MetaFilter Saved My Pals From Sex Traffickers—Exclusive Interview | Mother Jones. motherjones.com (2010-05-22):

How an online community mobilized to rescue two young Russian women.

Forget the irritating title and summary. Besides being needlessly sensationalistic, the rhetoric of “saving” or rescuing women from sex trafficking is infantilizing and intensely unhelpful; also, it’s just inaccurate as a description of what actually happened.

What is awesome about this story, crappy headlines aside, is how a good friend and an Internet community managed to not only alert two young Russian women that the “agency” was lying to them, that the replacement jobs they’d been promised were actually at a skeazy strip club, and — even more important — while government “hotlines” and “counseling” proved to be alienating and more or less completely useless, an ad hoc group of folks on MetaFilter managed to come together to connect the women with information, a safe place to stay in New York, a friend to advocate for them and help them out, and leads on getting help to secure straightened-out visas — meaning practical solidarity and mutual aid, through an ad hoc distributed grassroots network, scattered throughout cities all across the continent, which managed to foil a gang of lying traffickers, helped two women get themselves out of a really dicey situation, and provided with plenty of resources to help them land on their feet.

(Story thanks to a private correspondent.)

Dude, Where’s My Data? (The Sequel) snellspace.com (2010-05-12):

DeWitt Clinton: I have my music collection stored on a file server, and I’d like to be able to play it remotely via my Android device. Local network only is fine. Storing personal stuff on home networks is cumbersome and annoying. I have pictures, movies, music, and many other types…

Technological civilization is awesome. But it’s not awesome enough yet. The fact that Dropbox’s remote servers are currently easier to work with than a server 3 feet away from where I’m sitting is one of the unremarked scandals of computing.

As Snell says, The fundamental technologies to make all this happen already exist. Someone just needs to make it happen. Please.

• I can't count on anybody to understand. (Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010) amandaw, three rivers fog (2010-05-01). (Cross-posted to FWD/Forward. See more BADD 2010 at Goldfish's blog.) I'm pretty open about my health issues. To be honest, I don't know any other way to be. I know how to strategically hide my disabilities from strangers in passing interactions, but from the people with whom I interact on… (Linked Monday 2010-05-10.)

• Prison Rape. myglesias, Matthew Yglesias (2010-04-22). (cc photo by amandabhslater) Excellent post by Liliana Segura: In 1994 in the case Farmer v. Brennan, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a prison official's "deliberate indifference" to the risk that a trans woman prisoner named Dee Farmer would be raped when placed within the general population of a… (Linked Monday 2010-05-10.)

• Welcome: Japan Council Against A&H Bombs. mom_in_las_vegas, Las Vegas Anarchoblogs (2010-05-07).  Welcome: Japan Council Against A&H Bombshttp://pjep.org/actions/?id=4618&t=1273035600The Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (Gensuikyo) was established in September 1955. Since then it has waged various kinds of campaigns for: the prevention of nuclear war; the total ban on and the elimination of nuclear weapons; and support and solidarity with Hibakusha… (Linked Monday 2010-05-10.)

• It's just like the time I got confused and accidentally went on an interstate bank-robbing spree. John Markley, The Superfluous Man (2010-05-03). You know, the frequent attempts I see to excuse flagrant police misbehavior as honest mistakes are seldom very convincing, but at least the excuse is usually applied to acts committed in the field. It’s still usually a weak and often absurd excuse, and often applied to situations where the officer’s… (Linked Tuesday 2010-05-11.)

• A Statement from SubRosa concerning May Day. JC, SubRosa – a community space (2010-05-06). SubRosa was not involved in the events in downtown Santa Cruz on May Day. SubRosa is a community space that offers literature, art, coffee and performances. Like many businesses downtown, SubRosa provides a public bulletin board for people to post fliers. Jimi Haynes is not and has never been a volunteer… (Linked Tuesday 2010-05-11.)

• NYT: !!!@@e2;20ac;2dc;Attorney General Eric Holder Backs Miranda Limit for Terror Suspects' John Gruber, Daring Fireball (2010-05-10). Disregard for the Bill of Rights is not limited to Republicans: Mr. Holder proposed carving out a broad new exception to the Miranda rights established in a landmark 1966 Supreme Court ruling. It generally forbids prosecutors from using as evidence statements made before suspects have been warned that they have… (Linked Tuesday 2010-05-11.)

• Theories as Maps. Will Wilkinson, Will Wilkinson (2010-05-11). David Schmidtz says theories are like maps; they help us get where we're trying to go. John Rawls' theory of justice posits a closed society as a simplifying assumption. If theories are like maps, as Schmidtz says, a simplifying assumption in a theory is like leaving current patterns of traffic… (Linked Wednesday 2010-05-12.)

theoriginofthe<blink>tag (www) www.montulli.org (2010-05-11).

A brief history of the most hated tag in the history of the Web.

• ALL At NYC Anarchist Book Fair. DarianW, DarianWorden.com (2010-04-20). Alliance of the Libertarian Left folks from New Jersey, New York, and New Hampshire converged at the 2010 NYC Anarchist Book Fair. This is the first time ALL had a table at the event. We had a good mix of cheap and free literature: The table got more organized as… (Linked Tuesday 2010-04-27.)

• *"It is the responsibility of writers to listen to gossip and. Masha, Cyganeria (2010-04-26). “It is the responsibility of writers to listen to gossip and pass it on. It is the way all storytellers learn about life.” ~Grace PaleyOne of the benefits of working a side job as a writer is the constant exposure to people and their stories. My co-workers are people I’m… (Linked Tuesday 2010-04-27.)

• The Big Anarchist Survey. DarianW, DarianWorden.com (2010-04-21). I hope lots of anarchists fill out The Big Anarchist Survey. It won't take long, and the survey writers provided space to write in answers and comment on the survey itself. (Linked Tuesday 2010-04-27.)

• A (comparatively) cheerful post, for once: Naomi Wolf and the Tea Parties. John Markley, The Superfluous Man (2010-04-21). My feelings towards the Tea Party movement, and the public protests against the current administration’s policies in general, have generally been favorable but pessimistic: It’s nice to see a popular movement opposing the galloping statism of the bailouts, the stimulus, and health care “reforms,” but my expectation has been that… (Linked Tuesday 2010-04-27.)

• Apple IIe Twitter Terminal. Daring Fireball (2010-04-28). Awesome. (Linked Wednesday 2010-04-28.)