Sinners And The Laundromat - From Vampires To Blood Suckers; Plus Lisa Explains Her Fears

[Guide to this post:  This post reminds me of the rambling posts I used to do regularly.  And it feels good, because the world is tangled up in complicated ways - there are few straight lines.  This began as a post about the movie Sinners. But immediately got hijacked by some observations about movie theaters these days. There's a nod to Clarksdale, Mississippi.  But then I switch quickly to what I think is a much more important movie - The Laundromat. But that too gets delayed as I talk about Lisa Murkowski's appearance today on Talk of Alaska and her interpretation of her recent "We're all afraid" comment.  Which requires some background into what ecumenical means.  

If you only want to read one part of this post, I recommend learning about The Laundromat. It's still available on Netflix if you have that.  Skip down to that heading - bold and in capitals.  Then skip past the part on Murkowski to learn about why I think the film is important.]

We haven't been out to see a movie very often lately.  A couple of times while we were in Bainbridge - A Complete Unknown and The Brutalist.  Two movies worth seeing.  

I'd been hearing about Sinners on Spoutible and BlueSky.  Not a lot, but that it was a sleeper big hit, it was a Black themed film.  The parts that had me a bit skeptical mentioned horror elements.  

Well Monday night is a discount night, as two seniors, we got in for a total of $14!!  The tariffs haven't hit Anchorage theaters yet.  But our choice of seats was front row or two separate single seats further back.  We chose the later.  Inside, it was actually pretty empty and we took one of our seats and I sat in the one next to it, my actual seat in the row ahead.  

It did fill up a bit more, but no one claimed my seat.  

When I say it was full, I probably have to remind folks that the theaters have all been remodeled.  There are far fewer total seats, and the ones you get are lounge seats where the head tilts back and the feet up.  So a full theater has a lot fewer viewers than in the past.  

Later:  I didn't finish this.  Sinners is a forgettable movie.  Except for the music.  I don't know what the creators were thinking.  We'll do some Black history, but that doesn't sell enough (a dubious premise) so we'll add some great blues music, and to catch today's audience, we'll add in a vampire massacre.  And we'll locate it in Clarksdale, Mississippi - the Birthplace of the Blues.  (We actually visited Clarksdale and the Blues Museum.  Visiting Mississippi was sort of like visiting Albania or North Korea in my mind - a place forbidden and evil.  It wasn't our destination, but it was between Chicago and New Orleans by car.  But that's a story for another day.) 

This feels like one of my old blogposts, that wandered and jumped, as life does and as thoughts do.  So let's jump back into the present future.  

Why do people say the Democratic party is not really any different from the Republican party?  Because deep down, they are both corrupted by money and protection of the wealthy.  The Republicans are a lot more open about that.  They think rich people are the product of hard work and deserve all they get.  

The Democrats are a little embarrassed by their dependence on the rich.  They cover this addiction (well it's almost required if you want to have enough money to campaign, thanks to Citizens United) by trying to make the lives of those screwed over by the system a little more bearable.  They try to spread a bit of equality to more people, but their hands are just as dirty with money, and they go to parties with lots of people whose wealth comes from less than pristine morals and behavior.  

NO, NO, NO, I'm not saying they are the parties are the same, or that life under a Harris administration would have been no different from the disaster of the current Republican Administration.  [Someone suggested online today, not to mention his name, but to say Republican Administration instead to make sure all the cowards in the House and Senate are fully implicated in what's going on.  After all, they could end this non-violent coups if they chose to.  What do you think?)

THE LAUNDROMAT

So, tonight after falling asleep listening to Lisa Murkowski on Talk of Alaska, in what seemed an attempt to clean up her confession to being afraid, that 'We are all afraid' by saying, "It was kind of an ecumenical 'we' . . . When I say Lisa Murkowski is afraid, it's not in a cowardly way."  She's not, afraid of things like being primaried, she said. She's hearing from Alaskans who are losing their jobs, from Alaskans whose grant monies and contracts have been halted.  "So when I say 'we' I have to include myself as an Alaskan.  She also spoke of her oath to uphold the Constitution and her responsibilities  under Article 1.  "I'm seeing an erosion of the boundaries, if you will, between the Executive and the Legislative branch..."  As I say I fell asleep during this and I'm resurrecting her words through the podcast up at Talk of Alaska. (The comments I'm referring to start around 6 minutes in.)  And if you are a little confused by her reference to the 'ecumenical we' as I was, here's a little refresher.  Maybe she didn't want to say the 'royal we' and 'ecumenical' was the only other 'we' she could think of.  Maybe she thought it would imply some sort of bi-partisan message.  Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, atheists and agnostics, not included I guess.  

"The Ecumenical Movement is a key effort in the Christian faith. It works to bring different Christian groups around the world together. Its importance is seen in religious fellowship and the chase of shared goals. The word ‘ecumenical’ comes from ‘oikoumen?,’ the Greek word for “the inhabited world.” Over time, it has gained a special theological meaning. The word’s evolution shows a move from ordinary to sacred, going from a word about geography to a sign of hope to unite Christians.

"The Ecumenical Movement started as an answer to the need for unity in the Christian church. The church was split by arguments over belief and competitive missions. Through history, ecumenical councils played key roles. They helped form the faith’s theology and practices. This includes councils from the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. These meetings show the ongoing effort to find what the Ecumenical Movement is today. This effort is helped by groups like the World Council of Churches and places like Taizé that focus on community spirituality." (From Faithonview.com)

 But all th's Murkowski stuff slipped in because I got a bit of a nap this evening so I felt like I could partake in a bit of Netflix and while randomly exploring, found a movie called The Laundromat.  It turns out I saw this already on Netflix.  

It's an important film for USians to watch to understand why some people say there is no difference between the two political parties.  The very rich invite politicians of both parties to their parties, and most politicians accept the invitations.  (OK, I'm just saying that.  I don't have statistics.  But I'm pretty sure it's true in a general sort of way.)

It's not your run of the mill movie.  It's a semi-fictional account of a woman whose husband dies in a freak boating accident and she learns that the boating company's insurance isn't going to pay.  She is told about shell companies and holding companies and off shore accounts.  We also meet a couple of wealthy men, business partners,  Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca who tell us their side of the story.  

Mossack and Fonseca.  Is that ringing any bells?  Remember the Panama Papers?  When a law firm in Panama got hacked and all their clients and shell companies got exposed?  That was Mossack and Fonseca.  

It's essentially a movie that attempts to tell us in a down-to-earth way about how the world is rigged against most people by the very wealthy.  Generally we just hear stuff that says we're screwed.  

" 735 U.S. billionaires hold more wealth ($0.4 trillion more) than the bottom 50% of American households."  (I picked this claim because this is from Snopes checking out a statement by Robert Reich, so it was fact checked somewhat.)

The movie tells us a little bit more about how it happens.  

Wikipedia says the movie got mixed reviews.  But I'm guessing because it's imaginative, clever, and takes a very dry and difficult subject and makes it relatable to the average person. And the only vampires are allegorical blood suckers.  

Steven Soderbergh (a very inventive filmmaker) directed it and it stars Meryl Streep as an ordinary USian who wants to know who is screwing her over.  Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas play the two Panama lawyers who got hacked.  

As Trump is leaning on Congress to pass a huge tax cut for the very rich, this film does give us a glimpse of how slimy it all is.   

>

Rewind - Grandkids Were In Town

 I've got six post started from the press club.  My SF grandkids and their parents were here last week.  The world social, political, legal, and economic foundations are being multiple times daily by the current US president.  

With the press club posts, I took notes here (on Blogspot), but it didn't seem right to just post notes, yet there were so many panels that I didn't really have time to do the panelists or my readers right, so they are just dangling there as 'drafts.'  

While most Anchorage bowl snow was gone when the grandkids arrived, we did find some puddles sealed in sheets of ice, which they had a great time breaking and then holding large pieces.  They also liked bouncing sticks off of a still mostly frozen Goose Lake on bike ride to Goose Lake. Then on along 

Northern Lights, the back of APU, and home.  I knew my grandson would be fine - because he and I did a long bike ride in SF last year.  But my granddaughter was also a champ.  I'd warned them there might be some snow still on the trail, but by it was all gone, which disappointed my grandson.  But he found dirt path that went off into the woods and still had some snow.  And off he went.  (He's 10 and she's 8.)

We also made it to the bead shop in the Golden Donut mall at Lake Otis and Tutor.  There are all kinds of beads and other string able objects like porcupine quills.

At the west end of the mall is the Stars of Alaska Rock Shop.  I'd put it on the list of places to take visitors to Anchorage.  

It's a crazy crowded shop full of, rocks, of course, but also fossils, and amazing things.  

How about a mosasaurus skull.  Actually, I don't think that was for sale.

Owner Martin Warfield was unpacking a new shipment of Amonites - 'an extinct cephalopod mollusk' - that lived 280 million years ago.

Here's a closer look at a half of one.  

  Another big hit was Bosco's, Anchorage's really good comic, games, sports cards, etc. shop.  As was Title Wave used book store.  

And Wild Scoops Ice Cream shop.  

  

And a hike at McHugh Creek.

We saw the eagle on our hike.  

So that's some of what's been going on.  Other silly problems, like not having a port in my newish (late last summer) MacBook Air for my SD card from my telephoto lens.  Which I corrected today.  But that's why I never got up a picture of the April 5 Anchorage demonstration against the Trump administration.  But now that I have the card reader, I may put some up.  It was crowded.  

And I'm still working with my 3rd grader every day as a volunteer at my local elementary school.  He's doing well.  And I've got 200 km on my bike since we got back in March.  So I'm keeping busy.  

Alaska Press Club Conference -- Day One, Sage Smiley on AI

 The Press Club Conference begins.  This is the first time I remember a conference when it was snowy.  

Let's see how best I can do this.  

These are notes from the first panel I went to on how journalists can use AI ethically, by Sage Smiley.  

I have consciously resisted AI - getting old?, doing my own thing?  resistance to change?  just suspicious? - probably all of those.  So this was a good chance to hear from someone who has had a Fellowship to learn about AI.  

AI is a tool.  AI can't be ethical or unethical.  It's the users of AI, the people who use it, who will use it ethically or unethically.  And given that the majority party in Congress and the occupant of the White House have shown themselves to be ethically challenged, I still have serious concerns here.  

Perhaps I could say this panel was about how journalists can be more ethical if they want to be ethical and use AI.  And that's what the title of this presentation says:  "Ethicallt Using AI as a Journalist"

A questioner at the end said he's strongly opposed to AI, and the response was that this is how journalists can use it, and if they don't use it, they won't understand it.  If we are going to write about AI, we have to know what it is and how it works."

There was a lively and helpful discussion.  

The rest are my raw notes as I try to give a sense of what's happening here in close to real time, while being able to get on to the next panel.  Treat these just as my notes as I took them during the session to give you an idea of what was covered.  

Sage Smiley,  AI  - How to ethically harness the robots

I've been skeptical, environmentally and other ways.  Applied for Fellowship to find out more

What do you know? 

Use Quad, ??? transcribing interviews,  ChatGPT - makes things up.  

Places we can use AI, but doesn't replace humans.  Can do things we can't but it is infallible. 

Paywalls, academic journals, AI legally can't be legally looking at that.  People can go beyond that.  

Ethics, Tools, Examples

Proprietary AIs - BBC, Financial Times - Building the AI Playground

Ethics

NPR Ethics as example - 

Human -  Thoughtful - Benefits

Going Deeper - accuracy, completeness, impartiality

-Transparency - Protection  - Excellence

If AI is big, give credit to AI like you would attribute another writer.

Duty to people - documents public, but not easily acceptable, copyrights

Use AI to create headlines?   as long as not blindly using,  

Privacy - AI mining - do you put confidential info into AI.  

Partnership on AI 10 Step Guide to responsible adoption of AI tools in newsrooms

Poynter Ethics 

TOOLS

Many, querying, documenting

Ground level thoughts - changing all the time, quality improving maybe, important to check AI (some fabricate things) 

Tiiks tea are bit cage''

Perplexity,  Notebook LM (google) audio and video, Claude Gemini, Adobe Podcast, Pinpoint

Coding - creating code, better than conversational AI

Quad - good at creating code to scrape or analyze data, and stronger privacy 

Pinpoint also google, journalists

Enviornmental Impact

Other uses around the world

• APA alt text for infographics
• BBC verify deepfake detector
• AI for scraping large interviews OR hours of testimony
• El Vocero Weather Alerts  =Puerto Rico and AP

Tools for creating NAPKIN.AI  for infographics

Digital Democracy.org - public hearings, $ donated to pols, 

Columns - data

GITHUB - creating code

How Do You Choose Who To Help And How? How About Myanmar?

I got an email from the American Jewish World Service (AJWS) the other day asking for donations to help people in Myanmar after the earthquake.  Below is a link.   But I'll put it here too.   But first let me tell you why I think this is a good investment.  

There are so many worthy people who need help in this world.  The LA fire victims, particularly those in the Palisades area lost their homes and everything in them.  But these were also relatively affluent folks many of whom had great family and friend support networks.  Though not all of them.  

And there are many people who need a bit of help to pay the rent because of an unexpected expenditure - car repairs, surgery, an unexpected plumbing bill.  

How can you tell who is truly needy and  and who is just using Go Fund Me as a way to raise cash because they can?  

I don't know the answers to these questions. 

But I can vouch for the American Jewish World Service (AJWS)which is raising money to funnel to partner organizations on the ground who can help victims of the Myanmar earthquake.  I can somewhat relate to that 7.7 quake.  In 2018 Anchorage had a 7.2 quake.  I grew up in LA and experienced a few big quakes, but nothing like the 7.2 quake which severely shook the house and seemed to last forever.  Anchorage managed reasonably well, in large part because Anchorage had had a 9.2 quake in 1964 which caused the town to enact very strict earthquake-minded building codes.  I wasn't in Anchorage in '64, but it was North America's strongest recorded quake.

I've also been to Myanmar on three occasions - all on short, day visits from Thailand.  But I'm not claiming any special knowledge there.  

But I can vouch for the American Jewish World Service.  I spent two three month periods as a volunteer

Some of the people I worked with In Chiang Mai

for AJWS in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand.  While I didn't work with a group dealing with Myanmar, AJWS was supporting such groups.  They've been assisting organizations in Myanmar for over 20 years now.

My experience with AJWS was that they very carefully selected organizations to assist, organizations that were doing serious work to help - in the case of my organization - Thai farmers, many of whom needed protection from land speculators and even theft of their land via dishonest government land managers.  

They also helped promote CSAs - Consumer Supported Agriculture.  This is where consumers pay for their vegetables in advance to help support farmers before they have crops to sell.  They also helped farmers switch over to organic farming.  In Thailand they label even more specifically - farming that doesn't use pesticides and farming that doesn't use chemicals.  

The 5 things the project focused on:
Land, Water, Forest land, Debt, and
 Prices of products.

Spending six months (two three month stints) working daily in an organization that AJWS supports in Thailand gave me a good sense of how AJWS operates, at least in that situation.  And as a former Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, I arrived with a working fluency in Thai.  My spoken Thai was better than anyone's spoken English, so most interactions were in Thai.  And my earlier three years in Thailand meant I had some sense of Thai culture and history.  And that I had lived in Thailand before some of my colleagues were born.  

  Does AJWS Do Missionary Work?

Jews don't have missionaries trying to bring non-Jews into the fold.  The only thing I know of that is vaguely like that are some orthodox Jewish organizations that try to bring other Jews, less observant or even secular Jews, back into the fold.  But not non-Jews.  Non-Jews who want to convert, go through relatively extensive training in Judaism before that happens.  I've found that because of this, converts sometimes know more about Judaism than some people born Jewish.   

So, while "Jewish" is in the name of this organization, that is really the extent of the Judaism the receiving organizations get.  They know that the help they are getting is from a Jewish organization.  There is no proselytizing, no bible reading, nothing really about Judaism that AJWS offers to the organizations and people they assist.  

However,  Jewish values do underlie why AJWS does what it does.  From their website:

"For many AJWS supporters, tikkun olam—the Hebrew phrase for repairing the world—is the essence of what it means to be Jewish. Jewish teachings to help the poor, care for the stranger, and recognize the inherent dignity of every human being animate our commitment to build a better world. The Jewish tenet that all human beings are created b’tzelem Elohim—in the Divine image—underscores our belief that all people are infinitely valuable and deserving of respect."

All this is the lead-in to the email I got from AJWS the other day asking for donations to help AJWS's partner organizations in Myanmar help people affected by the earthquake.  

 Dear Steven,

This situation has no precedent.

A devastating earthquake unleashed destruction across Myanmar. More than 2,700 lives have been lost. Twice that number have been injured. Hospitals, schools, mosques, and apartment buildings have been destroyed. And the need for humanitarian assistance continues to soar.

But the little support offered by the U.S. government has been slow to arrive.

AJWS partners on the ground in Myanmar are ready to respond, but they need more resources — and there is no time to waste. When this 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck on Friday, our partners immediately began to provide food, water, and temporary shelter to thousands displaced by this disaster, including many from ethnic and religious minority communities overlooked by others. But with the first major natural disaster to take place since his election, President Trump’s dismantling of U.S. foreign aid agencies has delayed and diminished an American response when need is greatest.

The task now lies with us, Steven. We must rush emergency, life-saving support immediately. And we’re asking you to help.

  Give Now      [When you check out the link, you'll find the donations levels suggested are not the even numbers you see generally.  They're multiples of 18.  Here's why:

"Chai (חי) is the Hebrew word for "life." It also has the numeric value of 18. This is why many Jews typically give charity (and gifts) in multiples of 18 (e.g. 18, 36, 54, 72 etc.). We are thus symbolically blessing both the recipient and the giver with good, long lives." From Chabad]

The situation could have been very different. With a history of swift, significant action, the U.S. once led humanitarian response when people were in need. As the wealthiest nation on earth, we rushed emergency aid, saving lives and restoring order when communities were devastated by hurricanes, droughts, and earthquakes. While the AJWS community is pushing for this aid to be restored, the crisis in Myanmar demands that we act now. 

Please rush your gift right away and help AJWS and our partners on the ground in Myanmar to deliver lifesaving aid to communities whose entire existence has been upended by this earthquake.

In a country already devastated by civil war, AJWS is prepared to deliver humanitarian aid in this challenging environment, and we’re eager to bring support to as many people as possible. In Myanmar, AJWS must be ready to address humanitarian needs in a way that reflects our values, not this administration’s priorities.

I am in constant communication with frontline activists working around the clock and will update you as the situation changes. Until then, each of us is in your debt.

Jeffrey Stein

Senior Program Officer for Civil and Political Rights

American Jewish World Service

Some Of The Best Commentary At The Moment

Time is passing on fast forward.  Today is April Fools Day, 2025, but it's hard to come up with anything crazier than what the US president and his team of thugs do every day.  But a few things that happened on this day:

Cory Booker completed his 24 hour plus speech to Congress.  

Wisconsin voters reelected the left-leaning Susan Crawford  to the Wisconsin Supreme Court with 55% of the vote (with 95% of the votes counted) despite (or maybe because of) Elon Musk's various schemes to shower those who voted for her opponent with millions of dollars.

The GOP retained the two Florida seats, vacated so Matt Gaetz could be nominated (unsuccessfully) for Attorney General, and Michael George Glen Waltz could become the U.S. national security advisor and just last week managed to invite Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg into a Signal chat to plan an attack on the Houthis rebels in Yemen.  These are heavily Republican districts - Waltz got 67% of the vote in 2024 - but his replacement only got 56% of the vote this time.  That's still a decisive margin.  

The first video is an interview with Atlantic editor, Jeffrey Goldberg,  byAnne Applebaum, one of his writers at the New Orleans Book Festival.  Those who are attentive to the news, already know most of the information. 

In the second video, Goldberg is the moderator and asks questions of four of his writers, in conversation with Atlantic staff writers  Anne Applebaum, McKay Coppins, Elaina Plott-Calabro, and Adam Serwer.

This one is bubbling with insights about what is happening in the second Trump administration.  Serwer, especially, boils things down to what seem like accurate takes to me. 

Some of the key points:

• speed of destruction - in the first administration, Trump had traditional Republicans keeping him from straying too far beyond the normal boundaries.  Not this time.  Those around him believe in their mission to tear down the evil bureaucracy.
• institutions were slow to accept how much things would change and for the most part hadn't prepared strategies to resist.

I would add that destroying the government in the information age, isn't about destroying buildings, but messing around in the computers - to destroy files, to steal data, to identify 'enemies.'  

If DOGE were blowing up buildings, I suspect Congress would be trying to stop them.  But what they are doing is basically off camera and beyond most people's ability to conceive as 'destroying the United States" as we know it.  People know something bad is happening - particularly when they are directly affected, like when they themselves, or people they know well, lose jobs, their benefits, or people they know get disappeared.  But most of us still haven't felt the real impact yet.  

How Does Trump Screw Us? Let Me Count The Ways

That wasn't the original title, but as I started writing, it just seemed more apt.  

This post is about two videos - one by Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut who lays out the details of the unprecedented level of corruption in the first six weeks of the Trump administration.    (Thus the title of this post.)  

The second is a woman from Oklahoma venting her anger over the botched Signal chat that put her husband (stationed in the Middle East) in potential danger.  

I was struck by the contrast between these two approaches to criticizing the Trump administration - one highly factual and rational, almost like a college lecture.  The other focused, but almost unhinged in the level of anger and invective.  

I'd argue that we should all be at the level of anger and resistance that woman is at.  We shouldn't wait until we are directly impacted.  100,000 people raging like she does would probably pry enough US Senators away from Trump to stop the venal actions that Senator Murphy describes in detail.  

We need the facts and details to understand how we're being screwed to raise our level of anger and resistance.  And we need her passion and fury to get us to stop pretending life will not be completely disrupted if we don't stop this horror right now.  

Murphy Video

There's a lot of content and detail here.  You can skip down to the video, or you can first look at my outline of the ways Murphy lists that Trump is corrupting government and enriching himself and his oligarch supporters - from streamlining the art of the bribe to dismantling agencies that have investigations that hurt Trump supporters.  Here are some of them, to help you keep track.  I've added links if you want to find out more about each.  

1.  Memecoins - He starts out talking about Trump meme coins that can be used to transfer money, unreported, directly into Trump's account.  This is the latest in bribe technology. 

What are Meme Coins?

I had to look up meme coins to try to understand what they are.  Here's a link to investopedia.com and one to wikipedia to help you understand.  The first link even offers ways to invest.  The Wikipedia link is more contextual and historical.  One thing I learned looking this up is that DOGE - the Department Of Government Efficiency - the rogue mob that Elon Musk is leading, is also the name of one of the more popular memecoins, one that Musk promoted.

2. Pays off Oil/Gas Industry's $1 billion bribe.   On day one Trump privileges oil and gas and hurts their competition- wind, solar etc.  This article documents the billion dollar ask, but the actual money count doesn't get that high.  But the benefits were given.  

3.  Jan 25  Fires the watch dogs - all the Inspectors General - the people who investigate corruption

4.  Jan 27 - Fires head of National Labor Relations Board.  This means NLRB cannot investigate cases.  Musk has lots of cases before the NLRB.  And many others around Trump have cases pending.

5.  Jan 30 - awards $800K stock of Trump Media platform  to  cabinet members, which Murphy says is another way for people to move cash to bank accounts of cabinet members in order to get favors.  

6.  Feb 23 - Weaponization of DOJ  - Drops case against Musk SpaceX    Then drops case against a GOP congressman.  Then Operation Whirlwind that targets anyone critical of Musk or DOGE.   DOJ turned into entity that drops cases of Trump loyalists and attacks those who criticize Trump.

7.  Feb 1  - Shut down Consumer Finance Protection Board  which was investigating Musk and Trump backers - consumer protection actions now gone

8.  Feb 4.  Meetings in White House with Business Partners - Saudi Gulf League and PGA - Saudis play torunaments at Trump golf course 

9.  Feb 6 - Pam Bondi - dulls foreign government agent act - No longer registering as foreign government represenatives  = now his friends can lobby government while secretly getting paid by foreign governments.  

10.  Feb 10 - Eric Adams case dropped and publicly announced that gettting rid of the charges against Adams if he pledges loyalty to Trump.Six  people in DOJ refused and resigned and finally the seventh agreed.  

11.  Buying $400 million Tesla’s.  Biden admin was going to buy $483K, Trump bumps it up to $400 million.  This seems to have been scuttled.

This is only a partial list.  The rest are in the video.  

 The Murphy Video

p> 

The second video is just sheer anger at Trump's inept appointees jeopardizing the life of the lady's husband as well as of those of his fellow Middle East stationed military men.  [This is supposed to end after about 4 minutes 30 seconds - I added instructions into the code.  But it didn't work.  I'm not recommending you watch the whole thing.]

The original video I saw, but couldn't find a way to embed, was sharply directed to Sen. Lankford of Oklahoma.  She vows to end his career.  Very powerful messaging.  You can see it at this link to a Bluesky post.

As I said above, we should all be at the level of anger and resistance that woman is at.  We shouldn't wait until we are directly impacted.  Murphy offers us just a few of the reasons we should be angry as hell.   100,000 people raging like the woman in the video does would probably cause enough GOP Senators and Members of Congress away from Trump to stop the horrors that Senator Murphy describes in detail.  

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806 – 1861

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

This poem is in the public domain.

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.  

Civil Service - Who Are These People ET Are Firing? - Part II

INTRO:  Part I is here.  

If you find this topic dry and hard to get your head around, then you are half way there.  Because some of the most important things to know about government are dry and hard to get one's head around.  And that makes it easy for politicians to bamboozle voters with falsehoods and misinformation.  

So if you want to understand why ET's firing of civil servants (most of government employees) is a violation of law and various regulations, you'll have to buck up and read carefully.  Even take notes.  

This content is based on testimony I gave in a local discrimination case.  So I had to pare it down to as simple an explanation as possible so that I didn't lose the jury.  The attorney was nervous that his expert would talk over their heads, but when I was done he was relieved that I'd made it very easy to understand.  And the jury said the local government was guilty.

So good luck.   [I explained ET in the Intro to Part I, but it's not critical.]

From a February 19, 2018 post: 

Graham v MOA #9: Exams 2 - Can You Explain These Terms: Merit Principles, Validity, And Reliability?

The Municipality of Anchorage (MOA) Charter [the city's constitution] at Section 5.06(c) mandates the Anchorage Assembly to adopt

“Personnel policy and rules preserving the merit principle of employment.”   AMC 3.30.041 and 3.30.044 explain examination types, content, and procedures consistent with these merit principles.  

Âs defined in the Anchorage Municipal Code Personnel Policies and Rules,

“Examination means objective evaluation of skills, experience, education and other characteristics demonstrating the ability of a person to perform the duties required of a class or position.” (AMC 3.30.005)

[OK, before I lose most of my readers, let me just say, this is important stuff to know to understand why the next posts will look so closely at the engineer test that Jeff Graham did not pass.  But it's also important to understand one of the fundamental principles underlying government in the United States (and other nations.)  And I'd add that the concepts behind merit principles are applied in most large private organizations to some extent, though they may have different names. 

Jeff Graham's attorney made me boil this down to the most basic points to increase the likelihood I wouldn't put the jury to sleep.  So bear with me and keep reading. 

And, you can see an annotated index of all the posts at the Graham v MOA tab above or just link here.]  

Basic Parts of Government In The United States

Governments can be broken down into several parts.

• The elected politicians who pass the laws and set the broad policy directions (legislature)
• The elected executive who carries out the laws.
• The administration is led by the elected executive - the president, the governor at the state level, and the mayor at the city level.
• Civil Service refers to the career government workers who actually carry out the policies.  There are also appointed officials at the highest levels who are exempt from some or all of the civil service rules.

Merit principles are the guidelines for how the career civil servants are governed.  

So What Are Merit Principles?

Probably the most basic, as related to this case, are:

• Employees are chosen solely based on their skills, knowledge, and abilities (SKAs) that are directly related to their performance of the job. 
• The purpose of this is to make government as as effective and efficient as possible by hiring people based on their job related qualities and nothing else.  
• That also means other factors - political affiliation, race, color, nationality, marital status, age, and disability should not be considered in hiring or promotion.  It also means that arbitrary actions and personal favoritism should not be involved. 
• Selection and promotion criteria should be as objective as possible.   

So Steve, what you're saying, this sounds obvious.  What else could there be?

Before the merit system was the Spoils System.  Before merit principles were imposed on government organizations, jobs (the spoils) were given to the victors (winning politicians and their supporters)   The intent of the Merit System is to hire the most qualified candidates.

In 1881, President Garfield was assassinated by a disgruntled job seeker, which spurred Congress to set up the first version of the federal civil service system - The Pendleton Act.

Only a small number of federal positions were covered by this new civil service act, but over the years more and more positions were covered and the procedures improved with improvements in the technology of testing.  The merit system, like any system can be abused, but it's far better than the spoils system.  Objective testing is a big part of applying merit principles.

What does 'objective criteria' mean? 

Objectivity has a couple common and overlapping meanings:

• Grounded on facts.  Grounding your understanding or belief on something concrete, tangible.  Something measurable that different people could 'see' and agree on.
• Unbiased.  A second, implied meaning from the first, is that you make decisions neutrally, as free as you can be from bias, preconceived ideas.  That’s not easy for most people to do, but there are ways to do it better. 

What Ways Can Make  Tests More Objective And Free Of Bias?

I think of objectivity as being on one end of a continuum and subjectivity being on the other end.  No decision is completely objective or subjective, nor should it be.  But generally, the more towards the objective side, the harder it is to introduce personal biases.* 

objective ...............................................................................................subjective

First Let's Define "Test"

In selection and promotion, we have tests. Test is defined as any thing used to weed out candidates, or rank candidates from poor to good.  So even an application form can be a test if it would lead to someone being cut out of the candidate pool.  Say candidates are required to have a college degree and someone doesn’t list one on an application.  They would be eliminated already.  

Again,  how do you make tests more objective?

There are two key terms we need to know:  validity and reliability.

What’s Validity?

Validity means that if a person scores higher on a test, we can expect that person to perform better on the specific job.  

Or saying it another way, the test has to truly test for what is necessary for the job.  So, if candidates without a college degree can do the job as well as candidates with a degree, then using college degree to screen out candidates is NOT valid.  

And what is reliability?

Reliability means that if  a person takes the same test at different times or different places, or with different graders, the person should get a very similar result.  Each test situation needs to have the same conditions, whether you take the test on Monday or on Wednesday, in LA or Anchorage, with Mr. X or Miss Y administering and/or grading the test.  

How Validity and Reliability Relate To Each Other

To be valid, the selection or promotion test must be a good predictor of success on the job. People who score high on the exam, should perform the job better than those who score low.  And people who score low should perform worse on the job than people who score high. 

BUT, even if the test is intrinsically valid, the way it is administered could invalidate it.  If the test is not also reliable (testing and grading is consistent enough that different test takers will get a very similar score regardless of when or where they take the test and regardless of who scores the test) the test will no longer be valid.  This is because the scores will no longer be good predictors of who will do well on the job. 

How do you go about testing for validity and reliability?

This can get complicated, especially for  factors that are not easy to measure.  I didn't go into this during the trial.  I wanted to point out some pages in a national Fire Safety Instructor Training Manual used by the Municipality of Anchorage, but I was not allowed to mention it.  It talks about different levels of validity and how to test for them.  It also says that for 'high stakes' tests, like promotion tests, experts should be hired to validate the test.  The jury didn't get to hear about this. But it's relevant because as I wrote in an earlier post, the people in charge of testing, and specifically in charge of the engineer exam, only had Level I certification, which allows them to administer training and testing designed by someone with Level II certification.  It's at Level II that validity and reliability are covered.  

There really wasn't need to get detailed in the trial, because the oral exam was so egregiously invalid and unreliable that you could just look at it and see the problems.  And we'll do that in the next posts. 

That should be enough but for people who want to know more about this, I'll give a bit more below.

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Extra Credit

*"the harder it is to introduce bias"  There are always ways that bias can be introduced, from unconscious bias to intentionally thwarting the system.   When civil service was introduced in the United States, there was 'common understanding' that women were not qualified for most jobs.  That was a form of bias.  Blacks were also assumed to be unqualified for most jobs.  Over the years many of these sorts of cultural barriers have been taken down.  But people have found other ways to surreptitiously obstruct barriers.  

Merit Principles

If you want to know more about merit principles I'd refer you to the Merit System Protection Board that was set up as part of the Merit System Reform Act of 1978.  

A little more about reliability problems (because these are important to understand about the engineer promotion exam)

In the main part of this post I wrote that all the important (could affect the score) conditions of the test need to be the same no matter where or when or with whom a candidate takes the test.  Here are some more details

• Location - If one location is less comfortable - temperature, noise, furniture, lighting, whatever - it could skew the scores of test takers there.
• Time -  could be a problem in different ways.  
• All candidates must have the same amount of time to take the test.  
• Instructions - all instructions have to be identical
• Security of the test questions - if some applicants know the questions in advance and others do not, the test is not reliable.

The scoring, too, has to be consistent from grader to grader for each applicant. 

And there are numerous ways that scoring a test can go wrong.

• Grader bias  - conscious and unconscious.   Raters who know the candidates may rate them differently than people who don’t know them at all. 
• The Halo effect means if you have a positive view of the candidate, you’re likely to give him or her more slack.  You think, 'I know they know this.' 
• The Horn or Devil Effect is the opposite - If you already have a negative opinion about a candidate, you consciously or unconsciously give that a candidate less credit.  These are well documented biases.
• Testing order bias affects graders and candidates.  
• After three poor candidates, a mediocre candidate may look good to graders.  

• Grading Standards - Is the grading scale clear and of a kind that the graders are familiar with?
• Are the expected answers and how to score them clear to the graders?
• Do the graders have enough time to calculate the scores consistently?
• Grader Training -
•  If they aren't well trained, it could take a while to figure out how to use their scoring techniques, so they score different at the end from the beginning. 

How Do You Overcome the Biases In More Subjective Tests Like Essays, Interviews, and Oral Exams?

Despite the popularity of job interviews, experts agree that they are among the most biased and result in the least accurate predictions of candidate job performane.  Or see this link.

You have to construct standardized, objective rubrics and grading scales - this is critical, particularly for essay and oral exams.

On November 9, 2016 when the electoral college vote totals were tallied, everyone saw the same facts, the same results.  But half the country thought the numbers were good and half thought they were bad. When evaluating the facts of a job or promotion candidate, the organization has to agree, before hand, what ‘good’ facts look like and what ‘bad’ facts look like. Good ones are valid ones - they are accurate predictors of who is more likely to be successful in the position.   Good and bad are determined by the test maker, not by the graders.  The graders merely test whether the performance matches the pre-determined standard of a good performance.

What’s a rubric?

It’s where you describe in as much detail as possible what a good answer looks like.  If you’re looking at content, you identify the key ideas in the answer, and possibly how many points a candidate should get if they mention each of those ideas.  It has to be as objective as possible. The Fire Safety Instructor Training Manual has some examples, but even those aren't as strong as they could be. 

Good rubrics take a lot of thought - but it's thought that helps you clarify and communicate what a good answer means so that different graders give the same answer the same score.

Here are some examples: 
UC Berkeley Graduate Student Instructors Training
Society For Human Resource Management - This example doesn't explicitly tell graders what the scores (1,2, 3, 4, 5) look like, as the previous one does.
BARS - Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales - This is an article on using BARS to grade Structured Interviews.  Look particularly at Appendices A & B. 
How Olympic Ice Skating is Scored - I couldn't find an actual scoring sheet, but this gives an overall explanation of the process.

My experience is that good rubrics force graders to ground their scores on something concrete, but they can also miss interesting and unexpected things.  It's useful for graders to score each candidate independently, and then discuss why they gave the scores they did - particularly those whose scores vary from most of the scores.  Individual graders may know more about the topic which gives their scores more value.  Or may not have paid close attention.   Ultimately, it comes down to an individual making a judgment.  Otherwise we could just let machines grade.  But the more precise the scoring rubric, the easier it is to detect bias in the graders. 


Accountability

Q:  What if a candidate thinks she got the answer right on a question, but it was scored wrong?

Everything in the test has to be documented.  Candidates should be able to see what questions they missed and how they were scored.  If the test key had an error, they should be able to challenge it. 

Q:  Are you saying everything needs to be documented?

If there is going to be any accountability each candidate’s test and each grader’s score sheets must be maintained so that if there are questions about whether a test was graded correctly and consistently from candidate to candidate, it can be checked. 

In the case of an oral exam or interview, at least an audio (if not video) record should be kept so that reviewers can see what was actually said at the time by the candidate and the graders. 

Q:  Have you strayed a bit from the Merit Principles?

Not at all. This all goes back to the key Merit Principle - selecting and promoting the most qualified candidates for the job.  There won’t be 100% accuracy. But in general, if the test is valid,  a high score will correlate with a high job performance.  But unless the test is also reliable, it won’t be valid. The more reliable the test, the more consistent the scores will be under different conditions and graders.  The best way to make tests more reliable is to make them as objective as possible.