osewalrus

The successful world-changing advocate must believe it is possible to achieve the impossible through passion and perseverance and planning. At the same time, the successful world changing advocate must be a horrible pragmatist, knowing when to cut losses or what evils to tolerate because diverting to tilt at windmills will stop you from ever reaching the dragons — let alone slaying them.

 

What this means is that the successful advocate exists in a peculiar state of functional delusion and cold calculation. It means having a pair of rose colored glasses but keeping them perched on your forehead, lest they obscure too much. It means spending oneself recklessly and, of necessity, repeatedly losing heartbreaking battles because failure is always, ALWAYS, an option. And despite utter, soul-crushing disappointment, getting back up and going for another round.

 

But even if one achieves this perverse state of functional madness, the successful advocate faces one last trap — the seductiveness of martyrdom. By this I do not mean true martyrdom of dying for one’s beliefs, or even genuine figurative martyrdom of those willing to endure in the face oppression so as to create an example of resistance or to shame others into action. By martyrdom, I mean struggle with no hope of victory and no goal in defeat.

 

Martyrdom allows you to define failure as success. Martyrdom converts bone crushing defeat into a sort of sick pleasure, and therefore defeat becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Martyrdom is its own reward, and its own prison. After a time, the failure becomes necessary, confirmation that previous failures were not your fault but the inevitable way of the world.

 

Those looking for world-changing advocacy should therefore embrace madmen but shun martyrs. The unfortunate history of social movements is that they tend to get this backward.

 

If this were deadpan humor, it would be a classic.

Unfortunately, it is the FCC's report on T-Mobile's nationwide outage last June. 

"Now Pinky, we reboot the server for the device authentication system and solve the congestion problem created by our routing table error!"

"Narf! You mean that server we just disconnected from the dedicated fiber line Brain?" 

"Yes, now that we have ascertained this is not the source of the error, we can restart the authentication server."

"But Brain! We just disconnected the dedicated fiber line that provides the only remote access to our critical server that we store an hour away."

[Pause] "Well yes, a small miscalculation on my part. We will just use the backup fiber line."

"Troz! You mean the one we never bothered to install because it was too expensive?"

"Yes, that one." [Pause] [Facepalm]

"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"

"Poit! I think so Brain. But why would the United States deliberately deregulate its critical communications infrastructure in a way that would guarantee a complete lack of accountability so that a simple software error and a misdiagnosis of the problem could black out the third largest carrier and cut millions of people off from emergency services or even basic communications?"

Grabs Snout! "Stop that Pinky! Remember -- deregulation brings freedom and innovation! We will just have to live with it until tomorrow night."

"Zort. Why Brain! What are we going to do tomorrow night?"

"The same thing we do every night Pinky. Try to take over the web!"

Though their no longer dinky, T-Mo's still Pinky and the Bain, Brain Brain, Brain -- NARF!

Interesting analysis of how Google's monopoly power has translated into harder to use search results that focus on profitability rather than user experience.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/19/google-search-results-monopoly/ ;

And whether those places got the promised speeds.
https://nationalunbroadbandmap.com/

(Not updated since February) 

https://www.pressherald.com/2020/09/15/to-correct-fcc-errors-mainers-tell-their-stories-of-poor-internet-service/ ;

I finally moved this off LJ. Need to update.

Feld's First Law: Where brute force is sufficient, brute force is sufficient.

Feld's Second Law: REPEALED

Feld's Third Law: Any sufficiently expensive card game is indistinguishable from Magic (tm).

Feld's First Law of Public Policy: Being right is not enough, but it helps a lot more than people think.

Feld's Second Law of Public Policy: Public policy is made by human beings (adapted from Clausewitz)

Feld's Third Law of Public Policy: Always make it as easy as possible for people to do what you want.

Feld's Fourth Law of Public Policy: Never ask an agency to do something it is prohibited by law from doing. But feel free to convince the agency something is permissible if you have an actual legal theory. Remember the difference between between a novel but supportable interpretation and "making stuff up."
 

Feld's Law of Expectations: Always be prepared for the best possible result.

Feld's Hand Grenade Rule of Public Advocacy:
1. Never threaten to use a hand-grenade unless you are willing to pull the pin.
2. When you pull the pin, the hand-grenade better go off. Even if it blows off your own hand, it is better to be known in Policyland as someone crazy enough to blow up his own hand to take out the other side than it is to be known as someone whose hand grenades are duds.

Feld's Ratio of Political Power: Your political power is directly proportional to your *perceived* ability to cause pain.

Feld's Reality Check: Is this about being effective or about feeling good? If it's more important to feel good than to be effective, then it's a hobby. For me, this is my day job.
 

Failure is always an option.

Cultivate functional delusions.

Sometimes, it really does hurt to ask.

When someone answers your question with "why do you hate consumers/hate freedom/hate the market/support piracy" or other variation on "why do you want to drown puppies and torture kittens," your shit detector should be going BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Before it happens, it will be impossible. After it happens, it will have been inevitable.

Once you get what you want, shut up and get out.

Citizen's movements are citizen driven.

You are not a telepath or a precognitive. Neither is your boss. Nor are your friends. Actually listen to what people say. It is surprising how useful this is -- even when they are lying.

All true change is culture change.

People constantly say "don't let the best be the enemy of the good." My experience is that far more often "good enough for the poors" is the enemy of the good.

Yaakov's Rules of Court Schtick (going back to the days when I was head of the Carolingian Fools Guild):
Rule 1: You are not as funny as you think you are.
Rule 2: Rule 1 really does apply to you.

I'm fairly sure I missed some, but I'll conclude here with my Reflection On The Peculiar Nature of Advocacy:

The successful world-changing advocate must believe it is possible to achieve the impossible through passion and perseverance and planning. At the same time, the successful world changing advocate must be a horrible pragmatist, knowing when to cut losses or what evils to tolerate because diverting to tilt at windmills will stop you from ever reaching the dragons -- let alone slaying them.

What this means is that the successful advocate exists in a peculiar state of functional delusion and cold calculation. It means having a pair of rose colored glasses but keeping them perched on your forehead, lest they obscure too much. It means spending oneself recklessly and, of necessity, repeatedly losing heartbreaking battles because failure is always, ALWAYS, an option. And despite utter, soul-crushing disappointment, getting back up and going for another round.

But even if one achieves this perverse state of functional madness, the successful advocate faces one last trap -- the seductiveness of martyrdom. By this I do not mean true martyrdom of dying for one's beliefs, or even genuine figurative martyrdom of those willing to endure in the face oppression so as to create an example of resistance or to shame others into action. By martyrdom, I mean struggle with no hope of victory and no goal in defeat.

Martyrdom allows you to define failure as success. Martyrdom converts bone crushing defeat into a sort of sick pleasure, and therefore defeat becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Martyrdom is its own reward, and its own prison. After a time, the failure becomes necessary, confirmatory that previous failures were not your fault but the inevitable way of the world.

Those looking for world-changing advocacy should therefore embrace madmen but shun martyrs. The unfortunate history of social movements is that they tend to get this backward.

 

CWA report on AT&T digital redlining. 

CWA report on AT&T using subcontractors to avoid using union labor.

EPI report on low wage growth among telecom workers.

As most of you reading will probably know, Becky had a very rough 2018-19. One of the lingering consequences if extremely bad arthritis in both hips and knees, which cause significant mobility issues and make doing stairs extremely painful.

Our house is a split level built into the side of a hill. It takes 40 feet of elevation to get from the street to the front door. And split level means a flight of stairs for Becky twice a day to get from bedroom down to the main floor. And since we have no bathroom on the main floor, I have been living with the joys of chamber pots for 2.5 years now.

We were initially going to tough it out until Aaron finished college this spring, then rehab the house (which has accumulated a lot of issues over the 17 years we've lived here), sell and find something in our community (which we love). But then a ranch house nearby opened up so we pounced on it. Unfortunately, this left us with a very short time frame to rehab the house and find a buyer (since the only way to have the downpayment for the new house is to sell our current house). So we ended up selling "as is." Even so, thanks to the current housing market and a wonderful agent, we were able to net enough to get the financing we need for the new house.

So, God willing, we will be moving the first week of November. Hopefully, we will have lots of reasons to celebrate that week.
 

Interestingly, YouTube does the best in terms of making their policy clear to users, limiting abuse, and giving users tools to control the ads.

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/paid-programming/ ;

I've been waiting for someone to use this model. 
https://muninetworks.org/content/sifi-networks-first-fibercity-goes-live-fullerton-ca?mc_cid=0034683c4c&mc_eid=bf11efc24c ;