't automatically mean that you will hate AI; people aren't even framing the issue in the right terms.

 

What else can I do but multiple blog posts?

A little bit more on the music

There were things on the last music post where I didn't know if I wanted to get into them yet.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/05/1963-1961-april-daily-songs.html 

I did say I would continue working backward through the Billboard charts.

I just finished 1959. 

One interesting thing about that is it appears to have been the first year where it was a top 100. It looks like there will be a couple of years with a top 50, and then mostly top 30s with a few top 35s through 1946.

I am sure there were changes in both radio stations and music sales that affected that. 

The other thing that I had mentioned, then kind of let sit, was that "Volare" really affected my mother.

I want to talk more about that.

"Volare" charted in 1960. That was the year that my parents got married. As I was listening to 1959, when they first met, but also a big part of their youth in general, I came across Paul Anka's "Lonely Boy". I remember her telling me long ago that Dad used to play that one on the jukebox.

Her favorite song from her youth was actually "Come Prima" from 1957. That would have been before they met, but nonetheless she really liked it.

She can still be pretty chatty now, but her words are often garbled. It isn't even where she is speaking in English or Italian now; it is that the words are not distinct and the sentences are not complete.

Because of that, it is often easier to sing to her. I will tell her things, but being able to sing lyrics instead of coming up with words helps.

I have sung a lot of 80s songs, which she loved back in the day, but one day I had the thought to sing "Volare" and it really seemed to get through.

You may be thinking, why "Volare" instead of her favorite, "Come Prima"? Well, the lyrics to "Volare" are easier for me to remember. However, it got me thinking and I printed out the lyrics for "Come Prima" for the next time.

When I sang it she started to cry.

That can actually seem like a bad response, but I knew she was responding to it emotionally, and I don't always know if anything is getting in there.

I will sing hymns fairly often as well. There is not always a clear response, but when I sang "Love One Another" she started singing along. No, she wasn't exactly forming the words, but she was going along with the tune.

When I want to know more about music, yes, I generally enjoy music and I enjoy knowing more about things.

There is also more to it. Music can be very powerful, and not always in ways we can predict.

When I decided to keep going backwards, I was not thinking about getting into songs from my childhood or songs from before I was born that were important to my parents, but here I am, at a time of grief, but it is still good to be here. 

For my mother...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jWsIpAbo-8 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usWFcKTe2YQ

 

At least Superman's dog is cute

The title is a Krypto joke.

Remember a few years back when there were a bunch of celebrities endorsing FTX? It was mainly athletes but Larry David did a Super Bowl ad. Then when it turned out to be fraud a lot of the endorsers were named in law suits but were mostly exonerated as they did not know about the fraud.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/remember-that-larry-david-crypto-ad-court-rules-he-and-other-celebs-didnt-mean-to-dupe-ftx-users/ 

It stuck out to me at the time because it seemed like a terrible idea and I was surprised to see so many big names going for it. Of course, they were doing that because they were given incentives, not because of any real understanding, but I suppose it gave me some extra skepticism on famous people promoting new techno things.

Looking back at it, the thing that shocked me most was the amounts of money involved. Larry David was paid $10 million, though it is unclear how much of that was in cryptocurrency. He says he lost money.

Back to that thing about there not being any real understanding.

The thing is, even if every one of those celebrities has been paid $10 million in cash, the fraud amount was in the billions. Depending on your way of doing the fraud, if your heart is set on ill-gotten gains and you believe you can con enough people, putting up large amounts of actual cash could be reasonable.

I mean, you can use meme coins to launder bribes or potentially do these pump and dump schemes. It can be pretty effective and I can see where it might be easy to assuage any guilt by deciding that the buyers are so stupid that they are getting what they had coming.

I hope my disdain isn't too subtle.

There is a lot to criticize with the various cryptocurrencies and even non-crypto exchanges and hedge funds, if we wanted to go that way.

For now, I just want to put one thing out there:

https://unu.edu/press-release/un-study-reveals-hidden-environmental-impacts-bitcoin-carbon-not-only-harmful-product

There are people who do get rich, mostly by other people losing their shirts, so a less-regulated stock market. There is also a toll.

I have no interest in participating in these exchanges, but I reside on the same planet. Things that strip resources and pollute the water and air matter to all of us.

If that weren't causing enough damage on its own, well, there's something else that celebrities get excited about now, this time mostly for free.

That "worse" appropriation story

Back when we were talking about appropriation as a way of making money (in that specific posts, with bonnets), I mentioned that I had a worse example. Ta-da!

https://ictnews.org/news/navajo-word-for-beautiful-at-center-of-controversy 

In summary, a Dutch woman took the Navajo word for beauty, "nizhoni", and made that the name of her company.

That may not seem like a big deal, but registering names internationally can cause issues. For example, there was a Spanish company sock company that had trademarked the name "Nike" (the Greek goddess of victory). They sold that trademark, then the new owner interfered with some advertising for the US company around the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-08-08-fi-4596-story.html 

The Dutch company faced some pushback from Navajo people, not just for the name use but also for AI-generated images of Native American models that were apparently being used to make the use of the name seem more legitimate.

The initial response to the pushback was "Get a life!" Then there were expressions of wanting to support the Navajo people, perhaps through donations. These sentiments seemed insincere when photos of actual Navajo people were used without permission to imply that the company was employing real Navajo. (They were not.)

They finally apologized and said they were working on changing the name, but that it was a complicated process. In fact, they appear to have successfully changed to using just the designer's name now.

(I could link, but I don't want to give any traffic to her overpriced cardigans.)

Technically, I guess this is still better than Lady Antebellum wanting to sound less racist by stealing the name of a respected Blues artist and battling her legally over it, but it's hard to compare. 

https://www.knkx.org/blues/2024-01-27/lady-a-seattle-blues-singer-music-lawsuit-career

Regardless, note the pattern of taking without asking, resenting being asked about that, doubling down, and maybe eventually changing, but being really determined to ignore issues of respect.

It is easier to do it with marginalized people. 

For many people, it is easy to romanticize Native Americans and keep them firmly in the past; then that romance is free for the taking.

They're still here.

It would be completely possible to respond to the initial pushback better, but it would be even better to not go down this path in the first place. That would take some awareness and respect. 

There was a growing concern for me that made the Nizhoni story worse. That led to me annoying a minor celebrity, which I will get into after something else.

Stay tuned!

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/07/music-review-lady-a.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/05/buying-in.html

Fighting erasure: daily articles and Women's History Month

It's probably pretty fresh in everyone's memory, but in January an absolute horror of a president was sworn in. His legions of evil having learned from the last time around, they hit the ground running in starting to erase any traces of history that were not centered around white men.

Determined to fight that in my own small way, I decided to post articles for every day of Black History Month (plus an extra three days in January to get to 31 days), but then also to do that for all of the history months.

I am currently in my third month of doing this, but there have been snags and things that I am trying to still figure out.

The first thing is that I couldn't always find great articles. I had a lot of people and events to choose from, but often -- even if you remember reading a great article once -- it doesn't mean you could find it. For the first month I was linking to a lot of biographies. When they were on sites affiliated with the government, there was no knowing if they would end up being taken down without warning. 

I have started keeping a list of good articles when I see them. Since this is definitely going to go on throughout this year, I can keep a pretty big file.

One nice thing about posting is that the algorithm suggests articles, some of which were pretty good. I shared some, though never at the expense of posting my own article.

There was also the question of whether to collect these into blogs. I did not keep a good record of February's articles. I did note whom I had posted about, but not the links for the articles. Initially, I did not think I would save them, but it can be helpful to have a record.

For February (Black History Month), May (Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month), September 15th through October 15th (Hispanic Heritage Month) and November (Native American Heritage Month), I generally have reading lists that I will blog about. It doesn't happen during that month, but it happens. The articles could go in one of those posts.

I haven't generally had specific Women's History Month (March) reading or posting, which is why I am including them here. 

I have more of a history of commemorating both Black Music Month and Pride Month (June) in different ways, but do I post two articles daily this June? I haven't decided yet, and I only have about two weeks left to figure it out.

For Facebook, I worry about posting too much. I generally do the song of the day with the blog post, if there is one and if it's ready, but if I am posting three things, or four, does it get lost in the shuffle? Spacing them out may help, but again, I am not seeing many likes. Is it enough to post the article? Do I need to add some text of my own thoughts? 

That leads to the question of whether it matters at all; there haven't been many likes.

I am committed to doing good, but figuring out what to do and how to do it can be a challenge. 

Articles for Women’s History Month

3/1 Las Soldaderas: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-real-history-of-las-soldaderas-the-women-who-made-the-mexican-revolution-possible?

3/2 WASPs: https://www.npr.org/2010/03/09/123773525/female-wwii-pilots-the-original-fly-girls

3/3 Mesannie Wilkins: https://minotmainehistoricalsociety.wordpress.com/minot-history/mesannie-wilkins/

3/4 ENIAC 6: https://www.codecademy.com/resources/blog/eniac-six-women-programmed-computer/

3/5 Night Witches: https://allthatsinteresting.com/night-witches

3/6 Bletchley Park: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/the-women-who-decoded-german-enigma-at-bletchley-park.html

3/7 Henrietta Swan Leavitt: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210310-the-star-fiend-who-unlocked-the-universe

3/8 Caroline Hershel: https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/in-caroline-herschels-footsteps/

3/9 Hedy Lamarr: https://www.history.com/news/hedy-lamarr-inventor-frequency-hopping-wifi

3/10 Hildegard of Bingen: https://www.culturefrontier.com/hildegard-of-bingen/

3/11 Rosalind Franklin: https://www.history.com/news/rosalind-franklin-dna-discovery

3/12 Sanora Babb: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/forgotten-dust-bowl-novel-rivaled-grapes-wrath-180959196/

3/13 Rigoberta Menchu: https://www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-rigoberta-menchu-2136348

3/14 Dorothea Lange: https://wams.nyhistory.org/confidence-and-crises/great-depression/dorothea-lange/

3/15 Belle da Costa Greene: https://www.npr.org/2024/10/28/nx-s1-5159998/the-true-story-of-a-famed-librarian-and-the-secret-she-guarded-closely?utm_source=pocket_shared

3/16 Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teens-pythagorean-theorem-proofs-published-60-minutes/

3/17 Dolores Huerta: https://www.history.com/news/dolores-huerta-cesar-chavez-farm-workers

3/18 Margaret Bourke-White: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/08/photography-of-margaret-bourke-white/596980/

3/19 Alice Ball: https://www.biography.com/scientists/alice-ball

3/20 Susan LaFlesche: https://picottecenter.org/dr-susan

3/21 Ada Lovelace: https://findingada.com/about/who-was-ada/

3/22 Christine de Pizan: https://amedievalwomanscompanion.com/christine-de-pizan/

3/23 Eunice: Foote: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-woman-who-demonstrated-the-greenhouse-effect/

3/24 Grace Hopper: https://www.biography.com/scientist/grace-hopper

3/25 Carol Kaye: https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/bassists/carol-kaye-greatest-basslines

3/26 Anne Conway: https://philosophynow.org/issues/145/Anne_Conway_1631-1679

3/27 Viola Smith: https://wisconsinlife.org/story/the-fastest-girl-drummer-in-the-world-celebrating-wisconsins-viola-smith/

3/28 Christine Darden: https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/christine-darden

3/29 Jacinda Ardern: https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a64147509/jacinda-ardern-new-zealand-prime-minister-interview-2025/?utm_source=pocket_shared

3/30 Artemisia Gentileschi: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180824-the-artist-who-triumphed-over-her-shocking-rape-and-torture

3/31 Ava DuVernay: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/18/entertainment/ava-duvernay-origin/index.html

One bright note

The fascists seem to have given up on taking over the school boards! 

(By the way, ballots in Oregon are due on May 20th. We just turned ours in to the dropbox today.)

Things had seemed pretty quiet, but I actually did not start checking on it until a few days ago. That could easily have not worked out, but when you have that kind of organized takeover attempt, there are stirrings that are hard to ignore.

The first thing I checked was https://communitiesforsensibleschools.org/, previously the home of the Hillsboro school board fascists:

"Future home of something quite cool."

I guess it could be; the domain name is kind of limiting. 

Regardless, the site is not being used at this time to try and stack the Hillsboro schoolboard with racist, classist, homophobic COVID deniers, and that is progress.

My next step was to see what was new with Scott Presler. He seems to be focusing on voter registration in Pennsylvania, though apparently one of the January 6th guys has turned against him which has caused a little polarization among various Trumpers.

I don't think that will be that disruptive. A movement built on grievance is going to regularly have personal blow-ups and the don't affect the momentum like you would hope. Frankly, Presler's homosexuality makes him an easy target for his side. Regardless, neither of them appears to be organizing candidates in Oregon, and I appreciate that.

Also, where there did seem to be something weird going on last time with attempts to organize candidates for the fire and water district, that appears to have fizzled out.

It was time to look at the candidates.

There were several uncontested seats, does not guarantee there is no nefarious organization but seemed comforting.

Reminder: I vote for Beaverton School District, but look at Hillsboro as well because they're our neighbors and I know a lot of people there.

For the contested races, the options are overall good. There were two where it was a hard choice between two very good candidates. Because of that, I am not going to give specific endorsements.

I will note two concerns. 

One of the races with two very good candidates had a third candidate who wants to improve relationships with school resource officers and seems to have a lot of police support. Please remember that having police in schools does not make schools safer and creates worse conditions for students of color. 

I ask you to remember that, because it is very easy for white people to not notice. 

Also, in the Hillsboro races, one of the candidates has an endorsement from Joe Everton, who was one of the original Communities for Sensible Schools candidates.

Everton is a Hillsboro resident and could be connected to lots of people, so it doesn't automatically mean anything. It does make me a little suspicious, and I would have extra skepticism toward that particular candidate.

The most obvious point may be that with control of all three branches of the federal government and the placement of an even worse Education Secretary than DeVos (which would have recently seemed so improbable), like, maybe they aren't even bothering with school boards anymore.

Maybe, but that doesn't change that school boards still matter. 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/05/school-board-elections-dont-let.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/05/some-people-behind-campaigns.html 

 

Two more down

Speaking of trying to do good things with the time I have, I quietly unfriended two more people.

No, that's not me doing a good thing.

In both cases, they were people I was not particularly close to who posted things that I found repellent.

One was a Mother's Day post about how the holiday is only for real women with a cruel April 1st "joke" about men in dresses.

I acknowledge that the majority of people -- even if they may struggle with some gendered expectations --do not feel a big mismatch between the gender they feel and the one assigned at birth. If there is something I don't understand, I try reading books about it, but you can decide you don't need to understand and that is not automatically harmful.

If you do not pay attention to notice that more people are being questioned and accused about gender, primarily consisting of women, where their birth assignment and how they are perceived and present matches, and you also choose not to notice that a lot of this comes down to men being able to aggressively police women based on their perceived attractiveness, thus making it a way of extending misogyny... that is becoming harmful.

If you have discomfort with your ability to identify someone's gender, or with whether you agree with someone's gender BUT YOU DO NOT WISH TO CAUSE HARM, you have options. You can silently sit with your discomfort, you can try learning more, and you are always free to mind your own business.

In this case, the person appears to be someone I went to school with, but I have no memory of them.

That is not as uncommon as I might hope. There is a handful of people whom I really don't remember at all, but I accepted the friend requests and they seem to be good people with interesting hobbies or strong friend groups or fierce attachment to their families. If my memories about them and affection for them are all due to Facebook, I can live with that. Zuckerberg has made a positive contribution!

However, if we haven't built that up, so there is no past relationship to go on and my strongest impression of you is bigotry, a soft delete seems preferable to creating a relationship that is based on me telling you that you are horrible.

Under different circumstances I might feel differently.

The other person was a little bit trickier. Though she and I have not interacted a lot, I am very fond of her parents and have good memories of two of her three siblings.

She posted a picture of Dr. Fauci calling him truly evil, claiming to have done hundreds of hours of research, and begging people to protect themselves from his devilish corruption. Then the replies go on about how evil he was with AIDS.

No. He's not evil. He's not perfect, and he does have a bit of an ego as some AIDS activists know. (A doctor with an ego? Imagine!) 

He is also a knowledgeable professional who tries to operate ethically, and she is using conspiracy theories to pile on.

I also remember seeing the people celebrating when his Secret Service protection was removed by Trump, castigating him. 

Her language may be part of a trend that leads to his murder. It may not; there is so much hate and aggression going around that it is hard to accurately predict where it will end up.

Regardless, she is spreading hate and ignorance. The fact that she believes that she is right does not make that better.

Because of my affection for her family, should I have tried harder? 

Possibly, and in other circumstances I might. However, remember that post about masking that really offended some people and they tried to take over the thread and one got mad and called me obviously an ignorant person? She was a part of that. She was in more of a "just asking questions" part, so it did not lead to a rupture at that time, but it led to me feeling that additional communication would not be productive.

(I thought I blogged about that, other than the original masking post, but I can't find it now.)

I do not have boundless energy. 

I will try and make a difference when I believe I can. 

I will make efforts to stay informed and clear so that when I do say something it can be useful.

If all logic dictates that something would be a losing battle but my heart tells me that I need to fight, I will. 

That's about all I am comfortable committing to.

Discouragement

I took a few days off from blogging.

That was mainly that I just had too much work to do for school; spending time blogging when I could be working on assessments. As I also was not quite sure what direction to go in for the next few posts, that made it easier to decide to just hold off.

I did feel bad about it, and that has been one source of discouragement.

I can't keep up with the times. 

I know that I don't truly have a big audience and the clearest explanation I write of anything has not changed the world, but still, what if I could help someone, but then slacked off?

Living under this administration is very discouraging. Unless you hate people; apparently, then it's exhilarating.

This administration is discouraging about school as well. Okay, instructional design is not only used for formal education, but there is so much working to destroy thought now! I see educational standards that I totally see the value of, and yet I know they would be considered "woke" and wonder how long they will last.

How soon will the federal government sue the state over SB 13?

That sounds like a time to fight, but fighting sounds like it requires energy. Just thinking about these guys makes me tired.

(Plus there was this article about AI use by students, though AI was one of the areas where I was thinking about writing more...) 

Also, since my father died I find I am a lot more aware of how much I miss my mother. 

It's just life, and life is hard and I generally feel inadequate and behind.

I am still learning a lot.

The last time I was a full-time student was 1996. It was a long time ago and there are a lot of things that have changed. When you are looking at K-12 education specifically, there is a lot of emphasis on teaching digital literacy and online safety and concepts that did not even exist when I was a student there myself. I keep feeling like I am having to reinvent the wheel, but it is not a total reinvention and I can ask people for help. 

It just takes a lot, and I don't feel like I have a lot.

So sometimes I may take breaks, rather than collapsing and giving everything up. I may not feel great about it, but I will try and be practical.

If I cannot do everything that I believe it would be good to do, I am still committed to having the things that I do be good.

1963 - 1961 April Daily Songs

For this segment, I suppose 1962 was the most interesting year and 1961 was the most emotionally resonant year.

First of all, 1962 could have been all "twist" songs if I wanted. The dance craze started in 1958, but at least for songs charting this must have been the height. Then there are three "shout" songs, with one overlap: the Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout".

1962 may have also been more notably racist. One of the songs that bothered me was "Speedy Gonzales" by Pat Boone. Reading about Boone and evangelicalsim in Jesus and John Wayne and also seeing there was a suit because the song was recorded and released without permission to use Mel Blanc's vocalizations... well, I guess it all kind of fits.

It was a little thing in 1961, but I recognized Bert Kaempfert's "Wonderland By Night"; a jazz song when most of the familiar ones are more rock. It was on one of the albums my father had.

When I played it, one of my sisters came to me almost accusingly, "What is that?" She almost pulled our other sister out of the shower.

There's something there when a memory has been so distant but is so clear when it comes up.

Maybe it is harder if you associate it with your father who is still fairly recently dead.

You know, if we went to 1960, "Volare" would come up, which is one of the songs that my mother still responds to, though it is not the one that she kind of sang along to or the one that made her cry.

Music can get you.

That's important to me, but there are moments.

1963

4/1 “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes
4/2 “Wipeout” by The Surfaris
4/3 “Mean Woman Blues” by Roy Orbison
4/4 “Up On the Roof” by The Drifters
4/5 “Wild Weekend” by The Rebels
4/6 “Maria Elena” by Los Indios Tabajaras
4/7 “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash
4/8 “One Fine Day” by The Chiffons
4/9 “Busted” by Ray Charles
4/10 “Blame It On the Bossa Nova” by Eydie Gormé

1962

4/11 “The Twist” by Chubby Checker
4/12 “Twistin’ the Night Away” by Sam Cooke
4/13 “Alley Cat” by Bent Fabric
4/14 “Twist and Shout” by The Isley Brothers
4/15 “Hey Baby” by Bruce Channel
4/16 “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis Presley
4/17 “Venus in Blue Jeans” by Jimmy Clanton
4/18 “Surfin’ Safari” by The Beach Boys
4/19 “Percolator (Twist)” by Billie Joe and the Checkmates
4/20 “Shout Shout (Knock Yourself Out)” by Ernie Maresca

1961

4/21 “Bristol Stomp” by The Dovells
4/22 “Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp Bomp Bomp)” by Barry Mann
4/23 “Take Five” by The Dave Brubeck Quartet
4/24 “Mama Said” by The Shirelles
4/25 “Angel Baby” by Rosie and the Originals
4/26 “Pretty Little Angel Eyes” by Curtis Lee
4/27 “Wonderland By Night” by Bert Kaempfert
4/28 “Walk Right Back” by The Everly Brothers
4/29 “Crying” by Roy Orbison
4/30 “Pony Time” by Chubby Checker

Brief hiatus

I need to take a few days off from blogging. Back soon.

1966 - 1964: March Daily Songs

I actually went back for two months, but that's a lot of songs for one post, so I am splitting them up. There have been some different thoughts anyway.

There are some songs I really love here. I remember exactly where I was the first time I heard "My Guy". "Have I the Right" had a similar effect on me, but I only remember the impression, not the details of how and when it happened.

(For the record, with "My Guy" my mother and I were parked outside of the Barker's house in Sellwood.)

Watching an episode of The A-Team with Vietnam flashbacks, I realized Julie was getting confused between "Eve of Destruction" and "We Gotta Get Out of this Place". That makes sense; together they are both used to indicate Vietnam.

(I must say, the sense of fear and apocalypse fits in well with this administration.)

One thing I had been thinking about more is that in my mind the music that I think of as 50s music is usually more 60s music. I think the reason for that is that it is from the period before the 60s became THE '60s; I mean, decades as we remember them take a few years of transition. I think the '80s mostly started between 1983 and 1984, but it can be hard to pinpoint.  

Then I started thinking about "American Pie". We watched a VH1 Behind the Music on it, and that treated it as if there was a real shift in music, but I am not sure that is true. That doesn't change the emotional impact of the song, but the people talking about its import may have overstated their case.

Also -- with all of this writing about appropriation -- it's hard not to think about how much richer white musicians got from music they did not write or introduce.

It is also interesting how many songs I did not know were covers the first time I heard them. I don't know that anything will top finding out that "Hard to Handle" came from Otis Redding, and was then covered by Black Crowes, but that was back in 1968.

I have decided that regardless of what I am doing for the daily songs, I am going to keep going back through the years, and then go forward again. Maybe then I will be able to move past 2000 into current years. 

That will be the work of years, and there will be books and articles that come up, but I want to have that sense of context.

I like understanding how things fit together.

1966

3/2 “Cherish” by The Association
3/3 “You Can’t Hurry Love” by The Supremes
3/4 “Red Rubber Ball” by The Cyrkle
3/5 “Wild Thing” by The Troggs
3/6 “634-5789 (Soulsville U.S.A.)” by Wilson Pickett
3/7 “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak For You)” by The Isley Brothers
3/8 “Wipeout” by The Surfaris
3/9 “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by The Beach Boys
3/10 “The More I See You” by Chris Montez
3/11 “19^th Nervous Breakdown” by The Rolling Stones

1965

3/12 “King of the Road” by Roger Miller
3/13 “It’s the Same Old Song” by The Four Tops
3/14 “Unchained Melody” by The Righteous Brothers
3/15 “Downtown” by Petula Clark
3/16 “Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire
3/17 “Down in the Boondocks” by Billy Joe Royal
3/18 “All Day and All of the Night” by The Kinks
3/19 “We Gotta Get Out of this Place” by The Animals
3/20 “The Tracks of My Tears” by The Miracles
3/21 “I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction)” by The Rolling Stones

1964

3/22 “My Guy” by Mary Wells
3/23 “The House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals
3/24 “Where Did Our Love Go” by The Supremes
3/25 “Dancing in the Street” by Martha and the Vandellas
3/26 “Under the Boardwalk” by The Drifters
3/27 “Have I the Right” by The Honeycombs
3/28 “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)” by Betty Everett
3/29 “Glad All Over” by The Dave Clark Five
3/30 “Suspicion” by Terry Stafford
3/31 “Wishin’ and Hopin’” by Dusty Springfield