I'm Mary Lauran.

designaemporter: Bruno Ferrari I hope this actually exists.

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:16:46 -0500

designaemporter:

Bruno Ferrari

I hope this actually exists.

Optical calibration targets painted on the earth to measure...

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:40:06 -0500

Optical calibration targets painted on the earth to measure drone cameras resolution / Via BLDGBLOG

Enrique Peñalosa quotes, via the Alliance

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:39:29 -0500

Enrique Peñalosa quotes, via the Alliance

Vintage rocket-powered bicycles, 1929 - 1951

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 18:08:42 -0400

Vintage rocket-powered bicycles, 1929 - 1951

Will Robertson of the Washington Bicycle Club riding an American...

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 18:00:46 -0400

Will Robertson of the Washington Bicycle Club riding an American Star Bicycle down the steps of the United States Capitol in 1885

Photo

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 22:09:00 -0400

Photo

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 21:52:21 -0400

Stop Complaining; Start Organizing

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 19:35:00 -0400

There’s been quite a bit of controversy lately about nonpartisan tech startup NationBuilder’s decision to sell its software to the Republican State Leadership Committee. Last month, POLITICO reported:

A suite of easy-to-use campaign software designed by rock-ribbed Democrats is about to be deployed as the go-to online tool for thousands of Republican candidates.

NationBuilder, a 15-month-old startup founded by a former John Kerry campaign aide, will announce this week a deal to be the official, exclusive software provider for the Republican State Leadership Committee. NationBuilder GOPro will enable the Los Angeles-based company to outfit GOP candidates for state-level offices with campaign tech.

And in response, some progressive organizers like Raven Brooks, executive director of Netroots Nation, are encouraging progressive groups not to support the platform (TechPresident).

As a NationBuilder customer and as someone who cares deeply about organizing, here is my perspective on all this.

Perhaps most importantly, these are tools we’re talking about, not the campaigns themselves.

Part of Brooks’ reason for starting the boycott is that progressive who pay for the platform will now also be paying to support conservative candidates’ platforms. He opines, “progressives should think carefully about who they’re helping when they use NationBuilder — every dollar you spend directly aids your opponents.”

I would disagree. The dollars and feedback that organizations give to NationBuilder help make the tools better, not an opponents’ use of the tools. There are so many steps between effective tools and winning campaigns. I guarantee that even with an excellent suite of online tools for email blasting and phone banking and turf cutting, you will still be nowhere without effective list management and inspiring messaging and effective volunteer management. That’s up to people, not tools.

Brooks thinks it’s unfair that NationBuilder will sell its technology, which he argues is based on hard-earned progressive organizing tactics, to the RSLC for conservative co-opting. Nation Builder, says Brooks, sells “a specific set of tools that draws on a body of knowledge that’s been built up on the progressive side primarily over a number of years.”

Steve Ofner of Liberal Art disagrees. Before they were used in progressive political campaigns, he says they were ripped off from business practices. And besides, shiny tools do not a good campaign make:

Can we please stop romanticizing CRM as if it were handed down from the clouds by Saul Alinksky himself? It’s just a tool, one we lifted from the business world almost a decade ago…and there’s no soul in it. You have to provide that yourself.

I wager that every ounce of energy that has been expended complaining about Jim Gilliam’s decision to sell NationBuilder to customers on both sides of the political aisle would have been better spent designing more effective campaigns. Rather than complaining about the other people using the tools, help your people get better at using the tools to their greatest potential.

A particularly troubling part of Brooks’ argument is that is seems to attack the idea of nonpartisan political software. Josh Tauberer, a software developing civics aficionado behind projects like GovTrack and PopVox, wrote:

Brooks’s point seems to boil down to a belief that there can be no nonpartisan political tools.

GovTrack, and most tools that reuse its database, is a nonpartisan tool that has played an important role in political activism over the last several years on both sides of the political aisle. It is astonishing to me that anyone would think that technology infrastructure should choose sides.

Indeed. Where is this drive to keep Internet tools polarized coming from?

I think it’s a symptom of a much larger social problem. As a culture, we have a blinding and debilitating tendency to endlessly categorize and dig in our heels in the face of ideological difference. We try to polarize for self-preservation, but our efforts to express outrage and erect more barriers can run us into the ground while needlessly vilifying others.

This is how Brooks characterizes letting the RSLC use NationBuilder:

You’re kind of giving tools to a less-advanced civilization, if you will. They don’t have stuff on their side that’s been generated by their people. They’ve tried and failed to copy our infrastructure. You can read best practices on the Internet and can study people’s e-mails and go to trainings, but it doesn’t mean that you have the secret sauce that makes campaigns work.

First of all, yes, he did call Republican campaigners a “less-advanced civilization.”

Second, Brooks is essentially endeavoring to stake off effective online campaigning as an inherently progressive thing that must not be shared. But in today’s day and age, when more people are tinkering with code and the Internet makes information more open to more people than ever before, I will place zero faith in a strategy that purports to save progressive campaigns by hiding online tools from opponents.

I’m reminded of liberal author Steve Almond’s declaration in a New York Times article that he is going “cold turkey” on the right-wing media outlets he loves to hate. Instead, he pledges, he will “take up the hard work of genuine political action.”

I’d like to make a similar argument in this situation: liberals, stop complaining and start organizing. There is so much work to be done.

"The Wild West days are over. A bicyclist in New York will be, and should be, increasingly a domestic..."

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 11:39:00 -0400

“The Wild West days are over. A bicyclist in New York will be, and should be, increasingly a domestic creature. … What cyclists are giving up – death-defying thrills – is nothing compared to what we stand to gain, which is the right to bike in safety. … Being accepted as a legitimate member of society means learning better manners.”

- Sarah Goodyear’s much better advice for urban biking.

"Find the safest and fastest route, regardless of bike rules. I hop on the sidewalk during a..."

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 11:36:37 -0400

“Find the safest and fastest route, regardless of bike rules. I hop on the sidewalk during a congested stretch of morning commute. If you’re weaving between pedestrians in a crosswalk, point to the spot where you’re headed to give them a heads up.”

- Terrible, horrible, no-good rules for urban biking in GOOD. Don’t treat biking like an alleycat race; be a citizen cyclist.

Photo

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 17:18:37 -0400

bees-knees: i really, really love...

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 17:14:51 -0400

Photo by Kevin Shelton

Photo by Kevin Shelton

bees-knees:

i really, really love this.

britticisms:

Installation shots of Jessica Stockholder’s Color Jam, which paints the streets and buildings on State and Adams in Chicago with swaths of rich colored vinyl.

I’ve walked through this space numerous times during the past couple of days. To truly understand it’s power, one must experience it personally. It is both the street as we know it and not the street. The space instantly brightens one’s mood and makes downtown sparkle amidst the grit and noise and wear.

Cool!

This is my new favorite gif.

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 17:10:16 -0400

This is my new favorite gif.

Grant Petersen in the League blog: I ride a bicycle because… I like to sweat a little, not a lot,...

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 22:01:00 -0400

Grant Petersen in the League blog:

I ride a bicycle because…

I like to sweat a little, not a lot, every day, and riding is my favorite way to sweat.

My house and yard fit more bikes than cars.

I like riding something I can fix.

epicstratton: via Brilliant. The only problem is that it...

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 21:38:54 -0400

epicstratton:

via

Brilliant. The only problem is that it looks too difficult to take that bike off the wall and take it outside and ride it.

"The real problem isn’t Limbaugh. …The real problem is that … rather than..."

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 21:27:01 -0400

“The real problem isn’t Limbaugh. …The real problem is that … rather than initiating discussion, or advocating for more humane policy, we react to the most vile and nihilistic voices on the right. Media outlets like MSNBC and The Huffington Post often justify their coverage of these voices by claiming to serve as watchdogs. It would be more accurate to think of them as de fact loudspeakers for conservative agitprop. … The most insidious effect of our addiction to right-wing misanthropy has been the erosion of our most generous instincts. … I’ve come to regard all conservatives as extremists, a mob of useful idiots plied by profiteers, rather than a diverse group of citizens, many of whom share my values, anxieties, and goals. … My personal goal is simple: to go cold turkey on conservative wing nuts and instead take up the hard work of genuine political action.”

- author Steve Almond in the New York Times. What if all of the energy liberals exert in being annoyed at right-wing media were reallocated towards more productive ends? That is a lot of energy. Part of the problem, I think, is that the dopamine squirts that liberals get while watching John Stewart poke fun at Fox News exist in equal proportion to the dopamine squirts enjoyed by conservatives tuning in to Rush Limbaugh. Some of us sit around being outraged at the prompts of highly specialized right-wing media moguls. Others of us sit around being outraged at the thought of others sitting around being outraged. In the meantime, nobody gets anything done.

"Riding a bicycle should be just a natural part of your life. It’s so easy. We are the only..."

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:38:01 -0400

“Riding a bicycle should be just a natural part of your life. It’s so easy. We are the only ones — ‘we,’ speaking as an American — we are generally the only ones who commute to work in racing clothing. Where is there room for debate about how ridiculous that is?”

- -Grant Petersen (NPR)

I was surprised to hear my #1 bike hero’s voice on the radio this morning. Grant was the US marketing director for Bridgestone bicycles during their best years, and now he runs the phenomenal Rivendell Bicycle Works in California.

Happy Bike to Work Day!

Grant Petersen

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:38:00 -0400

Grant Petersen

They’re organizing.

Tue, 15 May 2012 18:38:09 -0400

They’re organizing.

"I think people are often quite unaware of their inner selves, their other selves, their imaginative..."

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:18:26 -0400

“I think people are often quite unaware of their inner selves, their other selves, their imaginative selves, the selves that aren’t on show in the world. It’s something you grow out of from childhood onwards, losing possession of yourself, really. I think literature is one of the best ways back into that. You are hypnotized as soon as you get into a book that particularly works for you, whether it’s fiction or a poem. You find that your defenses drop, and as soon as that happens, an imaginative reality can take over because you are no longer censoring your own perceptions, your own awareness of the world.”

- Jeanette Winterson, Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 150 (via leopoldgursky)