Tag: police

  • Clone Wars Watchlist

    A few weeks ago, I wrote my congresscritters regarding the Department of Defense’s 1033 Program, expressing a desire to end the transfer of military-grade tactical gear to state and local police departments. I haven’t heard back from my Senators yet, but my Representative, Jaime Herrera Beutler, responded:

    Dear Mr. Ward,

    Thank you for contacting me about the Department of Defense’s 1033 program and recent events in Ferguson, Missouri. It is an honor to serve as Southwest Washington’s representative in Congress, and your thoughts are important to me.

    I share your concerns regarding the militarization of local law enforcement. There is a fine line between keeping our communities safe and utilizing overwhelming, unnecessary force against our citizens.

    The Department of Defense operates the 1033 program to provide local law enforcement agencies with the ability to obtain excess equipment and weapons the military no longer requires. As you know, this program has been brought under heavy scrutiny since the killing of Michael Brown, an eighteen-year-old from Ferguson, Missouri by a local law enforcement officer.  Since then, we’ve seen footage of officers of St. Louis County law enforcement equipped with body armor, tear gas, and armored vehicles in response to violent protests and riots spurred by the shooting.

    The program has been operated by the Defense Logistics Agency’s Law Enforcement Support Office since 1990, and now over 8,000 federal and state law enforcement agencies in all 50 states participate. While the 1033 program provides combat equipment, it also supplies office furniture, generators, and copiers which some agencies may be unable to afford.

    The use of force by police deserves ongoing scrutiny, and police forces should be accountable to the communities they serve to ensure that all citizens are receiving adequate protection. We’ve seen that the tragic incident and subsequent protests in Ferguson have forced local police forces to consider their posture toward and interaction with their local communities, and I hope this continues.  Law enforcement agencies must judiciously deploy the weapons and equipment they receive. While a proportional response should be used to stop criminals rioting, shooting innocent people, looting, and throwing Molotov cocktails, the excessive use of tactical weapons when simply protecting peaceful protests exercising their First Amendment right is unacceptable. I will continue to monitor the situation in Ferguson as the investigation continues and will work with my colleagues in Congress to ensure that the 1033 program is reviewed and properly utilized, with the protection of all citizens as the utmost goal.

    Thank you again for contacting me on this important issue. I invite you to visit my website at www.jhb.house.gov for additional information or to sign up to be kept up to date on this important issue. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of assistance.

    Sincerely,

    Jaime Herrera Beutler

    Member of Congress

    A few thoughts on this response:

    • She has a valid point which is that this particular program is used for other supplies, which I have no particular objection to; I did not consider that case in my original letter
    • She seems to just be interested in more oversight of the existing 1033 program, and will not support significantly modifying the program or similar programs to prevent the transfer of tactical weapons and gear
    • She seems fine with the use of military equipment by police in the abstract, but agrees that the response in Ferguson was disproportionate… which is at least better than some members of her party’s commentariat
    • She did not address my concerns about SWAT tactics at all, or a militarized policing stance in general, focusing solely on the specific events in Ferguson

    I haven’t decided yet if I’ll write back. It does not sound like she will entertain a significant curtailment of this kind of policy. I think the next step for me is to write my state and local reps to discourage them from requisitioning military weapons and vehicles.

  • Sunspot

    A small Yorkshire Terrier lies in a pet bed on a green upholstered chair in a sunny living room.

    I wish I could nap like Pike naps.

  • The Muppets Meet Murderbot

    For the last year and a half or so Andrle and I have been having a ton of fun as part of an online book club put together by my friend Tanya. Unlike most book clubs where you all read the same thing, we all just share things we love that we’ve been reading.

    One recommendation that kept coming up was The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, and I’m glad we finally ran with it and started reading them. We’ve been bingeing the last few weeks and they’re really, really great. Highly recommend (even though I’m only on Book 4.)

    Unsurprisingly another thing I’ve been reading about and thinking about a lot is the advent of Large Language Models, particularly as manifested by ChatGPT. My past work life as an NLP practitioner has me a mix of curious, envious, and highly suspicious of what these are and how they’re being used. In the short term I don’t mind using them as a toy that I can play with for the purpose of a joke, which is what this post is about.

    A recurring topic in this book club is how we might have the Muppets interpret a particular book, or how we might recast a movie with Muppets (but keep one human actor). This provides a lot of fun discussions, especially since I grew up regularly watching the classic Muppet movies on VHS recorded off of TV, and I really like musicals.

    That all brings me to some prompt iterating that I did to get ChatGPT to write the painfully cliché finale to a Muppet musical featuring Murderbot. (Apologies to both Henson and Wells.)

    Verse 1 (Murderbot):
    I used to be a killing machine,
    A rogue cyborg, feared and mean,
    But then I met the Muppets and Kermit,
    And learned what friendship truly meant.

    Verse 2 (Kermit):
    I'm just a simple frog, it's true,
    But I believe in friendship too,
    And when I met Murderbot, I knew,
    Together we could do something new.

    Chorus (All):
    We don't need to kill no more,
    Our friends are all we're fighting for,
    With Murderbot and Kermit side by side,
    We'll show the world what we stand for.

    Verse 3 (Murderbot):
    I never wanted to be a tool,
    But that's all humans see in me, it's cruel,
    I used to dream of breaking free,
    From their endless schemes and greed.

    Verse 4 (Kermit):
    It's true, I'm always happy-go-lucky,
    But I've been through some tough times that were quite yucky,
    But now with Murderbot and the gang,
    I know our friendship will never hang.

    Chorus (All):
    We don't need to kill no more,
    Our friends are all we're fighting for,
    With Murderbot and Kermit side by side,
    We'll show the world what we stand for.

    Bridge:
    The past is gone, the future bright,
    With friends like these, we'll win the fight,
    Our love and trust will guide us through,
    Together we'll see this journey through.

    Chorus (All):
    We don't need to kill no more,
    Our friends are all we're fighting for,
    With Murderbot and Kermit side by side,
    We'll show the world what we stand for.

    Outro:
    So let's raise our voices high,
    And let the world hear our battle cry,
    With Muppets and Murderbot side by side,
    We'll change the world and turn the tide.
    OpenAI. (2023, Mar. 16) [Iterative prompt conversation starting with “This Muppet movie is about a rogue cyborg traveling to different space stations and learning the power of friendship from the Muppets” and “I need some lyrics for the big finals. The music is big broadway style number about how the rogue cyborg doesn’t need to kill bad guys anymore because it has friends.” and then encouraging more dialogue between Kermit and Murderbot] https://chat.openai.com/

    Yes, I looked up recommendations on how to properly cite ChatGPT output.

    Overall the result was mildly amusing. I couldn’t get it to capture Murderbot’s signature style, presumably because while information about the novellas are in its model training, not enough text from the novellas are in there.

    I’m still not sure what useful things I could do with this kind of tool, but in the meantime, I can make it make silly songs.

  • Fox Ferocity

    Pike playing with a toy almost as big as he is.

  • Groomed Pike

    Tiny freshly groomed Yorkie sits on a teal couch wearing a monstera bow tie

    I love this little gentleman.

  • The Kale Wanter

    A small black and brown Yorkie stands on a cream rug in front of a brown cupboard begging for the bunch of lacinato kale in hand in the foreground.