MeFi Projects

A climate-fiction text adventure with dystopian themes, set in 2051. Can you survive for one week as a regular person under the rule of the York Emergency Authority? (Maybe you can do more than survive, and blow oxygen on embers of resistance.) With beautiful art by Dibujos de Pam! Play for free in your browser, desktop or mobile. [more inside]
posted by mcbaya on Nov 15, 2023 - 4 comments

Last year, Seven Stories Press released my book Full Spectrum Resistance, a two-volume exploration of how to build more effective movements. Right now you can get a free eBook version of both volumes (until July 5). (I’m posting bonus content on Facebook.) If you like free books about resistance, you can also download a copy of Direct Action Works: A legal handbook for civil disobedience and non-violent direct action in Canada, first released during February 2020's massive Indigenous solidarity actions.
posted by mcbaya on Jul 3, 2020 - 1 comment

I found out about the Town Hall Project from this question on ask. The data in the spreadsheet are amazing, but it can be pretty hard to get the most relevant data out of a spreadsheet. I made a couple hacked together maps to help with that question, but then decided to actually make a real thing as a learning exercise and to hopefully help other people out. [more inside]
posted by rockindata on Feb 9, 2017 - 5 comments

The current political cycle is terrible! But I am terrible at not being a news and politics junkie! Since I'm not going to get a break from it, I thought I'd put together this newsletter digest so you don't have to drown in it, too.
posted by Phire on Feb 7, 2017 - 2 comments

Back when we started the KNOWMORE.ORG project in 2005, we posted about it here, Excited young pups that we were. In the time in between we educated hundreds of thousands of readers over the last decade, covered the entire Global Fortune 500 and then some, and rated each company for Worker's Rights, Environmental Concerns, Human Rights, Political Influence and Business Ethics. We created an award winning browser plug-in, helped remove Dov Charney from American Apparel, and did it all on volunteer hours and DIY fundraising before crowdsourcing existed. Sadly, pending a crowdsourcing appeal, the site is in danger of closing down this April. [more inside]
posted by bernard@knowmore on Feb 5, 2017 - 2 comments

An online game specifically made to call out Elon Musk on his collaborationism with the Trump regime. Will you manage to board the Mars rocket, or will you be crushed by an unsympathetic bureaucracy?
posted by Zarkonnen on Feb 1, 2017 - 0 comments

I started a new site based around the idea that long-term political involvement is often an overwhelming idea. But if we promise ourselves to do something one hour a week, we could change the world. Aimed at people who are looking for ways to get started in political activism, it currently consists of links to resources about how to find your representatives, and how to contact them effectively, but this is just the start. Over the next few weeks, I hope to build a much more interactive site that gamifies the process, allowing you to form teams, log time and contacts, and find & share new tactics for organizing. There are a ton of progressive resources out there, but getting started and making it a habit can be too daunting for a lot of folks. I hope to change that.
posted by gofargogo on Jan 23, 2017 - 2 comments

An open-ended research tool for everything that the DC Police Department writes on their twitter feed. The department made the controversial decision to encrypt all radio communications last year, with no allowance for journalists, and thus have devoted more time to twitter. The site allows you to view the last three thousand tweets and quickly analyze factors like age, city quadrant, gender, etc., though a clever regular-expression-based interface.
posted by tmcw on Aug 30, 2012 - 7 comments