October 6, 2023

📡 – 2023-10-06

Back at it again! Apologies for the missed missives – gonna try to keep this one lean and not overwhelm, but the back-catalog is big, and full of bangers.

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Understanding the Self-Employed in the United States

Understanding the Self-Employed in the United States - Center for American Progress

This fact sheet explores the size, demographics, and key features of the self-employed population in the United States.

Historically, official counts have suggested that self-employed workers were more likely to be male, white, and non-Hispanic than wage workers, and that the self-employed were comparatively highly educated. Those who have been in some forms of self-employment—particularly incorporated self-employment and independent contracting—have historically earned comparatively higher incomes.¹⁶ However, these counts may miss lower-income self-employed workers and those who are misclassified, suggesting that the overall self-employed population—or the population of those treated as self-employed—may have lower incomes and be less white than some statistics suggest.¹⁷ Informal work is also particularly likely to be left out,¹⁸ which is important given that informal work is more common among low-income workers, workers with less education, and workers of color.¹⁹

The Maker of ShotSpotter Is Buying the World’s Most Infamous Predictive Policing Tech

SoundThinking, Maker of ShotSpotter, Is Buying Parts of PredPol Creator Geolitica | WIRED

SoundThinking is purchasing parts of Geolitica, the company that created PredPol. Experts say the acquisition marks a new era of companies dictating how police operate.

SoundThinking’s absorption of Geolitica marks its latest step in becoming the Google of crime fighting—a one-stop shop for policing tools. Experts who study law enforcement use of technology say the bundling of two controversial technologies signals a new era for the cop-tech industry and has the potential to shape the future of policing in the United States. And while SoundThinking has rebranded “predictive policing” as resource management for police departments, a WIRED analysis of one of the company’s apps found that crime-forecasting technology remains one of its key offerings.

US Justice Department Urged to Investigate Gunshot Detector Purchases

US Justice Department Urged to Investigate Gunshot Detector Purchases | WIRED

A civil liberties group has asked the DOJ to investigate deployment of the ShotSpotter gunfire-detection system, which research shows is often installed in predominantly Black neighborhoods.

Attorneys for the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center—a leading US-based civil liberties group—argue that “substantial evidence” suggests American cities are disproportionately deploying an acoustic tool known as ShotSpotter in majority-minority neighborhoods. Citing past studies, EPIC alleges that data derived from these sensors has encouraged some police departments to spend more and more time patrolling areas where the fewest number of white residents live—an allegation disputed by SoundThinking, the system’s manufacturer.

She challenges one school book a week. She says she’ll never stop.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/28/virginia-frequent-school-book-challenger-spotsylvania/

“This whole effort has been a waste of money, time and resources,” school board member Nicole Cole said. (The district said it has not tracked the money, time and work it spent responding to Petersen’s requests, although a top library staffer estimated that a team of 11 people spent 40 hours per week on her challenges last school year.)

Junk websites filled with AI-generated text are pulling in money from programmatic ads

Next-gen content farms are using AI-generated text to spin up junk websites | MIT Technology Review

More than 140 brands are advertising on low-quality content farm sites—and the problem is growing fast.

To take advantage, content farms have sprung up where low-paid humans churn out low-quality content to attract ad revenue. These types of websites already have a name: “made for advertising” sites. They use tactics such as clickbait, autoplay videos, and pop-up ads to squeeze as much money as possible out of advertisers. In a recent survey, the Association of National Advertisers found that 21% of ad impressions in their sample went to made-for-advertising sites. The group estimated that around $13 billion is wasted globally on these sites each year. 

Climate Control, Modernism, and Mass Production

Project MUSE - Climate Control, Modernism, and Mass Production

Air-conditioning (AC) made images modern. It enabled two of modernity’s paradigmatic and seemingly opposite visual forms: abstract painting and the mass-produced image. AC transformed art conservation, securing the field’s scientific authority and adapting it to the demands of modernist painting. AC also played a crucial role in the development of industrial mass production, including the production of “mass images” in newspapers and magazines and on film. In both cases, AC transformed the labor of image maintenance and production by de-emphasizing the roles of gesture and manual inscription in favor of environmental management. Rather than touch up a damaged canvas, the twentieth-century conservator preferred to prevent visible changes from happening in the first place; rather than manually align color impressions, the twentieth-century printer sought to control flows and atmospheres in the pressroom. Of course, printing and preservation alike continued to require manual touch-ups and corrections long after AC transformed these practices. But expectations changed with the new technology: manual intervention on the image surface became more the exception than the rule, conceived as an act of repair or quality control, rather than regular maintenance. Climate control thus helped secure romantic and modernist ideals of the image’s autonomy—the artist’s control over and ultimate responsibility for [End Page 3] the image—by restricting the hand of the craftsperson whose work it was to preserve and transmit that image to others.

State security departments: The birth of China’s nationwide state security system

https://deserepi.org/0/joske_ssd.html

China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) sits atop a national system of state security units, yet provincial-level state security agencies, a defining feature of China’s intelligence apparatus, have attracted little research. Provincial agencies are subordinate to the MSS but have their own origins, cultures, networks and priorities. Today, they are also particularly active in foreign operations. This paper documents the establishment of the first 14 provincial agencies to provide a foundation for analysing the state security system and the creation of the MSS. Tracing their establishment and early development through official histories and biographies, this paper shows the diverse backgrounds and capabilities of provincial agencies, which originally combined counterintelligence, foreign intelligence and technical units. It also provides new findings on foreign intelligence agencies that were predecessors to the state security system. Finally, studying the birth of provincial security agencies offers new insights into the original priorities of the state security system and the founding of the MSS itself.

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I’m taking a little break from games – got a little too frustrated with Baldur’s Gate III (see previous) – but in that gap Molly has taken up Dave the Diver upon recommendation from our pal Chris and it is a delight. Highly recommended casual resource gathering / business simulation game.

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Fun City hath returned – two new eps went up in Sept. and another will come at the end of this month. We’ve just recorded our first Mork Borg game in a year, and are looking forward to recording a Holiday Special next month (both of those will be for Patrons).

Are we back?

I’m thinkin’ we’re back.

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That’s what I got for you; hopefully back on track now, and not another age between observed updates. Hope you had a good week and have a great weekend. Work just hard enough, party harder, and tell your pals about this little newsletter if you’re so inclined:

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