Five Links Worth Checking Out - Definitely #1

 I used to blog daily, but I started this before most social media were active.  In fact I didn't realize a blog was part of social media when I started.  

I didn't intend to be a curator, but Bluesky, Spoutible, and other sources often unearth interesting articles that are worth sharing.  So here's another menu of interesting readings that taught me things I didn't know or know about.    

1.  Card Catalog - Teaching you how to think like a librarian in the age of AI.

Google Has a Secret Reference Desk. Here's How to Use It.

40 Google features to find exactly what you need, the alternative search engines that do things Google won't, and the reference desk framework underneath all of it.

HANA LEE GOLDIN, MLIS   FEB 24, 2026

These really are shortcuts on google searches.  Some examples:

"The minus sign

removes a word from your results entirely. Put it directly before the word with no space: jaguar -car returns the animal, mercury -planet returns the element or the musician depending on your other terms. Precise, effective, and useful any time a word you’re searching carries more than one meaning.

The asterisk *

works as a wildcard for any missing word or phrase. Try: “the * of artificial intelligence”. The asterisk stands in for whatever word you can’t remember or want to explore. It’s invaluable for chasing down half-remembered titles and quotes, and it surfaces the full range of ways a phrase gets used across different contexts, which is useful for research that starts from a concept rather than a specific source.

intitle: and inurl:

let you filter by the structure of a page rather than just its content. intitle:”media literacy” returns only pages where that phrase appears in the actual title, not just mentioned once in passing. inurl:gov intitle:”AI policy” finds government pages where AI policy is the stated subject. Combined, they’re considerably more precise than keyword searching alone."

I tend to use DuckDuckGo as my browser and I was wondering if these would work there.  Turns out there is a list of alternatives to using google.  Here's what it said about DuckDuckGo:

"DuckDuckGo is free, doesn’t track your searches, and supports all the operators covered above. It also has a feature called !bangs: type !w before any search to go straight to Wikipedia, or !scholar for Google Scholar. It turns the search bar into a shortcut launcher for wherever you want to land, without a company logging where that is."

Lots of useful tips.  I've bookmarked the page because I know I'll want to look at it to remind me of shortcuts I'm not using.  I'm going to try out at least three a day.

2.  The Situation: But Wait! There’s More!  (From Lawfare blog)

Katherine Pompilio, Benjamin Wittes

Tuesday, April 7, 2026, 2:46 PM

About their interactive chart to document habeas corpus cases in the United States courts that the Trump administration is not in compliance with.  

Sorry, the image isn't big enough.  It's just a screenshot, but here is the link to the interactive chart.

3. STRENGTH THROUGH NUMBERS  (his website and the title of his book)

The Strategist’s Fallacy in American politics

The average American voter does not think about politics the way elite strategists and pundits do

G. ELLIOTT MORRIS

OCT 28, 2025

This one is for those of you who rather not read too much - It only has the introduction in front of the paywall.  

4.  RUMINATO POLITICS

The People vs. Donald J. Trump

This presentation to a jury of his peers is also a handy, comprehensive reference to his crimes when you debate those somehow still on the fence about this maniac

CHARLES BASTILLE   APR 06, 2026

"On behalf of all decent Americans, I am calling for a citizen’s arrest.

Let us waste no more time. Let the proceedings begin. This post includes a comprehensive list of 39 separate crimes against the people of the United States. There are more, either not appearing here or not yet uncovered.

Defendant: Donald John Trump.

Charges: High crimes and treason. Nary a misdemeanor to be found because they’re all felonies. Felonious like a mafia boss, with loads of Diddy thrown in for extra effect. The worst human in the public realm.

Jury: The jury is you.

The judge in this case: Whoever happens to be wearing a nice, black, terry cloth bathroom robe while reading this."

It then goes on to list crimes committed by Trump and his entourage, with links.   

5.  'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back

Jason Koebler  March 16, 2026

"Every day, Michael Geoffrey Asia spent eight consecutive hours at his laptop in Kenya staring at porn, annotating what was happening in every frame for an AI data labeling company. When he was done with his shift, he started his second job as the human labor behind AI sex bots, sexting with real lonely people he suspected were in the United States. His boss was an algorithm that told him to flit in and out of different personas."

There's a 45 minute video interview with Michael Geoffrey Asia.  If you open it at the website, there are no ads.  If I embed it from Youtube, it's got ads.  So it's better to just go to the website.  

 

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More Reading/Listening Tips: AI, Iran, Surveillance Self-Defense

This is a followup to a March 21 post "Navigating Social Media - Just Find And Read The Good Stuff"

1.  "They have not seen truth, they have created fairy tales"

Listen to this view of Iran and the war on Soft Power from someone who knows Iran better than most USians.  

"Less than 24 hours after he graduated from college, Paul Barker was on a plane, en route to Iran, where he would spend the next five years as a Peace Corps volunteer, immersed in Iranian culture and history. And though he followed that with three decades of international work, he remained--remains!--in the thrall of Iran. And he understands, more so than almost anyone, the scope of the cataclysm unfolding there. (Recorded on March 12, 2026.)

2.  AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage by Cory Doctorow 

"AI is asbestos in the walls of our tech society, stuffed there by monopolists run amok. A serious fight against it must strike at its roots"

I checked with my son - who knows a lot more about computers and the internet than I do - and he vouched for Doctorow's insights.  This is a must read.   

3.  From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

"SURVEILLANCE SELF-DEFENSE

TIPS, TOOLS, AND HOW-TOS FOR SAFER ONLINE COMMUNICATIONS

A PROJECT OF THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION

We’re the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a member-supported non-profit working to protect online privacy for over thirty-five years. This is Surveillance Self-Defense: our expert guide to protecting you and your friends from online spying.

Read the BASICS to find out how online surveillance works. Dive into our TOOL GUIDES for instructions to installing our pick of the best, most secure applications. We have more detailed information in our FURTHER LEARNING sections. If you’d like a guided tour, look for our list of common SECURITY SCENARIOS."

EFF is one of the leading organizations in the world defending electronic privacy.  See comments from the World Economic Forum or Wikipedia

Don't be overwhelmed.  Start with BASICS and make a list of things you can do to improve your personal digital privacy.  

Why Was Stephen Colbert Told To Pull James Talarico Interview?

Fascist states censor. They want to control what people believe to be true.  

Stephen Colbert interviewed Texas state representative James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for US Senate in Texas.  His opponent in the upcoming primary is Member of Congress Jasmine Crockett.  Both appear to be strong candidates.  Both have Democratic detractors.  Or bots doing it.  I've seen social media posts saying Talarico isn't really a Democrat and will be another Fetterman.  And there are those that say a Black woman can't win in Texas.

But, apparently the White House doesn't want Talarico to be the Democratic candidate.  Watch the Colbert show where Colbert tells us that CBS didn't let him play the Talarico interview, but that you can see it on Youtube.  (By the way, Colbert did interview Jasmine Crockett July 2025.)  (Googling "Colbert interview with Jasmine Crockett July 2025" gave me four pages of links to stories about the Talarico interview!!  I had to work to find the link to the Crockett interview.)

And then watch the interview that was blocked, on Youtube.  

I'm guessing that the Republicans are more concerned that a white guy who's a Christian pastor will be more more competitive against the eventual GOP candidate than a fiery, smart Black woman.  Or they think that it will be easier (and more fun) for them to smear the Black lady than the choir boy.  But there's backlash against Talarico from the left too.

"There's a definite battle waged on behalf of
the old guard "dems" who believe that a safe
white man is always the answer. . ."

I'm not sure they're wrong.  But I'm also not sure they're right.  

We've been told that Texas was going to go blue with Beto O'Rourke and then with Colin Allred , both formidable candidates.  So I'm not counting my Senators before they're elected.  

But Trump's heavy handed misadministration has set up 2026 to be the year of the Democrats. One could well argue that if it doesn't happen this year, it's not going to happen.  But it will eventually, given that the demographic shifts continue.  And that's one reason ICE is trying to deport as many people as possible.  

But non-citizens can't vote and don't vote (no matter how loudly the GOP yell about the need for every voter to prove they are citizens), so at this point they aren't thinning the rolls through deportation.  Though the SAVE Act would have a massive impact on elections.  [The SAVE Act link goes to a post from May last year, and there have been some changes, but you can see this is intended to prevent as many people as possible from voting, particularly those more likely to vote blue, like women.]

From what I've seen, both Talarico and Crockett are formidable candidates.  Will Talarico get more white Christians and maybe get votes from Republicans?  Possibly.  But will a white candidate cause Black voters to skip voting because he beat their bright and most in-your-face Black candidate?  Will Crockett get out the Black vote that other candidates haven't reached?  

Step one is the primary, which has already begun in Texas.  From the Texas Newsroom via the Texas Standard:

"Texas voters can now cast their ballots early for the state’s March 3 party primaries. The results of these elections will determine who represents Republicans and Democrats on the ballot in November.

Despite the important role party primaries play in state politics, Texas has consistently seen low voter turnout for them. Take 2022, during the last midterm election year. During those primaries, only 3 million Texans cast ballots — just 17% percent of the state’s registered voters at the time.

Because relatively few of Texas’ more than 18 million eligible voters show up for these elections, that means those who do vote have an outsize influence on the Lone Star State’s political landscape."

Somewhat relevant to all this is the video below I came across of Texas Rep. Barbara Jordan telling us what impeachment is all about in 1974.  I've been a giant fan of Barbara Jordan since I first came across her about that time.  Just listen to the authority in her voice.  But with no condescension or sarcasm. (or am I missing it?)  If I were doing a movie that had God as a character, her voice would be perfect.  

It's Time To Catch Up Here - From No-Snow, Yes-Snow, Trees, Basketball, DEI etc.

There are lots of reasons I haven't blogged for a while.  There's so much nonsense flooding social media, I'd like to not add to it.  But there are also terrible things happening that are begging for push back.  But if I blog about them, I want to offer a different perspective than what everyone else is saying, and I haven't been very confident I could.  

But also, we've returned to Anchorage.  Aside from finding Anchorage strangely snow free in early/mid March, there was also a spruce leaning on another tree in the back yard.  (There had been strong winds while we were gone.) I did get a couple of bike rides in on snow free sidewalks/biketrails.  

We've got a tree cutting proposal, but they said the current priority is getting down Christmas lights that are still up.  I think the tree is firmly lodged into the other tree.  Someone - the phone people?  electric people? - cut off the top of the tree which must have looked threatening to the wires along the alley in back.  

But then, finally, the snow came.  

We've been sorting through mail, and just catching up.  I brought the rose bushes in from the garage.   They've already started leafing out.                                                                                      Brought the begonia basket in too.  They began to poke out of the soil in a few days.  

Our internet has been on and off, more off than on.  This morning it was off again but while I was calling Alaska Communications (ACS), I noticed there was a truck up in the alley and a guy on a cherry picker working near the pole.  The ACS tech guy on the phone said they had decided there was a short and the guy at the pole was splicing something.  It still didn't work when he left.  

I went off to school.  The particular kid I'm focused on was out for the third day this week.  He was there Tuesday and it was nice to see each other after our long break.  Our regular routine is:

Steve:  "Good morning, A... how are you today?"

He's supposed to, and generally does, answer, "I'm fine thank you.  And you?"  The daily repetition is intended to get him comfortable speaking in English and it's been working.  But Tuesday he had trouble answering.  I finally figured it out.  It wasn't that he'd forgotten while I was gone.  It was just that he wasn't 'fine, thank you' and he didn't know how to say, 'I'm not feeling well.'

And he hasn't been there since Tuesday.  But that gives me a chance to help out other kids in the class.  I discovered today that two kids couldn't tell me what 2X8 equals off the top of their heads.  Working on ways to help them learn the multiplication of basic numbers from one to ten.  

And while the Trump administration is trying to erase all pictures and mentions of non-white males in US history (see War heroes and military firsts are among 26,000 images flagged for removal in Pentagon’s DEI purge)  the elementary school I'm volunteering in has very recently put up four large murals that feature men and women of note, representing various ethnicities.  

Part of me doesn't really want to bring any unwanted attention to this addition.  This had to have been arranged before Trump's White Nationalist staffers began their crusade to erase non-white, non-males from our history.  The fact that they are taking images of, and stories about, people like these down at the national level shows that the rhetoric about efficiency and cutting the budget are just smokescreen for getting rid of anything that challenges their white male image of the United States.  It costs more to find and delete these images than to leave them up.  And what kind of person feels compelled to erase images of people who aren't white or aren't male?  In my eyes it shows how scared they are to allow anything that suggests anyone else has played a role in making this nation great.  But it's clear that it is white males who are trying to destroy the greatness of the United States.  (Wow.  I'm just writing this to explain the pictures, but what a good segue into the next picture.) 

Went with a friend to GCI (the other phone/internet company in town) the other day where there was a protest against Rep. Nick Begich for speaking to a private group, closed to the public, because he won't speak to his constituents at a public meeting.  Even though the original sponsoring organizations pulled out - the reasons weren't made clear - there were still about 40 folks out with signs about various issues they'd like to discuss - from Ukraine, to fired federal workers, vets,  and the looming wipe outs at Social Security, Medicaid, and the Department of Education.  

I'd note that former US Senator Ted Stevens died in "a DeHavilland DHC-3T . . . registered to Anchorage-based General Communications Inc., a phone and Internet company" on the way to their private remote lodge near Dillingham.

We also got to watch the state high school championship game between the girls' teams from Fort Yukon and Shaktoovik last Saturday at the sports center at UAA.  (It disturbs me that the state underfunds the university and other state organizations so that they have to beg private companies to pay for such things and then plaster the name of the company on the buildings.  I realize most USians probably don't remember when stadiums were not covered with corporate advertising and companies didn't buy naming rights to buildings all over campus, but I do.  Until the 1970s or so, we weren't confronted with corporate branding everywhere we went.  They did name buildings for individual donors* back then, but not for corporate donors.  But then that gets back to issues like cutting taxes continuously for the wealthy and for corporations since the 1950s so that governments have less money and the public has to go to wealthy individuals and corporations to beg for money for public facilities.  So that's why I'm only calling the building 'sports center.')

.

Fort Yukon won in a great game.  Lots of passing and setting up shots.  Though the three point rule tempts people to shoot when they probably shouldn't.  

State Infectious Virus Reports

While my regular posts have been slow in coming lately, I have been posting updates based on the (now) weekly updates to the State's Infections Virus Snapshots.  Those don't show up here among the regular posts, but can be found at the tab up top (under the orange header) titled: Respiratory Virus Cases October 2023    Below the introduction are weekly updates (well, not quite. . . there was a period when they were updating them monthly) with new charts and the numbers for each type of virus.  The State's chart is interactive, but each new chart has updated numbers, the original numbers disappear.  So I capture the the originals and the updates so you can see if and how much the numbers changed from when first put up to a week or two later.  When they were doing it monthly, I could only compare the original and updated numbers for the last week of the month because it was the only weekly set of numbers shown twice.  This is getting way too complicated.  If you have questions leave a comment.  

The charts look like the one below and I add some commentary each week.  

You can also go to the state site to see the interactivity of this chart.  

When I got back from the school today, the internet still wasn't working, and again I called ACS, and again, as I was talking I saw an ACS truck in front of the house.  And 20 minutes after the truck left, I could get email and start writing this post.  

*Individual donors.  Even then, there were tremendous protests that UCLA named the new basketball arena after a wealthy oilman and donor, Edwin Pauley, and not for Coach Johnny Wooden who put UCLA basketball on the map with a string of undefeated seasons and national championships.  Before that, UCLA was scrambling for a court for the basketball team.  They played in the Sports Arena near the Coliseum (next door to the campus of rival USC) when they could get it.  Sometimes at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, and even the Venice High School gym.  

AIFF2024: Cigarette Surfboards; Alaska Native Masks Out In the World

Two more days of festival.  Well only one more for us.  Not that long ago, the Festival website said the festival was Dec. 6-14 and we made our plane reservations for December 15.  Then the more recent edition of the website moved it to December 15.  

This festival has been filled with crazy good documentaries - Champions of the Golden Valley, Ultimate Citizens, Porcelain War, 76 Days Adrift, The Empathizer, Diving Into the Darkness - and I heard Unearth was also great.  And I thought Queen of the Ring was also quite good, but not quite at the level of those others.  

Today we saw two more:  So Surreal:  Behind the Masks and The Cigaret Surfboard.  The basic 'discovery' in Surreal, was how Yupik Alaskan Native masks along with Native Masks from British Columbia had a huge influence on the surrealist artists early in the 20th Century.  This was something I'd learned some time ago.  But the film combined a number of themes - the spiritual meaning and use of Alaska Native masks, the history of how the churches and white government banned the ceremonies in which masks were used and confiscated them, how the Surrealists discovered these masks and were inspired by them, and a detective tale of where some of the masks were today and how to get them repatriated.  The magic of the film is how seamlessly all these themes were intertwined.

Perry Eaton (center) and Drew Michael, both Alaska Native mask makers featured in the film, talk afterward about masks and the film.  

But I also was very pleasantly surprised by how good Cigarette Surfboard was.  I'm biased.  I grew up near Venice Beach, and while I was too lazy to lug a surfboard around (they were big heavy monsters back in those days, and none of my friends were surfers) I was an avid body surfer growing up.  
 

This film starts out with Taylor talking about how cigarette butts are the most numerous item when people are cleaning trash off the beach.  (I had encountered this once long ago when I helped pick up trash with a Covenant House mentee in downtown Anchorage.  So many cigarette butts.)

Not only is the tobacco full of chemicals, but the filters are not biodegradable.  So Taylor decides to make a surfboard using cigarette butts to draw attention to the pollution they cause.  The first one - in the photo - was two heavy.  But he got it down in weight and then got professional surfers to use the boards as a way to get the environmental message across.  The basic question people seemed to ask when they saw these boards was "It must take forever to collect all the butts."  They get told, "Not really, they're everywhere."

So this is an environmental movie and a surfing movie.  We see lots of people riding the waves on their cigarette surfboards.  

Taylor also visits surfers in different parts of the world.  In Ireland one former surfer decided flying around the world to go surfing, while fun, was not environmentally defensible, and he switched to sustainable farming that won't harm the ocean.  In southwest England, a group of surfers had successfully lobbied - with surfboards at Parliament - to end the practice of dumping raw sewage into the ocean.  

A fun film with a message.  

Racist Or Just Insensitive Juvenile Prank? (Those Aren't Mutually Exclusive)

 Coming back from Denali last week, we stopped at Kashwitna Lake.  Not a terribly scenic spot that day, but good for a quick break from driving.    

The bulletin board on the other hand, offered a little MatSu humor.  Even though the announcements have State of Alaska Fish and Game seals, I somehow think they aren't from the State.  And I decided not to check with the State.

This is in the most conservative borough in Alaska and I'm not sure whether there's some hidden right wing propaganda or whether this is just non-political, teen humor.  I don't think they info sheets had  been up long.  They showed no signs of rain and the staples hadn't started to bleed rust.  

Given that [the Alaska Guide says] Kashwitna comes from a Tainana Indian name, this is probably more than a little disrespectful.  

I found this about the Fukawi Indian tribe on Reddit:

Go to Jokes

r/Jokes•10 yr. ago

noccusJohnstein

"The story of the Fukawi Indian Tribe 

Our tribe has rich and long-standing history. Long time ago, our tribe wander the wilderness. For many years, we wander looking for land to call our own. Our chief led our people through mountains, valleys, seashores and plains.

People were born wandering. People died wandering. After an entire generation of wanderers were born and died, our chief, then very old, led us to top of great mountain. He stood atop mountain summit and faced his people. He looked around. He looked far and wide. He then shouted to the gods,

"We're the Fukawi! We're the Fukawi! WHERE THE FUCK ARE WE?!"

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•10 yr. ago

This was originally told by the chief in the 60s show "FTroop". But it was "Hekawee' then.

Is this really worth a post?  I guess I consider it a form a graffiti and worth noting.  Though the more I think about this, I'm getting heavy racist vibes. Should I even leave it up?  Maybe just to alert folks.