It’s been ten years since I left that place…
November 26, 2023, 3:02 PM
This year marks an anniversary that just seems weird to think about: it has now been ten years since I left my job at Food & Water Watch. Ten years since I finally decided that enough was enough, and left an extremely toxic work environment.
The relationship started out innocently enough. Back in 2007, I was really involved with political activism, and I was also looking for a job that would enable me to get out of Walmart and move out on my own. A nonprofit organization that advocated for consumer issues seemed like a perfect fit. It was something that I could easily explain to my parents when it came to what the organization did, and the job that they were offering, office manager, was a perfect entry-level job for someone getting their first “real” job after college. I remember finding them in a search on Idealist.org while sitting at an Internet terminal at the Staunton Public Library, a few hours after Walmart fired me. I bookmarked their listing, and then, two days later, I fired off an application for them while sitting with my laptop at a coffee shop in downtown Staunton, along with a bunch of applications to other places. I got a call for an interview a few days later, and then I scored a second interview at the end of the first interview. The second interview went well, and then the following week, I got a call offering me the job. I produced this Journal entry immediately after getting it.
The job, meanwhile, was one of constant evolution. When I started, the organization was only about twenty people, with most working out of the Washington, DC headquarters. My role was something of a generalist in a small nonprofit. Then as the organization grew, my generalist role evolved with the organization. Over the years, I want to say that they created about five or six different specialized roles out of my job functions. And eventually, they evolved my role right out of existence, and made it very personal, even though there was no reason for it to be that personal. You know that it has to be bad when someone quits a job like that without something new lined up, and that’s exactly what that job was, as the toxicity was starting to consume me. But despite having to cash in my 403(b) account in order to have money to live on while I figured out my next move (and let it be known that those bastards never paid out my unused vacation time), I ultimately landed on my feet, getting a job in public transportation that I still enjoy nine years later.
Continue reading…If you want me to take you seriously, do your research, and don’t play the victim card…
November 17, 2023, 2:10 PM
Recently, while I was checking for copyright violations, I turned up a tweet by Twitter user @alx. The tweet, from this past September, showed my photo from 2004 of a Simplex fire alarm at Taylor Hall with the caption, “Any idea what this does?” I assumed, based on the date, that it was supposed to be commentary on the recent incident where Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building. Yes, Bowman is an idiot for doing that, but that’s beside the point. Looking the tweet over, I did not see the attribution that is required per the terms of the Creative Commons license under which that particular image is offered, so, per my usual practice, I submitted a DMCA takedown request to have that unauthorized usage removed. Then the folks who process these things at Twitter removed the image about twelve hours later. That speed is typical for Twitter, since they’re usually really good about processing DMCA notices, even following Elon Musk‘s acquisition of the platform. In other words, for as much of a cesspool as the Twitter has become these days, if there’s one thing that they still do right, it’s copyright enforcement. So as far as I was concerned, our transaction was complete. The image was removed, and we all went on with things.
Then the next day, I got an email from the folks at Twitter, telling me that Alexander Joseph Lorusso of Worcester, Massachusetts had submitted a DMCA counter-notice against the tweet that I had reported earlier, and that, as per the usual process, they would restore the content in ten business days unless they receive notice that I’ve filed an action seeking a court order on it. Here is what Lorusso said in his counter-notice when prompted for a reason:
This picture is a picture of a fire alarm and is on WikiCommons stating it is free “to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work”
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simplex_pull_station.jpg#mw-jump-to-license
This person is weaponizing DMCA against me
Categories: Copyright infringement, Social media
A trip to the Midwest…
November 11, 2023, 10:17 AM
From November 2-9, Elyse, our friend Kyle, and I took a road trip out to the Midwest. We went to Austintown, Windsor, Detroit, Dearborn, Chicago, Sheboygan, Gary, Elkhart, Cleveland, and lots of places in between over the span of eight days. The genesis of this trip was a desire to visit Chicago to see my sister and do stuff there, and then it expanded a bit into a much larger adventure. This was always intended to be a road trip, and we put quite a few miles on the HR-V over the course of the trip. It also means that the new HR-V has traveled further in its first year than any of my other vehicles ever did over their entire careers. The new HR-V has gone as far north as Ottawa, as far south as Charleston, as far east as Brooklyn, and as far west as Chicago. The only vehicle of mine that has gone further in any of those directions is the Sable, which traveled as far east as Quincy, Massachusetts in 2010. The highlights were a visit to The Henry Ford, where we not only saw the exhibits, but I also viewed a photo of mine that the museum licensed from me a long time ago, doing my own version of a walk through a Chicago neighborhood that SpinnWebe did as a spoof of a photo set of mine, a visit to the Kohler factory up in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, a siren test in Niles, some drone flights around Gary, Indiana, a visit to Garfield Heights, Ohio to see the former City View Center shopping facility that was later successfully repositioned as an industrial park, a visit to the Kent State University May 4 Visitor Center, a small museum about the Kent State shootings, to see a photo of mine that was used there, and finally, a ride on Cleveland’s RTA system. Unfortunately, my DJI Air 2S drone did not survive the week, as a stronger-than-anticipated wind caused it to run out of battery power on the way back from a flight in Sheboygan, which caused it to force-land into Lake Michigan, taking all of my drone shots from that day with it. However, I had my original drone, the DJI Mavic Mini, on hand in case Elyse had wanted to fly, so it was quickly pressed into service to complete the trip.
I’m going to do a full photo set about this trip for Life and Times, so right now, I’m just going to share a few photos of the highlights.
Categories: Canada, Chicago, Photography, Travel, Wisconsin