MeFi Projects

I wrote a book about the horrible futures tech billionaires are trying to shove down our throats (AI nonsense, space colonization, the Singularity, etc) and why they don't work. I didn't know it would be this timely, and I'm not thrilled that it is, but the good news is that now it's a lot easier to convince people that billionaires aren't geniuses. And people like the book. Jennifer Szalai in The New York Times called it "smart and wonderfully readable," Jaron Lanier wrote a nice review in Nature, and Cory Doctorow is a fan as well. I suspect people here might be interested too. [more inside]
posted by freelanceastro on Apr 23, 2025 - 4 comments

A site to help folks practice civic involvement, from calling their representatives to volunteering and donating, featuring encouraging news and commentary to help folks stay engaged. [more inside]
posted by kristi on Apr 11, 2025 - 0 comments

A searchable collection of accomplishments and announcements from the Biden-Harris administration. [more inside]
posted by kristi on Jan 20, 2025 - 0 comments

A fundraising drive for the Election Protection Hotline. (Not a US resident or US citizen? Hate all the major parties? No problem! You can donate!) Then, on Oct. 26th, watch 8 minutes of nerd jokes about open source software and how programming skews your brain, and none about politics.
posted by brainwane on Oct 24, 2024 - 0 comments

The polls in the headlines are alarming ... but polls have been way off in the past few years. This website documents some of the huge discrepancies between polling predictions and the actual results; notes some reasons for those errors; and suggests some other indicators that may offer a better sense of how the candidates are doing. The site's main message: don't panic - take action instead. [more inside]
posted by kristi on Oct 15, 2024 - 1 comment

Downticket Democrats highlights candidates for the House of Representatives and state legislatures in competitive districts, making it easy to donate for maximum impact. [more inside]
posted by kristi on Sep 20, 2024 - 0 comments

Barely a Project - just a single post to my blog - this highlights some of the other folks who were born in 1942, the same year as Joe Biden, including Paul McCartney, Barbara Streisand, and Harrison Ford.
posted by kristi on Jul 12, 2024 - 1 comment

Tweets when the president learns (and tweets) a word for the first time. Like @nyt_first_said, but applied to the president. [more inside]
posted by zazerr on Mar 28, 2019 - 2 comments

A rapidly deployed critical data & visualization intervention in the USA’s 2018 “Zero Tolerance Policy” for asylum seekers at the US Ports of Entry and the humanitarian crisis that has followed. Volume 2 is a deep and radically new look at the territory and infrastructure of ICE’s financial regime in the USA. This data & visualization intervention peels back layers of culpability behind the humanitarian crisis of 2018
posted by lollusc on Aug 28, 2018 - 1 comment