AI Scraping My Blog?

My Stat-Counter account has been showing this frequent Hong Kong visitor:

Total Sessions usually records how many times the computer has visited, but it says only 1, even though there are five total hits on this one page (of 20 hits) on the Stat Counter report.  It's been showing up frequently for weeks now.

I know, I said five, but they are scattered.  The one on top is one.  Here are three more and there was one more.  

I've had this sort of thing before, but it's been awhile.  In the past, the assumption was they were scraping content.  Now, I'm wondering if it isn't an AI bot gathering stuff for training.  If so, what should I do and how?  From Duda.

"How to Block AI Crawlers from Crawling your Site

Some site owners are choosing to block AI crawlers, such as ChatGPT and Bard from crawling their site in order to prevent it from learning from or using their website content. You can block these AI user-agents in a similar manner as you would block Google crawlers; by replacing the default robots.txt file with a new file that specifies disallow rules for specific AI user-agents."

When I first started blogging, I spent a lot of time learning about (and blogging about) technical aspects of blogging - how to:find out if anyone is reading the blog; to embed photos and videos; how to change the format; how to add an email address; etc.  

Now AI is raising other issues.  Such as how to block AI crawlers from using your site to train its bots.  

This is not what I want to spend my time on.  First the internet is telling me I have to block each crawler separately by adding code to the robot.txt file.  

Should You Block AI Tools From Accessing Your Website?

Unfortunately, there’s no simple way to block all AI bots from accessing your website, and manually blocking each individual bot is almost impossible. Even if you keep up with the latest AI bots roaming the web, there’s no guarantee they’ll all adhere to the commands in your robots.txt file. 

 From Google Search Central:

"You can control which files crawlers may access on your site with a robots.txt file.

A robots.txt file lives at the root of your site. So, for site www.example.com, the robots.txt file lives at www.example.com/robots.txt. robots.txt is a plain text file that follows the Robots Exclusion Standard. A robots.txt file consists of one or more rules. Each rule blocks or allows access for all or a specific crawler to a specified file path on the domain or subdomain where the robots.txt file is hosted. Unless you specify otherwise in your robots.txt file, all files are implicitly allowed for crawling."

That means I have to find the robots.text file and add stuff and hope I do it just right so I don't screw something else up.  But this site also warns:

"If you use a site hosting service, such as Wix or Blogger [That's me], you might not need to (or be able to) edit your robots.txt file directly. Instead, your provider might expose a search settings page or some other mechanism to tell search engines whether or not to crawl your page."

Of course I don't want to block search engines for browsers or only subscribers will ever see my posts.  

So I'm asking myself, is this worth the time it's going to take to figure this out.  Well, someone else asked that too.

"The real question here is whether the results are worth the effort, and the short answer is (almost certainly) no."

Here's another one saying the same thing:

"At the end of the day blocking ChatGPT and other generative AI crawlers is really a matter of choice. Depending on your website’s purpose and/or your business model it may make sense to. But in my opinion the vast majority of sites have nothing to fear from allowing AI crawlers to crawl their site."

For now, I want to agree with this advice.  But then I start thinking that this was written by an AI firm that wants to steal your content.   

And I don't even know if that Hong Kong visitor is scraping material for some AI enterprise.  Maybe it's just stealing content.  

Like your car, your house, your garden, your teeth, everything needs some maintenance to keep it functioning.  Clearly my phone and computer do, and this blog does as well, though I've avoided that for some time on the blog.  

I'm now officially putting myself on notice to pay more attention to AI.  

Blogging Block - Mushrooms And Octopuses

I've got a bunch of started posts, but finishing them gets hard.  Don't want to just be another opinion without strong evidence.  Don't want to post simple stuff that has no meat.  Don't want to say what others have already said.  And it's summer - Anchorage is green and the temperature has crept up to cool but comfortable.  The garden's been taking my time up - I do enjoy seeing everything that's popping up.  Seems most of the perennials have survived the winter.  Also have been pulling up dandelions - first, to get them before they go to seed and second to add the greens to the compost pile.  Still have lots of dead leaves and they need to be layered with fresh greens (and the kitchen compost).

Found a couple of morels had popped up yesterday.   

And getting that picture up reflects one of my obstacles - my airdrop to my laptop stops working after a while and I have to shut everything down and reboot to get it to work again.  

I'm reading David Scheel's Many Things Under a Rock:  The Mysteries of Octopuses for our next book club meeting.  I'm enjoying it immensely.  It's a pleasure to read, I'm learning about octopuses - what they prey on, who preys on them, and how they evade their predators, for starters.  

David Sheel teaches at Alaska Pacific University and has accepted our invitation to join us when we discuss his book.

Sheel writes that "many things under a rock" is a translation of the Eyak word for octopus.

Here's a sample:

"The giant Pacific octopus of Port Graham that had defeated the butter clam mentioned earlier ha taken the heavy bivalve in its suckered arms.  But she was to learn the limits of her strength.  With many suckers on multiple arms attached around both halves of the clamshell the octopus no doubt had tried to pull open this armored prey, perhaps with some patience.  The sucker attachment requires no persistent force, but the octopus has to pull continuously with its arms to pry apart the clam halves, while the clam resists, applying opposing force to hold itself closed. 

Watching an octopus apply this pressure can be a quiet affair.  If the clam wins, this may be a motionless tug-of-war.  With small clams, a giant Pacific octopus quickly and smoothly pulls the clamshell open, sometimes with enough force to break one of the clamshells.  The day octopus opens clams and pries loose prey from their holdfasts on the reef with a series of sharp pulls, its who body jerking until, sometimes with an audible crack, something breaks and the inner flesh is accessible.  The day octopus is very fast, often breaking into its prey or moving on within less than a minute, whereas the gist Pacific octopus my spend a few minutes to tens of minutes opening prey by pulling.  

In its battle with this large butter clam, the octopus tired first.  The clam was too strong, and did not yield to the octopus's strength.  So the octopus tried something else.  On the outside of the clamshell were no fewer than I've separate marks, two marks on one have of the clamshell and three marks on the other side.  The marks were small ovals mea by the giant Pacific octopus.   Each of those was an attempt by the octopus to get through the shell.  

These tiny oval perforations are drill marks.  Octopuses have inside their mouths a radula, which is a rising organ used to break up food.  The radula itself is a ribbonlike membrane  that runs between two muscle groups and lies over and between the posters, two muscularhydrostats.  Our human tongue, as well as octopus arms and the elephant's trunk, are muscular hydrostatic - anatomical constructions that use fluid pressure generated by muscle contractions rather than a rigid skeleton to allow movement.  Inside the octopus mouth, the bolsters can direct the pressure of a bend in the radula ribbon.  Along the length of the radula are rows of micro teeth.  Muscles at either end pull the radula back and forth, rasping it over and wearing away the surface against which it is applied.  

The radula begins the work of drilling, and is sufficient itself to make a hole.  But it cannot penetrate too deeply.  Beyond that, the salivary papillae, also tipped with a few rasping teeth must take over.  The salivary glands secrete enzymes that break dow the shell of prey such as crabs or this clam.  The papillae delivers the caustic secretions directly to the drill site, chemically dissolving the shell, and making it easier for the tooth-tipped salivary papillae to rasp away."

If you are having trouble imaging an octopus radula, here's a picture google says is an octopus radula.  Unfortunately, the link resulted in "Page Not Found."   I don't quite see the rest of the octopus so I'm still a bit confused.  But this helps a little.  

Additionally, I'd note, as I have on occasion that I am still posting about the Respiratory Disease Reports from State every week.  There's one more today.  You can find those at the Respiratory Virus Cases tab above (just under the orange banner.)  You can also go there with this link.  But I'd rather you find the tabs so you can check it any time.  This week COVID cases are up significantly while only one RSV case was reported, and the flu cases are down slightly.

So, many things under a block.  

Taking Advantage of My Air Drop Working Again

 My phone asked me to log in with my Apple ID today.  On a whim, I tried Air Drop after and it worked.  So, in what I hope is a long window, I'll put up some pictures.  

Grow North is the farm in Mountain View where the Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service of Anchorage Catholic Social services grows food for the summer and operates a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with once a week pick ups and sells fresh vegetables and some baked goods as well during the week.  You can't get much fresher food in Anchorage unless it's from your own garden.  

The garlic and the picture of the farm are from last week.  

This week's box includes:

• Classic cauliflower,
• Crunchy kohlrabi
• Unique malabar spinach,
• Tasty bok choi,
• And some lovely sage for the herb of the week!

From the email that CSA subscribers get:

"Malabar spinach seems like it would retain similarities to that of regular spinach. The plant uses the name spinach in it, yet the ironic part of that the two could not be more different. Malabar spinach grows on a vine, granting it the nickname of vine spinach, whereas regular spinach grows from the ground (like many leafy greens)."  

This Goose Lake as I rode by  The ducks hang out here because its's  spot where people feed them.

On a completely different bike ride, out past Taku Lake, they've had the big blue sign up much of the summer, but the little one just popped up.  If you can't read the small sign (which I'm guessing you can't) it says, "We are upgrading the skatepark!"  It also says the construction budget is $1.2 million. I know we've had inflation over the years, but really?  $1.2 million for curved concrete?  Curious how much profit the contractor, also listed as "Street Maintenance and Grindline Skate Parks LLC" is making.  I realize they may be doing more than just the skateboard park, but it would be nice if there was a watchdog group which gathered all the data on summer construction projects and evaluated how the money was spent.  

In other construction news, the ACS fiber optic team was out on Crescent in Geneva Woods today.  We're on the Lake Otis side, but all this area is getting wired.  That bright orange wire is popping up all around the neighborhoods.  

And it's mushroom season.  Here are some making appearances in my yard.

Don't have time now to research these.  The orange one is an amanita - hallucinogenic and al over Anchorage now.  It can also make you really sick.  Not planning on eating any, though I'm waiting for the King Boletes and the Shaggy Manes.  

But I have started eating the olive bread I made last night.  It came out well.  The one in the back is a dill experiment.  (We got lots of fresh dill from Grow North Farm last week.)

Meanwhile J got off the phone this evening with her long time friend (does 45 years count as long time?) who lives on the Haleakala foothills in Maui.  Her house is far from Lahaina, but there is also a fire up in that neighborhood as well and she's been evacuated and is staying with friends.  If I recall right, Maui has its share of eucalyptus trees, and their oil burns easily.  May the fire be quickly extinguished and your house survive.  

"It's been two months since I blogged. Considering that I am . . ."

From Ursula LeGuin's No Time To Spare:

"It's been two months since I blogged.  Considering that I am on the eve of my eighty-fifth birthday, and that anyone over seven-five who isn't continuously and conspicuously active is able to be considered dead, I thought I should make some signs of life.  Wave from the grave, as it were.  Hello, out there!  How are things in the Land of Youth?  Here in the Land of Age they are rather weird."

While for me, it's only been four days, and I still have daylight between now and 85, I am over 75 and don't want to be considered dead yet.  

For years and years I blogged pretty much daily.  And when I'm engaged in an important story (say Redistricting) blogging does take front and center in my life still.  But I've also given myself permission to take days off.  But don't want to have too many blank pages here.

So here's a list of other distractions:

1.  Technical - Getting photos from my phone to my laptop stopped working

I thought I'd conquered this, but the AirDrop stopped working again and the original fix didn't stick. Photos are an important part of this blog (at least for me).  Monday, when we went for a hike, I took along my bigger Canon so I could use the memory card to get the pictures onto my MacBook.  After two photos the battery stopped working.  

So I reverted back to the phone.  I'd find a way.  I figured I could upload the pictures to Blogspot (the blog site I'm using) on my phone. Easy Peasy.  But I couldn't.  I googled.  Here's what I found on google support::  (Google bought Blogspot long ago as well as other independent apps I've used for the blog)

"If your photo is on your phone, it is probably in Apple Photos. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no direct upload from Photos to Blogger. You must therefore export the image to your phone as a jpg. Then you can upload it into Blogger using the "from device" option in the Blogger post editor.

I do not know how to export the image to your phone as a jpg. But once you copy it into Blogger, you can delete the jpg file."

Or on Apple discussions

"iPhoto pictures no longer upload to Blogger with Mojave 10.14.6 update installed"

I've been thinking I might need to get a more current iPhone and even upgrade my laptop (it's about nine years old and the letters on six keys are no longer readable), but I have pulled out my old Canon Powershot and I'll use that until then.  It has a memory card I can insert into my laptop.  But as I think about it, I'm sure the newer laptops no longer have a spot to insert a memory card.  

2.  Other things - Reading online

Twitter and Spoutible - Despite everything, Twitter still alerts me to important items of (I hate to use this term because it's so overused) 'breaking' news, particularly Anchorage and Alaska related things.  Mainly because I've been careful to pick who I follow, I don't get a lot of garbage tweets. But as Twitter goes X-tinct,  Spoutible is getting more 'useful' Spouters (useful here meaning people who put up things I want to hear about) but I'm still getting too many "Hope you all are doing great this morning!" Spouts.  There's nothing wrong with them, but that's not why I'm on Spoutible.  

Spoutible also got its Android app up and then a couple of weeks later the IOS app was ready.  I downloaded it, but I couldn't type in the login info.  My keyboard didn't work.  Their announcements had said that the iPhone 7 still had some problems, so I deleted it.  When I downloaded it again a few days ago, I could log in.  But the keyboard doesn't work when I try to reply or to Spout.  

I've put Twitter and Spoutible under Reading.  I spend way too much time on these apps.  They were supposed to give me tips for blog posts (and they do) as well as back up information I can use to support my arguments on the blog.  But they are also addictive.  It's like fishing or slot machines, you're always hoping the next one will be good, and enough are, that you keep casting or putting more money in, when you should just walk away.  

3.  Other things - Reading books

I've got the following three books that I'm actively working on:

Boy, I didn't realize how relatively poor the images are on the Canon Powershot compared to my phone.  Demon Copperhead is for my September book club meeting (but I thought it was for August so I started it because it's long). No Time to Spare is the August book.  It's essays Le Guin wrote late in life (as the quote at the beginning of this post suggests) and so far it's focusing on being old.  She's not sugar-coating things.  Blowback is by Miles Taylor, a Republican who worked as a high level Homeland Security appointee in the Trump administration and is using the book to warn people about how crazy Trump is and the kinds of things to be expected in a second Trump administration.  Because Trump wanted to do them (and in some cases did) during his presidency.  But this time, Taylor warns, Trump and the conservative interests that back him, are better organized to make them happen.  Basically like establishing a Fascist regime supporting the wealthy and making life harder for everyone else, particularly those who aren't white, Christian, heterosexual men.  

As I figure out ways I can contribute to protecting democracy in the 2024 election, books like this give me facts to convince non-voters why they need to vote. Non-voters are the key.  But I'm not giving up on Trumpers either though that's time spent doing more work for smaller gains.  

But while people say the hard core Trump supporters are a cult, immune to reason and reality, I know that people leave cults all the time.  Cult-Escape is just one of many websites (not necessarily the best) for people thinking about getting out.  I also know that the Trump cult is reinforced by trolls who spew out misinformation at high volume, whether they do it on their own, for money, or with the support of foreign governments.  They exaggerate the number of people who support the Trump world of lies.  

There are several other books, newspapers that tempt me away from the blog (all in the guise of keeping me informed and giving me material for the blog.)

3.  Other things - local events

I listened in on the Alaska Board of Education hearings on a policy to ban transgender girls from girls sports. (You can find the written testimony here, here, here, here, and here.) While I have lots to say, the anti-ban crowd made many good arguments I don't have to duplicate.  

But what no one mentioned (while I listened in anyway) was the fact that the Board began the meeting with a Christian prayer that ended with "in Jesus' name."  

Here's a government board, holding a public hearing on a policy that is being heavily pushed by Christian Nationalists (and other Christians who would legitimately reject the Nationalist part) and beginning with a Christian prayer, that excludes those who are agnostic or atheists, and members of religions that do not worship Jesus Christ.  I can only think of two reasons for this:

1. To show their power to add their religion into their governmental function - that they can get away with this
2. Because they are so sheltered from the non-Christian world that they don't realize how offensive this is to people who don't see the world the way they do.  

(A PEW Trust study copyrighted in 2021 found that 37% of Alaskans identify as in religions other than Christianity or no religion. That's more than 1/3.  Under 

"Frequency of participation in prayer, scripture study or religious education groups among adults in Alaska"

fully 69% responded "seldom or never.")

If the Board is so out of touch with people who are not devout Christians that they can open this public meeting with a Christian prayer, imagine how out of touch they are with transgender youth!  This is not a representative body of Alaskans making this decision.  Even the Alaska legislature rejected this and the Governor has now asked a body that he's (mostly) personally appointed to do what the people's elected representatives wouldn't do.  

OK, so that by itself is a synopsis of a blog post I've been thinking about.  

There was also Juneteenth and Gay Pride which I didn't post about because I couldn't easily get my photos up.  

4.  Other things - biking and the garden

I took my bike in for a service yesterday.  There's a regular clank sound every time my right pedal is forward. It's been about four years and I've ridden it a lot (for an old man anyway) each summer. As of yesterday I've biked 762 km (473 miles) since April.  Last year my goal was 1000km which I passed and I'm well on my way to doing the same this summer.  I put it down here only because it takes up about five or six hours a week.  But mentally the biking is good for my blogging.  

Reviewing this before posting I realize I left out the gardening part.  I'll just say my favorite gardening book is No Work Garden.  Much of the hill in our backyard is natural - birch, alder, high bush cranberry and other local fauna.  We've focused on perennials which come back on their own. And the front lawn, much to the chagrin of our neighbors (though they've come to accept it over the years) is clover right now along with rock garden perennials along the sidewalk.  Gardening enthusiasm is highest in the spring when the snow is gone and things start poking out of the earth.  I have put in hours of weeding and thinning, and I do just enjoy wandering the yard to see all the daily surprises.  

5.  Other things - Netflix

We're currently juggling The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, Suits, Friday Night Lights, and random other movies or short series that some variety.  After watching several seasons of Suits I've concluded we would all be much better off if we had script writers to help us with our day-to-day interactions.  

Netflix takes a toll in my blog writing time.  

6.  Other things - Tutoring English

One of the more delightful activities this spring and summer has been tutoring a Ukrainian refugee in Ketchikan in English.  His English is good enough to communicate what he needs to say, but we're adding vocabulary, pronunciation (both sounds and sentence rhythms), grammar, and cultural nuances.  We were paired by Catholic Social Services' Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service (RAIS) and it's a great match, pedagogically and personally.  We tend to have a good time even though I work him hard.  Planning lessons and actually doing the lessons take up four to eight hours a week, depending on if we meet once or twice a week.  Twice a week is the norm.  

There are other things as well - the general maintenance people have to do in their lives, paying bills, getting things cleaned and repaired, getting and preparing food (fortunately, my wife has done the lion's share of this in recent years in part because she's not that excited about my cooking), and I'm sure you can add to the list.  

But I'm committed to writing here on important topics.  But I must say, that the local political and legal events I spent so much time on in previous years are being better covered by others now.  Twitter has been a big addition there as well as more local reporters covering events.  That just wasn't the case back in 2006 when I started blogging.  And it took me a while to jump from more mundane blogging to more public affairs blogging.  

Have a good weekend.  We're having more sun and warmth than we did earlier this summer.  But compared to much of the world, the weather has been very comfortable and the air quality good.  

The Lazy Blogger

 For most of the life of this blog, I posted close to daily.  Within the last six months or so (maybe longer) I've given myself permission to slack off.  Why?  

• This should be fun, or at the very least satisfying for me.  
• There's so much crazy out there to write about it's hard to choose how to best spend one's time dealing with it.  
• When I write about important issues I want to do it right - get most of the key issues and back up what I saw with evidence and that often takes time.  But that means working harder than just popping off with my opinion
• Much of that crazy is simply intended to confound rational people, because 
• it isn't intended to make sense, 
• but to waste rational people's time as they try to 'expose' the lies
• The key things we need to focus on are:
• signing up non-voters, people who 
• have never voted because they aren't interested in politics
• have never voted because they weren't old enough and may not know how to vote and for some, are leery about doing something they aren't good at
• for those of us who went along with our parents when they voted, this may seem hard to believe, but lots of people have parents who didn't vote or didn't take them along to familiarize them with the process
• stopped voting because they think both parties are equally bad
• don't vote because they think their one vote doesn't make a difference
• developing scripts with evidence explaining 
• why voting is important
• that there is a huge difference between the parties
• that democracy is threatened if the GOP hold on to the House, regain the Senate, and/or the Presidency
• how to vote and how to get their non-voting friends to vote too
• [UPDATED MARCH 27, 2023 - How to distinguish between fact and fiction, human and bot.]

But we can't use ignore ALL the BS flying around.  So I do have some thoughts on the pay raise for the Governor, his commissioners, and the legislature among many other things.  But that's for later posts.  Enjoy the end of the weekend.  Do something you've never done before.  

Blogger Put Warning On 2009 Post Here

I got this message Wednesday morning: 

Your post titled "Sullivan's Unity Speaker Swann Paid Enough for One Muni Job" has been put behind a warning for readers

Inbox

Blogger <no-reply@google.com>

     Hello,

     As you may know, our Community Guidelines  

(https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy) describe the boundaries for what we  

allow-- and don't allow-- on Blogger. Your post titled "Sullivan's Unity  

Speaker Swann Paid Enough for One Muni Job" was flagged to us for review.  

This post was put behind a warning for readers because it contains  

sensitive content; the post is visible at  

http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2009/09/sullivans-unity-speaker-swan-paid.html.  

Your blog readers must acknowledge the warning before being able to read  

the post/blog.

     We apply warning messages to posts that contain sensitive content. If  

you are interested in having the status reviewed, please update the content  

to adhere to Blogger's Community Guidelines. Once the content is updated,  

you may republish it at  

https://www.blogger.com/go/appeal-post?blogId=30897652&postId=4712449764177590722.  

This will trigger a review of the post.

     For more information, please review the following resources:

     Terms of Service: https://www.blogger.com/go/terms

     Blogger Community Guidelines: https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy

     Sincerely,

     The Blogger Team

I've been blogging here since 2006. That's 16 years.  I have never gotten such a warning before.  

My posts are by internet standards high in accuracy, with lots of clarification and qualification and understatement.  

I can think of three possibilities here:

1. Blogger has changed its policies and now is monitoring content more than before
2. They've been doing this all along but the low key and carefully couched way I write has never been a problem
3. There's a new vigilance and strategy by the Right to go after what they perceive as enemies.

If I had to guess, I'd pick numbers 2 and 3.  

Why?  The coiners of the term 'cancel culture' have been particularly unhappy about clampdowns on racist, sexist, and other discriminatory posts as well as the spreading of outright lies.

 (I object to indiscriminate use of the term 'conspiracy theory' because conspiracies do exist - when people work together behind the scenes to commit crimes.  Using the term 'conspiracy theory' to mean crazy makes people exposing actually conspiracies seem crazy too.)

This has become more of an issue since Trump was banned from Twitter.  And as Twitter's new owner is releasing bans on racist language and outright lies and intentional misinformation, I've also been seeing Tweets by reasonable, truth seeking progressive Tweeters who are being cancelled by Twitter.  Going back and looking for those examples is too time consuming, but here's a thread from progressive blogger Seth Abramson on how progressive bloggers are seeing huge drops in followers while misleading COVID and racist and Nazi accounts are being reinstated.

I've generally flown under the radar here.  The one time I was told to take down a post, it was from an attorney for the so called Alaska International Film Festival (mimicking the legit Anchorage International Film Festival) saying I was slandering his client.  My attorney's reply quickly ended that threat.  That was in 2010.  

Recently I - not the blog - got noticed by Right wing hyperbolizers when I sent an email to the Anchorage Assembly and it was pretty much posted verbatim on Must Read Alaska.

I went to the post and now it had a door, so to speak, that warned readers and required them to click the box that said they wanted to proceed.  

I'm guessing this could be part of the Right's cancelling efforts which flagged the 2009 post questioning how much Lynn Swann was paid by Anchorage Mayor (then) Dan Sullivan to speak here. Or it could Lynn Swann's booking company finding it on Google and protesting.  Or it could be someone who just found this old post and thought the title was misleading.

When I got the notice I carefully reread the post and couldn't figure out how Blogger could consider it a violation of their standards.  OK, the title of the post is misleading, but the body of the post explains why I titled it that and the first paragraph updates things to explain that a commenter added new information which made the title moot.  Did they really want me to change the title?  In this day when people post totally false stories that endanger the public and our democracy?  

Maybe someone flagged it and no one at Blogger actually read it.  So I reread the email to figure out how to communicate with them.  My only option seemed to be to click on an appeal link, which I did.  No way to actually add my thoughts.

Then later yesterday I got a new email saying the post had been reinstated.

Your post titled "Sullivan's Unity Speaker Swann Paid Enough for One Muni Job" has been reinstated

Hello,

     We have re-evaluated the post titled "Sullivan's Unity Speaker Swann  

Paid Enough for One Muni Job" against Community Guidelines  

https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy. Upon review, the post has been  

reinstated. You may access the post at  

http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2009/09/sullivans-unity-speaker-swan-paid.html.

     Sincerely,

     The Blogger Team

I guess someone at Blogger actually read it and realized it was as offensive as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which, if it falls open face down on the rug could be a problem. 

This was a 2009 post that really has no great relevance at all today, except maybe that it refers to a Black ex-football player and failed Republican political candidate.

In any case I want to note it here now.  The GOP has taught us well that we should not ignore the early warning signs.  I hope this is a one time exception to things.

Thank You Ms. Downing For Calling Attention To My Email To The Anchorage Assembly

Yesterday I sent an email to the  Anchorage Assembly.  I've been concerned about the disruptive behavior of a number of people who give testimony at Assembly meeting.  It's frequently demeaning and racist (calling Assembly members Faggots, using Jew as an epithet) and who otherwise attempt to prevent the Assembly from getting their work done.  There are also reports of people verbally and physically intimidating others who testify, both inside the Assembly chambers and out. 

I'd started a letter to the Assembly back in July.  Yesterday, after reading the ADN article about the man who made a long racist diatribe about Alaska Natives and homelessness,  I went through it, edited it a bit, and emailed it to all the Assembly members.  

This morning I got a comment on my last point that was simply a link to a Must Read Alaska* post.  

Actually, it was a relatively decent post by Must Read Alaska (MRAK) standards.  After discussing the incident and reactions, it then turned to my email (which was sent to all the Assembly members.)  In fact 85% of what I sent the Assembly was in the post.  Over 50% of the the MRAK post was my letter.  (I'm sure there is a check in the mail to pay me for my contribution.)  

The first part is a report of the incident and other people's reactions.  Then she gets to my email.  Mostly it's direct quotes, but she does say in the headline "university professor suggests ‘people’s brains have been polluted.'  She also says I want censorship 

"a letter to the Assembly about how to handle speech that is racist, hateful, or not welcome. He wants the public censored."

I never use the word censorship nor do I talk about unwelcome speech.  But I did use hateful and racist.  I guess she thinks those things are good.  That seems to be her biggest issues and you'd miss her comments if you blinked. 

I'd note 'pollution' was a metaphor here.  But I think it is apt and I explained it in the email.

What's telling is the tiny, but important, part she left out:  The conditions for participation in Democracy:  

• Sincerity - authentic discourse requires trust between participants that they are being honest and truly wish to find a solution. 
• Focus on specific issue - not simply ideological posturing without reference to some specific situation.
• Willing attention - Sincerely interested in the problem, willing to do the work necessary to get through the issues seriously, including listening attentively to what others say.
• Substantive Contribution - having a unique point of view, specific expertise, or something that helps the discussion move along - even just the ability to express the concerns of a class of people.

I quoted Fox and Miller who were examining what was needed for the public forum to work, that is to come to decent solutions to the problems the public faces.  

I have to thank Suzanne Downing for giving my email this much attention - much more than it would get from the Assembly members.  Much more than it would get on my blog.  

And she doesn't actually say anything negative about it.  I'm not sure whether she disagrees with the idea that brains can be polluted or whether she just thought that was an idea that would rile up her readers.  

She does also suggest that I'm proposing to censor people who speak at the Assembly.  I'd point out that I recognize that people have First Amendment rights to free speech.  But the Assembly has an interest in having orderly meetings and speakers who add to solving problems, not speakers whose intent is to spread hate, disrupt, and, yes, pollute the public forum.  Perhaps her intent was to rally the troops against what I see as a reasonable and logical attempt to honor people's free speech rights while also maintaining some semblance of order at Assembly meetings.  Maybe she recognizes it for what I intended and that's precisely why she's flagging it and hoping her loyal readers (some of whom are frequent Assembly disrupters) will  attack the suggestions and make it harder for the Assembly to use it.  We'll see.  

So my suggestions allow them to help people organize their thoughts better and to ban folks who cannot follow the rules.  It's not about what they say, but whether it furthers the Assembly's objectives to come up with ways to deal with the issues that arise or if it makes it harder to do that. 

And since Assembly meetings are online people can still view them.  And since people can send in written comments (or even leave voice mail messages), their freedom of speech is preserved, while allowing the Assembly to have orderly meetings.  

A note I did leave out of my letter, was that judges in court have this power to eject people who disrupt the proceedings.  While the courtroom and the Assembly chamber are not the same, both have an interest in conducting public meetings so they can come to a fair and reasonable resolution.  The point of public testimony is to get input from the public about the issue at hand.  It is not just an open forum to talk about anything, or to insult those you disagree with.  Just as the judge in a courtroom has the right and power to limit how information is introduced, the Assembly members have the right to limit speech that does not lead to resolving the issue at hand.  They don't have the right to simply cut off people who advocate solutions they disagree with.  But if someone's speech is not on topic or is disruptive, they can cut them off from oral testimony.  Written testimony can be submitted without disrupting the meeting and allows for people to get their ideas on the record.  The Assembly is not a Speakers Corner at Hyde Park  where anyone can say most anything.  The Assembly is taking testimony to add to their understanding of how to resolve issues facing the Municipality.  

I'd also like to clarify the Fair Use Doctrine here. From Stanford University:

"What Is Fair Use?

In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. In other words, fair use is a defense against a claim of copyright infringement. If your use qualifies as a fair use, then it would not be considered an infringement.

So what is a “transformative” use? If this definition seems ambiguous or vague, be aware that millions of dollars in legal fees have been spent attempting to define what qualifies as a fair use. There are no hard-and-fast rules, only general guidelines and varied court decisions, because the judges and lawmakers who created the fair use exception did not want to limit its definition. Like free speech, they wanted it to have an expansive meaning that could be open to interpretation.

Most fair use analysis falls into two categories: (1) commentary and criticism, or (2) parody."

She only appears to comment/criticize a very limited part of what I wrote.  If it were parody there would be some transformation of what I wrote.  BUT, emails to the Assembly aren't copyrighted, so she can probably do what she wants with it.  

So, below is the full text of what I wrote to the Assembly.  The parts that appeared in the Must Read Alaska blog are in green.  The parts I sent to the Assembly that she did not lift verbatim are in black.  I'd note that she did give credit and she did use quotation marks.  

"Suggestions for the Anchorage Assembly on ways to get public testimony focused on the issues and to avoid disruptive and hateful testimony.

I offer this as a contribution to the discussions ignited recently in response to David Lazer’s recent racist testimony.  First there's an introduction to the concept of pollution of public discourse.  Then there are specific recommendations.  

Steven Aufrecht

Professor Emeritus, Public Administration

University of Alaska Anchorage

Underlying concepts for good public discourse  

Charles Fox and Hugh Miller, two public administration scholars, many years ago suggested some conditions for participation in a public discourse.  Without these, democracy cannot thrive.

The participants should all possess the following:

• Sincerity - authentic discourse requires trust between participants that they are being honest and truly wish to find a solution. 
• Focus on specific issue - not simply ideological posturing without reference to some specific situation.
• Willing attention - Sincerely interested in the problem, willing to do the work necessary to get through the issues seriously, including listening attentively to what others say.
• Substantive Contribution - having a unique point of view, specific expertise, or something that helps the discussion move along - even just the ability to express the concerns of a class of people.

Pollution of Public Discourse

What's that? If toxic chemicals get into the water system, the whole system has to be cleaned out before people can drink the water again.

When people come to the public forum, but insult their fellow citizens, spout half truths and complete lies, don't learn the complexity of issues, they are really civic outlaws who pollute the public forum. 

Our progress to finding alternatives that we can all reasonably live with is thwarted. Instead, the public forum is cluttered with rhetorical litter - lies, falsehoods, innuendo and clear cut slanders - that have to be cleaned up before we can go on. 

But it's not as simple as picking up trash. People’s brains have been polluted, misinformation has been planted, and people have lost trust in others, healthy debate dissolves into hostile conflict.    

The point of civic debate, theoretically, is to work out our disagreements. We:

1.  share ideas about the problem, the possible solutions 

2. identify facts, 

3. forecast consequences and costs. 

That’s the ideal. Separating the objective from the emotional is never easy. We want to allow for emotion in testimony, but we also must draw a line when emotion becomes polluting of the discourse and derails sincere attempts to deal with issues.

Recommendations

Point of the Assembly having the public speak is:

1. Hear their preferences
2. Hear the reasons for supporting one action/path over another
3. Gain additional facts about the costs (financial or other), impacts, etc. about one option versus another
4. Identify options that meet the needs of the most people, or minimally inconvenience the fewest people 
5. Get a sense of how many people support a position (though good polling would be more accurate than counting people at meetings)

Actions that pollute the public discourse:

1. Repetition of the same information
2. Addressing unrelated issues
3. Intentional misinformation 
4. Personal insults and attacks
5. Trying to get one’s preferred outcome through physical or verbal abuse and intimidation rather than reason and information

Strategies to encourage good public discourse and to discourage pollution of public discourse.  

1. Clarifying what is expected of speakers
1. Written guidelines for oral testimony
2. Video guidelines
3. Written public testimony form to help people focus their presentation
1. State your preference - A, B, C etc.
2. Facts supporting your preference
3. Reasons for your preference 
1. How does it affect you?
2. How does it affect others?
3. Costs/Savings it might entail
4. Additional facts/points that have not been raised

2. Offer the public a summary of the basic options, supporting data, costs, and impacts and ask speakers to address those points - particularly if they have something to add or refute
3. Assembly chair or members ask questions guiding the speaker toward answering the questions on the public testimony form - “Do you have any new facts to add to the discussion?”  
4. Use of technology to get the public’s views

1. Electronic surveys people can take live at meetings to show support for one or another option or point - these can be done via cell phones and can show results on the screen.  People watching from home should also be able to participate.  
2. Online written, possibly audio and video, options that people can use to submit their testimony.  The Alaska Redistricting Board had this option on their website which allowed people to submit written testimony online.  The testimony was then made available for all to see online.  Board members got packets of the testimony.
3. Investigate what other participation technology options are already in use in classrooms, in government public hearings, in  business settings

5. Consequences for people who violate the Assembly ground rules

1. There’s a difference between people who genuinely have trouble organizing their thoughts and those who are intentionally trying to disrupt the meetings.  The former should be encouraged and given help.  The latter should be given alternative ways to submit their input other than oral testimony at Assembly meetings.
2. There can be a hierarchy of offenses.
1. Level 1: Worst
1. Intimidation - name calling, insults, slurs directed at other members of the public or at Assembly members or administration representatives.  This includes physical and verbal threats that occur inside and outside the chamber.
2. Intentional disruptions that unnecessarily delay the proceedings.  This is trickier, however the Assembly needs the power to keep order at meetings and to eject people who regularly disrupt meetings and do not stop when asked to, 
2. Level 2:  Bad
1. Regular harangues that are disruptive rather than sincere attempts at resolving an issue
3. Level 3:  Minor 
1. Repetition of things already said (this can be handled with electronic polls)
2. Difficulty organizing one’s thoughts - this needs understanding, unless it is something that happens repeatedly from the same person, in which case, moving to written testimony or referral to Public Testimony Guidelines
3. Hierarchy of penalties  - should be appropriate to the offense
1. Banning from public meetings (online access is available and ability to make online written testimony means the person can still hear what is happening and can still participate, but without disrupting the public discourse.)
2. Banning from making oral testimony at public meetings. Again, they can still submit written testimony, all of which should be available to the public.

This is a start.  Obviously there are legal issues to be resolved.  But I believe that the ability to watch the Assembly meetings online and to submit written testimony means that people who are banned from giving public oral testimony or even from attending meetings because of disruptive behavior, can still have access to their First Amendment rights. The rules, warning steps, and penalties have to be clearly stated, and even handedly meted out for this to work."

*I should note that Must Read Alaska is written by a former Alaska Republican Party communications director and she has been supportive of the disruptive actions of the group Save Anchorage. It is hard to find objective reviews online. Here is an Anchorage Press piece that gives some background.