Commie Shit

Read an article in the local paper submitted anonymously by a woman who got a DUI two years ago.

My first instinct was to hate her. Because I hate drinking and driving. Viscerally. Anyone who knows me knows how intense I can be about impaired driving of all kinds (drunk, high, tired). It’s not worth it. It gets people killed. I lost a good friend to a drunk driver. Don’t ever. I’ve gotten in fights with people! I have stolen keys!

“Don’t ever” was, in fact, the point of her writing it. But not because of the danger posed to others. Because of how much a single DUI had ruined her life for two straight years. This also didn’t garner much sympathy from me, because obviously the REAL reason not to drink and drive is because you could kill someone. What do I care if someone irresponsible is inconvenienced?

Anyway, this woman was pulled over after leaving a bar where she had two beers to drive a few blocks to her friend’s place. This didn’t really make me more sympathetic because I’m a hardass when it comes to drinking and driving, but she wasn’t pulled over for any kind of impaired driving. She was driving perfectly. It was clearly the kind of stop that happens late at night when the cops are just fishing. The cop made up something about her stickers being placed wrong or a faulty light, before making her take the normal physical impairment tests (as someone with dyspraxia these scare the shit out of me, but that’s neither here nor there) which she passed just fine. In fact, her driving was perfect, her reactions were perfect. But then came the breathalyzer. And her blood alcohol was just too high.

She got arrested.

And the rest of article was her detailing her attempts since to try to get her license back.

The for profit companies she had to take classes from, the for profit companies who make you pay to install the breathalyzer in your car, how if you are able to plead poverty to get aid for that installation you also have to commit to going once a month to a for profit company that will calibrate your discounted breathalyzer and how if you don’t go your car will get remotely bricked and how the pandemic interrupted the hours of these places without notice meaning her car needed to be towed when she missed an appointment after the place was closed when she expected it to be open, how this added to her sentence, how she lost her insurance.

As I read this, I thought, sure, about how much I hate drunk driving. About my knee-jerk, visceral lack of sympathy. And I asked myself:

Does any of this actually make me feel safer?

And it doesn’t. It doesn’t make me feel any safer at all. This woman was writing this article to say “Don’t drink and drive. Not even once. It’s not worth it.” But what I got from it was, these punitive measures aren’t preventing people from drinking and driving. They’re just… giving cops and for-profits fun new ways to mistreat and exploit normal people. People we, people I personally, can feel disinclined to protect because of judgments we have about them.

Meanwhile, people are still going to drink and drive.

And I thought about what would work. What would make me feel safer. And you know what would make me feel safer? If people who hadn’t planned ahead could still get a ride home. I’d much rather someone call the police (or a service that’s one of the many we institute to replace them) and go “I drove here but I don’t think I’m safe to drive home” and have the reply be “someone will be right there”. Then a pair of public servants show up, one to drive you home and one to drive your car home, and you get home safe.

I would love for traffic safety to be, like, the actual goal of how we manage traffic laws.

But more than that, punitive attempts to control people, blatant disproven behaviorism, doesn’t work. If your political philosophy is about finding the “bad” or “undeserving” and ensuring they struggle, I can’t identify with it. It’s hard to come up with a type of “common crime” that I have more disdain for than drinking and driving, but disapproving of the way this woman has been treated is not the same as justifying her actions. I don’t care! I don’t care if she learns her lesson! I don’t care if I like her! Everything you’re doing to her for a single breathalyzer failure is not keeping the roads safer!

this is way too important to leave in the tags.

[ID: tumblr tags that say:

her ancestors? you mean her dad? 

y’all realize she was crowned in 1953 right? Nearly 70 years of imperialism with her face stamped on it. She’s the longest-lived, and longest reigning British monarch. 

Y’all look at her and see a kindly withered old gramma with memeability, but completely ignore the amount of damage that she and her family have done to so many countries. 

“oh well, what did you want her to do, just walk away from it?”

yes. 

Yes, I do expect people to look at the harm that systems they uphold do to the world at large and then actively refuse to continue their participation in them. I do not believe that is too much to ask of anyone, let alone one of the most powerful women in the entire fucking world. 

Sorry that I’m not particularly impressed with her #girlboss legacy when the Indigenous Peoples of Canada and Australia are still feeling the monarchy’s effects on their homes and families. 

70 years and she never once thought, “Hm, maybe imperialism is a bad idea?” 

Sudan (finished fighting for independence in 1956)

Ghana (finished fighting for independence in 1957)

Malaysia (finished fighting for independence in 1957)

Singapore (finished fighting for independence in 1959)

Cyprus (finished fighting for independence in 1960)

Nigeria (finished fighting for independence in 1960)

Somaliland (finished fighting for independence in 1960)

Tanzania (finished fighting for independence in 1961)

Cameroon (finished fighting for independence in 1961)

Kuwait (finished fighting for independence in 1961)

Sierra Leone (finished fighting for independence in 1961)

Jamaica (finished fighting for independence in 1962)

Trinidad and Tobago (finished fighting for independence in 1962)

Uganda (finished fighting for independence in 1962)

Kenya (finished fighting for independence in 1963)

Malawi (finished fighting for independence in 1964)

Malta (finished fighting for independence in 1964)

Zambia (finished fighting for independence in 1964)

Gambia (finished fighting for independence in 1965)

Maldives (finished fighting for independence in 1965)

Barbados (finished fighting for independence in 1966)

Botswana (finished fighting for independence in 1966)

Guyana (finished fighting for independence in 1966)

Lesotho (finished fighting for independence in 1966)

Yemen (finished fighting for independence in 1967)

Eswatini (finished fighting for independence in 1968)

Mauritius (finished fighting for independence in 1968)

Nauru (finished fighting for independence in 1968)

Fiji (finished fighting for independence in 1970)

Tonga (finished fighting for independence in 1970)

Bahrain (finished fighting for independence in 1971)

Qatar (finished fighting for independence in 1971)

United Arab Emirates (finished fighting for independence in 1971)

the Bahamas (finished fighting for independence in 1973)

Grenada (finished fighting for independence in 1974)

Seichelle (finished fighting for independence in 1976)

Brunica (finished fighting for independence in 1978)

Solomon Islands (finished fighting for independence in 1978)

Tuvalu (finished fighting for independence in 1978)

Kiribati (finished fighting for independence in 1979)

Saint Vincent and the Bernardines (finished fighting for independence in 1979)

Saint Lucia (finished fighting for independence in 1979)

Vanuatu (finished fighting for independence in 1980)

Zimbabwe (finished fighting for independence in 1980)

Antigua and Barbuda (finished fighting for independence in 1981)

British Barbudas (finished fighting for independence in 1981)

Saint Kitts and Nevis (finished fighting for independence in 1983)

Brunei (finished fighting for independence in 1984)

Hong Kong (“given” to China in 1997)

Anguilla (still a colony)

Bermuda (still a colony)

British Antarctic Territory (still a colony)

British Indian Ocean Territory (still a colony)

British Virgin Islands (still a colony)

Cayman Islands (still a colony)

Falkland Islands (still a colony)

Gibraltar (still a colony)

Montserrat (still a colony)

Pitcain, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno islands (still a colony)

Saint Helena (still a colony)

Ascension Island (still a colony)

Tristan da Cunha (still a colony)

South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (still a colony)

Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (still a colony)

Turks and Caicos Islands (still a colony)

as well, of course, as Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, which are still a part of the British kingdom, although i am unsure whether the people in them consider their countries to be colonies

so, yeah. “ancestors” my ass

and that’s not mentioning that none of these countries ever got reparations and all of them (as well as pretty much any other third world country) are still victims of british imperialism

She was born to a rich plantation family in the American South during the time of slavery. She owned a slave, Hetty, a girl her parents gave her when she was a child. She was absolutely the sort of person whose racism you could justify as being ‘of her time’ and ‘just the way she was raised’.

And she cited the injustices she saw growing up on the plantation as the motivation for her becoming an abolitionist as an adult.

When she was a kid, she tried to give bible lessons to the slaves on her Dad’s plantation, and taught her own slave to read and write. As an adult, she and her sister campaigned for the end of slavery. When she found out that one of her brothers had raped one of his own slaves and gotten her pregnant three times, she welcomed her nephews into the family and paid for education for the two that wanted it.

This was a woman who was raised in a culture of slavery, looked around her as a child and said “hey, wait a minute, we’re all assholes!” and spent the rest of her life trying to put things right.

The more I see this happening–and the more I learn about the past and how hard people did fight to stop Hitler from initially rising to power, or to point out the humanity of slaves–the more apparent it becomes that we have always had these choices, and they’ve always been the same.

And then you’re in your mid twenties watching a food show on Netflix and you learn that because Pennsylvania was a Quaker colony, they led the nation in emancipation and if an enslaved person was in Philadelphia for more than six months, they automatically became freed. And the young nation’s early capital was in Philadelphia, where Washington brought his household of enslaved people with him. And he took them back to Virginia every five months for a time so as to start that clock over and keep them enslaved.

There’s a trend with historians to want so badly to maintain the prestige of George Washington and an exceptional and morally pristine figure. And true, there are many instances in his writing where he sounds like his opinion on slavery as an institution is turning and that he knew slavery was wrong. But his actions. He literally had to do absolutely nothing to free his household staff, and took great pains to keep them enslaved.

It’s important to remember that too. That there were people in positions of enormous power, who know what they’re doing is wrong, and choose to do it anyway.

THIS THING SHOOTS 6.5mm CREEDMOOR WHAT THE FUCK. FOR REFERENCE, THIS IS WHAT THAT ROUND LOOKS LIKE COMPARED TO A 9mm

GOOD TIME TO SHARE THE BATTERY INFO AGAIN SO YOU CAN SHUT THESE DUDES DONE

[image: first tweet in a thread by Dr. Sarah Taber, who is quote-tweeting The Verge’s tweet that reads “They’re putting guns on robot dogs now” and depicts the said robot dog. Dr. Taber’s full thread is quoted below:]

PSA for anyone who might be dealing with robot gun dogs, from a farm robot specialist who wasn’t really looking at robot wrangling from the public safety standpoint but here we are.

I haven’t worked w police/military robotics so I can’t speak to exactly how these are built.

But I can tell you, IME roboticists can be really naive about environmental conditions: making robots sturdy enough to handle rain, dirt, & other outdoor realities.

For example! I’ve worked w a couple startups that do fruit picking robots. They build the thing, *then* call me in to figure out how to clean it.

And half the time you can’t. Bc the picking arm has all these delicate cameras & servos that can’t get wet.

Folks who build robots at this time tend to be focused on making it do cool things like see, jump, run, & somersault. So they can release teaser videos that make everybody go “wow what a fancy robot”

They tend to be less focused on actual service performance: DURABILITY.

What’s this mean?

The joints, motors, cameras, & other sensors are more exposed than they should be.

It’s easy for water, road salt, grit, etc to get in there and cripple the robot.

I mean look at this thing. That housing’s got more nooks & crannies than a dang English muffin. You think that’s watertight?

For robots that work outside, not even watertight is good enough.

Farms add surfactants (like dish soap) to sprays. They make the sprays stick to leaves & get into all the nooks & crannies of the plant.

So farm robots need surfactant-proof seals. Not just waterproof.

Otherwise after a few hours in the field, you have a mix of dew, mud, soil & grit, and whatever surfactants you put in your last pesticide

mixing together & working their way into all the robot’s delicate parts. Scratching up the cameras. Jamming up the joints & motor.

If there’s any salt or acid in the mix, it’s even worse!

Some soils have a lil salt in them, or an acidic pH. It’s actually pretty common!

The salts or H+ ions work their way into the machine & corrode the shit out of EVERYTHING.

Bye-bye expensive farm robot!

Now let’s apply this to street settings.

Water. Dirt & grit. Road salt.

Just a little salt destroys metal! Even faster if it’s mixed with water, acids, surfactants, &/or grit.

And again, dirt & grit destroy joints.

They scratch up camera lenses & otherwise interfere with sensors.

They also scratch up any corrosion-proof coatings the engineers may have put on there, & expose the metals to water, salt, & acid.

These robots look super-vulnerable to normal wear & tear.

They look even more vulnerable to a super-soaker filled with common household items like salt, vinegar, & just a lil dish soap. Maybe with a lil diatomaceous earth to bump up the scrubbing power.

If they don’t go belly-up from short circuits immediately, they’re still looking at either an expensive tear-town, clean, & rebuild (takes the robot off the street for a few days)

or it’ll go belly-up within a week or two.

Both options are REALLY expensive & frustrating for own

Especially if they get hit with water/salt/acid/grit/soaps ASAP the moment they hit the street again.

Then the robots wind up spending more time in the shop on life support than actually doing their job.

That’s actually a pretty common outcome for automation!

Everyone gets excited about this fancy new machine that’s going to replace people. Then in real life it turns out to be broken all the time, can’t do shit, it’s a giant money pit, & eventually the sponsors give up.

idk just some thoughts on outdoor automation from someone who buries the corpses of failed robots for a living

it’s just really funny to me that these are supposed to be scary but probably can’t stand up to a water balloon full of pickle juice

uh… if you like “agricultural technology & the public good” you will love my book, for which there is a fundraiser with just a few days left [as of 2021 October 17] & it’s really close to the goal already 🍻