https://transparentelection.org

Clyde Shavers is getting something together for WA.

https://www.digitalistpapers.com/vol2/autorthompson

The basic idea is the Expertise framework.  Jobs are composed of tasks, tasks have more or less expertise associated with them.  If the less-expert tasks are automated, expertise is valued, there are fewer but more highly paid workers (experienced software architects).  If the more-expert tasks are automated, the remaining work is lower-paid, and more broadly available (Amazon warehouse workers).  The way out is the creation of new expertise, through the creation of new tasks, most of which we can’t yet conceive of.

Douglas was arguing this years ago when I expressed my fears regarding automation and paid work.  This is a nuanced guide to the argument, with supporting research and examples.  Along the way, lots of good ideas and observations.

We all shop at Trader Joe’s.  https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/tell-trader-joes-to-commit-to-keeping-ice-out

This one is for my son, Ian. Years ago before the Internet, when social media was dial-up and I had an account on the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, I read a post speculating about a new theory, that ocean warming could cause a state change in the oceanic currents that keep Europe warmer than other places with similar latitudes (for example, northern Canada). Not a gradual temperature shift, but more like flipping a switch.  If such a thing happened, the average temperature in Europe would quickly plummet, making traditional agriculture as it’s currently practiced in traditional locations difficult or impossible.  This in turn would significantly affect Europe’s ability to feed itself.

The theory has become well-accepted. This week I read that the consensus is now that there’s a 50% chance that the state change will happen this century, and a substantial chance that it happens by 2050.

From a book* I’m reading, while being interrupted by the events of war in Iran driven by the US administration:

I was beginning to behave like a fatally wounded old animal that charges in all directions, bumps into every obstacle, falls and gets up, more and more furious, more and more weakened, crazed and intoxicated by the smell of its own blood.

* The Possibility of an Island, Michel Houellebecq

doc.searls.com/2026/04/13/the-kids-take-over-2/

How to empower kids in schools to really use the tools of now. AI, CNC, robotics, programming, all integrated into the curriculum instead of firewalled into a speciality class. Starting in Kindergarten, like reading.  The “coding” push in the last few years was always a dead end, focused on job skills and quickly superseded by AI.  But the approach described here is about empowerment.

Contrast this with https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/to-teach-in-the-time-of-chatgpt-is-to-know-pain/, which documents a thoroughly frustrated take on how (higher level) education is grappling with AI.  What are the institutions missing?

Bruce Sterling comes at everything sideways. Like this: “Whatever Happens to Music Will Happen to AI”. New stuff I didn’t know. Connections I hadn’t made. What a useful guy.

Just read Dave Winer’s latest on text editors he’s working on, and then, lo and behold, another feed I follow is talking about their Markdown editor.  Seems like an opportunity here for interop.

https://observatory.cooperate.social/

AI analysis of media coverage of specific domains.  In the case of the Iran war, two things jump out:

• the media being analyzed deliberately exclude the Western MSM, and
• the site generates testable predictions daily, which it then scores the next day