Out of prison after 30 years and people telling him to find forms on the web
twitter.com
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A few things, it is astounding but believable that when people are released they enter a world that is entirely unknown to them. Not only technology but their relationships and neighborhoods are completely different.
In addition,They have no reliable way of getting back on their feet. They usually have zero money, no housing and no job - and there is why you have high recidivism rates. Not only that, but no one wants to hire justice involved individuals, even though significant tax credits are available for doing so - Walmart for example, takes extreme advantage of these.
The training programs in prisons will train someone up to a certification, but fall short of letting them get that certification. People have completed their GED maybe 5 times inside serving sentences at different times because doing so can reduce their sentence, it doesn’t help them in any other way.
Without the ability to access training for in demand skills, many of these individuals get temp service jobs as flagged for construction for example. Doesn’t make sense to me that we want to rehab people yet minimal opportunities inside are provided to break the cycle.
Realize this. People serve a sent and then they are eligible for parole. Many people opt to serve their parole inside, rather than outside. I’ve been told they feel it is easier inside than out.
I would probably make the same choice.
1. Education programs that actually mean something and actually are adequately funded.
2. Retaining prison work, but requiring that prisoners who are not paid minimum wage where they are be paid the difference on release. (The Federal government may need to make this a protected fund or trust to make sure its not use as a fund to raid by lower governments and administrators.)
There’s also work release where certain members can go off location to work when they’re getting close to release. In addition there stuff like unicore https://www.bop.gov/inmates/custody_and_care/unicor.jsp Unicore pays pennies on the dollar though. But this money helps people upon release have enough maybe to get an apartment for their first month out - which most cant afford.
Some cool organizations trying to help, just as examples off the top of my head in case you are interested in looking further about solutions include:
-remerg https://remerg.com/
-KOBEYO https://www.kobeyo.com/
-Justice reskill https://justicereskill.com/
But main point is really these individuals that have served their time are not adequately given the resources they need to succeed. Tons of opportunities to contribute though - as with any u underserved demographic.
Is that PC for "ex cons"?
As is too often the case, the lure of money from selling drugs combined with not being able to find work meant he returned to prison. He got out again in the early-mid 2000's and this time around, there were no courses offered for study. When he got out that time, he didn't even know how to use the TV remote.
One day, history will look back on how we treat our prisoners with immense shame. Instead of trying to rehabilitate them, we leave them to rot, and politicians never shy away from an opportunity to make the lives of prisoners more miserable, lest they risk being called "soft" on crime.
In our pursuit to avoid cryptic black screens with command prompts, a user must now understand that their computer has Windows with all of its menus and functions, a browser window with all of its menus and functions, running a webapp, with all of its menus and functions. Whenever functionality bleeds into other layers ("how do I print this pdf file"), it is a huge hassle trying to explain "oh, it's not that print button, its this other print button".
It makes me sad to think that people prefer their "appliance computers" (phones, tablets, chromebooks) over real computers, but I can hardly blame them.
> Well there's usually an icon that looks like this, and sometimes it will bring up the android share menu, but sometimes it opens up something that only shows you contact in that app, and having someone on facebook is not the same as on whatsapp.
> And oh look, apparently whatsapp and/or facebook has a bug where you select to share the video and you end up at the whatsapp contact screen but selecting a contact loses the video.
> Well I guess you can go into your gallery and share from there. That seems to work. But not every app is going to expose its images in your gallery.
And it became clear that even the simple devices aren't.
Back in my day, Apple had something called the Human Interface Guidelines and they adhered to them religiously, and IMHO it made computing a lot more approachable for a neophyte, compared to the mess we have today with "hamburger menus" vs. "triple-dot menus" (REALLY??), no general way to access the settings of any app, no general way to do anything really save for typing in text (and sometimes not even then!)
Instagram and Snapchat (the worst offender here, you literally won't learn some inputs unless someone tells you about them!) have not made anything better.
He has absolutely zero interest in learning how file systems work, the intricacies of networks, or anything else about the underlying plumbing that allows him to do the things he wants to do.
I'd add that many of us have internalized how to use phones/tablets over time as they've become incrementally more complex. I still never remember all the details of having multiple windows open on a tablet given I don't use that functionality much and I periodically learn some trick I never knew about.
And then sell it to the rest of us as well.
The current seniors phone are utter crap. I've tried a bunch for my dad.
My dad, 80+, can't figure out how to use a feature phone (I got him a Nokia handset) much less a smartphone (have tried iPhone and Android).
The thing is, he has no desire to read a menu, or figure out what an icon means, or what the text under the icon says. He can't even be bothered trying to understand up, down, left, right and OK in terms of navigating a phone's capabilities.
What he does know how to use is a land line. He's got a Northern Telecom phone with some pre-programmed numbers, and he seems to have no problem with that at all. He doesn't know how to do voice mail on his phone, but he does know how to use an old school answering machine.
If someone can make a phone that behaves more like a traditional phone (i.e., maybe a lid flips so that it's like lifting a phone off the hook, close the lid to hang up), and no send/cancel buttons, I think my dad would be able to figure it out more easily.
On a separate note, the reasons above are the same reasons why he can't use a media player on a TV. He only knows the concept of sticking physical media into a player, and using the standard media buttons, and for the TV, he is used to punching in numbers to change the channel.
Menu navigation, which is easy for most people under 60, is SO foreign to him.
But once you remove the physical buttons everything becomes much less intuitive and hinges way more on proper UI design in addition to making a lot of assumptions about a users knowledge on touch controls.
I think this has two big benefits:
- Minor point: Greater resilience to downtime, interruptions to service
- Major point: a check on becoming a faceless entity with no exposure to the public. Think Google or FB if you get flagged. If there's a number you can call or an office you can go to and a guarantee of service via those modalities, it provides at least a modicum of accountability.
People are directed to the online versions first because it’s fastest for everyone involved. We should be pushing everyone toward efficient online self-service first, while leaving the limited in person and call staff to handle the rare cases who need them.
The mistake here was that the person was only informed of the online version, rather than being told where to go or who to call to handle this offline.
I was with you until that statement.
If we push online, self-service first, then the offline, in person services will languish. This is what OP was driving at.
Establish effective offline services _first_, with the intention of online, self-service, and you will end up in a place that better serves everyone.
Due to the pandemic, they had strict rules and required me to first book an appointment one week later for a specific time slot. Reserving that time slot was only possible via phone call.
So I basically had to wait a full week for a one-page printout with a stamp on it. Should this be possible offline? Yes, but why not save most people the drive and waiting times if this could also be done instantly via a simple digital signature?
Develop the paper forms. Figure out what needs an gov't employee or other official to help with the necessary steps. _Then_ offer complementary self-serve options that can streamline the process.
It's 2021. Why are we still talking about paper forms for government functions?
Agreed. All I am really advocating for is that we don't expect people to have sign into a website from a computer/phone at home. Some people don't have that luxury.
> Self-service kiosks are a perfectly reasonable way to support in-person needs
That isn't true. A very significant portion of the population needs help with these systems.
Hell, I had to order a hamburger from a fast food restaurant one time, and I was intimidated and confused, (I at least got my food eventually). Most the customers who came in tried to avoid the system and went straight to the cashier.
We could set it up so that everybody does. Public libraries have traditionally been great at this, although they could certainly do with more funding.
I tried to get a form at the DMV a few months ago and when I got to the counter they sent me away with a printed slip of their web address. (They are currently only handling licensing and renewals in person; all title and registration processing forms are apparently supposed to be done online.) I tried calling their central office and they told me I needed to print the form from their website and mail it in.
I suppose if I had asked them really, really nicely they might have mailed me a printed form, but it was never presented as an option (and that wasn't my issue anyway). It's also worth noting that this is state government and not federal, so compliance to accessibility requirements may not be as regulated or well-enforced.
The US Embassy FBU in London has recently switched to email only. They no longer accept postal mail. [1] The FBU handles social security related matters for those out of the country.
You can visit in person only for urgent visits with an appointment which they point out are limited. [2] They no longer list a phone number of their site so appointments must be made through email as well.
Their territory reaches very far from London so in person visits for Americans in South Africa means event urgent requests are email only.
[1]https://uk.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/federal-benefi...
[2] https://uk.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/federal-benefi...
I guess the flipside is your needs may be more complex (passport / family / citizenship issues always are) so having someone competent to talk to on the phone is necessary.
The example they give of an emergency is "a 12 year old needs to have a social security number issued". I think social security numbers are issued at birth now, so I don't think it comes up often. (Coincidentally I did need to have mine issued very quickly at 12)
But, to OP's point, there are services that are indeed moving to "online only".
These are all just some of the things that can go wrong arriving in a foreign country!
But, at least for my own country, they're definitely not there to help you with connectivity issues.
So I set off on a 35 minute drive to the local office.
While the wait times were shorter in the physical building I had to chuckle when I thought they were just collecting documents and uploading them to the same online portal I was warned would take a fair bit of time, but that I needed to allow a few more days past the 45 day limit because they fax them into the same remote place periodically. Their email system for the document collecting office does not allow email attachment of documents.
My other option, I kid you not, was to used their "house" cell phone and login to sensitive accounts, bank ect. And screenshot the information and use the same web-form to upload said documents.
Oh, and covid, I could not touch the "house" cellphone but he would wanted me to write my logins in a piece of scratch paper and he could navigate for me based on my direction.
Emailing unencrypted documents honestly sounds a bit better to me then leaving all my info in a publicly accessible box.
Reminds me of this scene from Hitchhikers:
—————-
“But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.”
“Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.”
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’”
A stack of papers going back years showing that the corporate entity you're dealing with confirms that you payed them on time for years feels a lot better defense than:
Me: your honor, I swear I paid them Corp: our computer thingy says you didn't. also it's a tangle of 50 different sql databases, so we'll never know the truth for sure
Similarly, if you have a bunch of paper showing that you did something with respect to the government that feels safer than officers showing up to your house because a database upgrade went sideways. Something is traceable. There's an artifact that can be used to reconstruct what really happened.
And the government needing forms can be useful too. If an internal auditor (or reporter or something) shows up and finds a bunch of filled out forms in the trash or they see that some forms are intentionally not replenished, then they can bust some skulls. However, on the other hand if things are just "lol the computer says you can't have freedoms and liberty" then maybe it's because of a bug with respect to the hyphen in your last name or maybe it's because someone is persecuting you illegally, but nobody can prove anything and there's no trail to follow.
I do agree with this sentiment, but I would like to point out that one can achieve the same effect (or very nearly so) by saving the "receipt" page or confirmation page that you usually get with online transactions. You could either save a directory full of PDF's and only print them out if there actually is a need for them in court, or you could even print them as you encounter them and build up that "big stack of papers" over time.
Yes this imposes extra friction, which does suck, but it's something.
But I personally like having paper that the corporation printed out versus something that I printed out. Like, technically, you can fake the "receipt" page because it's just some html etc. The only thing that proves that what you have is real is the confirmation number and suddenly you're back to hoping that the corporation that asserts you owe them money has and will provide all of their sql databases so that you can show that your confirmation number is genuine.
On the other hand, if I have years of documents they produced and the styles and layout, paper quality, postal records, etc all match what everyone else has in their homes, then, yeah, it could still be faked, but it's a much harder pill for a judge to swallow. Like, at some point people are going to decide that you're either telling the truth or you are a super genius with way too much time on your hands. Either way they're going to tend towards letting you off the hook.
Meanwhile, the jury can look at 200 bill receipts and see the age of the paper for themselves. Like, yeah it could be faked, but it means they were planning on faking something for 20 years.
Sure, there are still a lot of people who simply isn't comfortable handling this, and for them send them printed versions.
Auditors and reporters should audit the end-result, not look at paper baskets. We already know "oops liberty not found" happens in a lot of cases yet the powers that be does nothing. (Because it can't because it's a in a gridlock, because well, a lot of people are still just a xenophobic bigoted harmful dickhole waving their (single issue) flag.)
I mean, sure. It's just that it's really hard to know how we got to any given end-result. Hey, we see a guy who is really having problems getting services for his kids from the state. Investigation time! Oh, it turns out he's got a bunch of money but he just doesn't want to spend it on his kids. So the reason why he's not getting the services is legit.
MEANWHILE
A guy isn't getting services for his kids AND we see that his forms are all in the trash outside of the statehouse. And there's Jimmy from the service department emptying some more filled out forms into the trash. Ah ha!
If it was an electronic form, then Jimmy could just hit delete (maybe even accidentally) and we would never know.
The point of paper is to make it harder for people in government to get away with not helping. Yeah, ideally we would investigate everything, but we just don't have the resources for that. Forcing someone to throw away paper into a basket is a shortcut to help people investigate.
Paper is no different from digital documents when it comes to shady government business. It's just as likely for said magical auditors to find printed copies, email attachments, missing reports, missing data, misplaced data, forgotten backups, and so on. (Have I mentioned the tendency of digital things to be easy to get copied? Whistleblowers? Also I want to mention just to be redundant: backups!)
Audits are conducted based on processes. If the process is so lax that it does not mandate adequate records keeping then that problem needs fixing. And ... reporters write about this all the time, paper or not, it doesn't matter.
Just look at how the ATF's National Trace Center (the federal gun database) is still paper based to protect privacy. (To protect against a government overreach.)
"Interestingly" other special interest groups were less successful in keeping their records out of searchable databases.
If someone is not getting the money they are allocated by law, they usually sue. In the trial the plaintiff presents the evidence (documents in whatever form) that support (prove) that they are due whatever money they are not getting. Then it's the government's responsibility to contest that, show the problem with the argument, or show some document that changes the outcome of the assessment.
I don't recall ever seeing such an option.
I work in software and I do not trust it. Like you, I get paper bills. Where that's not an option I keep my own records.
I do allow some services to auto-bill my credit card. That's the bank's money first and credit cards offer more protection in the event of billing errors.
The problem? I couldn’t update any of my info from when I was 16 unless I went in person.
What this ultimately means is that I will be 34 when this new license expires, using a baby faced teenage photo from 18 years prior, with physical descriptions that are out of date and inaccurate.
Oh well.
What if an officer pulls you over and has to compare current you to your ID? Could be cause for trouble.
The converse is that the government should provide free internet access to all citizens and immigrants, IF that is the primary way to communicate with the govt.
I also reject that "mail is an option" when mail takes 6-8 weeks to get to a federal/state inbox, and takes that much time back. Even contacts at agencies I work with have me send DVDs to their contractors to bypass federal months-long delays in sending required resources.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/andr...
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
Because of that, any plans that try to to help everyone MUST have no exceptions for offenders. In that way, it would have a better chance to pass since it doesn't directly call out offenders.
I also think that if Government keeps pushing everything to the internet, then the internet needs to be a utility.
Also counter-intuitively, a physical office you can visit or phone number where you're on hold for an hour plus, and need to access between 9am-4pm, M-F could actually be less accessible for a huge portion of society compared to 24/7 web forms. If I don't file required forms because I can't get to a government office who's accountable for that?
That is a big problem. But in my experience, we always manage somehow, if only by mandating someone else to do it for us. The level of unaccountability reached with online services here in France during COVID times is incredible. At least when we had physical places to go, i could always have someone face-to-face to have an argument about why the hell the system is broken. Now this is not an option anymore...
And if government services do go online only, then I think the government is obligated to provide free internet access and training to those who can't afford it, in the same way that they provide roads and legal defense.
Offering services online is a major game-changer for such folks.
If that database field ever goes from 'true' to 'false' they will be fired, deported and never allowed into the country again.
That's kind of important.
Situations like the one mentioned here shouldn't happen.
Weren't there any classes? Books? Library? Computer rooms?
It's complete failure of a justice system if person comes out of prison like from a time capsule. IMHO it may just increase recidivism - what can a person do in a "free" world if he/she were not let to know about the world outside prison walls?
Keeping people in prisons might be just what the US prison industrial complex wants.
Not to mention the Federal prison Industries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Industries Revenue $531,453,000 (2019) "Under current law, all physically able inmates who are not a security risk or have a health exception are required to work, either for UNICOR or at some other prison job.[4][12] Inmates earn from US$0.23 per hour up to a maximum of US$1.15 per hour, and all inmates with court-ordered financial obligations must use at least 50% of this UNICOR income to satisfy those debts"
And that is just one of them...on the federal level...not state.
Some patriots probably got offended.
Looking at this disproportional reaction it feels like we have stakeholders here.
You're a better person than that.
tu quoque fallacy
And of course...it just adds to their money if people reoffend.
Just look at the replies on the twitter post. They amount to "shouldn't have done the crime then". Get raped/attacked in prison? Whoops, shouldn't have done the crime then. Released unprepared and institutionalized after 3 decades in prison? Whoops, shouldn't have done the crime then.
I strongly suspect there's a lot less interest in rehabilitation than we like to think. Being let down by a profit-driven incarceration system is only one facet of this.
It's more than this - tough-on-crime rhetoric is largely explicitly built around interracial (black on white) homosexual rape and abuse fantasies.
Anyhow, a neighborhood homeless man and I became friends and I'd help him out with $$ and food and drink from time to time. We'd hang out and I get to hear stories of all the crazy shit he'd seen in the past 40 years in the neighborhood, from growing up through the civil rights era and seeing the city burn in 68, to the lines of people around the block waiting to buy crack at Rayful Emmonds grandmothers house. He'd been in and out of jail, run with gangs, the full nine yards. After getting hit by a drunk driver on his way to holdup a liquor store to get money to buy his new baby diapers, he'd ended up on the streets with nothing but his stories and a bum leg.
Along the way, he told me about his wife and children, his stint at the Navy shipyards in Virginia Beach, and his childhood in North Carolina. He told me about how one day he'd love to travel back to his childhood home town and see his mother, who he'd purchased his childhood home for with the proceeds from his successful dealings at the shipyards.
One day, he mentioned he'd gotten some money and wanted to send his mother flowers, but he couldn't remember what the address was. I asked if he remembered how to get to the house, and he said he did, so I grabbed my laptop, opened up Street View in the center of the town and asked him which way to go.
I've never experienced quite such a reaction in my life. This was black magic fuckery to him and he thought I was using some secret government technology. I explained to him the general principles of it, and he just didn't believe it. Incredulous wouldn't describe a tenth of his reaction.
That reaction wasn't anything compared to when we finally found his mothers house. He couldn't believe that he was looking at the house he grew up in, had purchased for his mother and that he'd not seen probably 30+ years. He teared up looking at it and got quite emotional. I offered to find her phone number so that he could call her, but it was too much for him at the time, and he waved it off.
He eventually got housing through a city program, and I lost touch with him as he stopped frequenting the neighborhood.
Old Dirty, if you're still out there, I miss your company and stories and hope you're doing well!
But for some homeless people, job hunting is a nightmare because they don't have the internet savvy and, on top of that, they don't own a laptop and they may not know they can get access to a computer at the library (at least when there isn't a pandemic on).
Kudos to her for taking the time to do this. I don't know how to solve this, though I run some websites and what not aimed at trying to provide useful info to homeless people and people at risk of homelessness and I advocate to whatever degree I can for trying to get smartphones and the like into the hands of homeless individuals and people at risk (and people with prison records are at risk if you can't infer the obvious just from reading these tweets).
But, because she has no income (she is left with about $40 a fortnight after government assistance) she has had to cut off her internet connection, phone connection, and her ageing laptop of nearly 10 years has also completely died.
Unfortunately, I didn't learn of this until just a few years ago, but even in that small gap of a few years between where she was able to still afford all of these vital services and bits of equipment and use them perfectly fine and by the time she couldn't, she grew completely disillusioned with technology and has an extremely difficult time in using even basic smart phones. On top of that, it is almost impossible for her to apply for jobs through this device. Trying to teach her how to write up a cover letter on the Google Docs Android app was impossible.
It has really opened my eyes and taught me to be a lot more patient and empathetic with people struggling with modern technology. It feels like a lot of these improvements are supposed to make our lives easier, for for a few, it does nothing but make it harder and I don't know how to solve this problem or if it even can be. Are these people just to be left behind?
Isn’t incarceration a two way street? If government takes away (for good reason or not) your personal freedom aren’t they liable for your well-being during that time? And more importantly, responsible for the person “their” system returns to society at large?
Practically? If there is no accountability, no loop closure on the delivery of such a thing, then no.
Whether judges are elected or appointed varies by state and the states with appointed judges do better at some things but not others.
Ironically, while computer skills courses may be unavailable, mobile devices (with Internet service!) are increasingly-common contraband items in US prisons:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2020/04/19/will-cel...
I was in federal prison until just 3 months ago I can safely say this is exactly what I saw while there.
I don't think there is a concerted conscious profiteering effort and it's just "Tuesday" business for municipalities and contracted corps. I'd contend more that the emotional appeals for tough on crime laws and media crime porn drive the mentality of imprisonment in the US.
But those are produced by people who profit from the system as it is. People didn't just arrive at the cruelty level they are at, they were whipped to it, and countervailing opinions are shut out of "serious" discourse.
Note that I'm not talking about private prisons here, I'm talking about vendors, contractors, and the funders of politicians that need to preserve local human warehousing jobs.
I sat down and spoke with the manager of the program at the prison. She barely removed her eyes from her computer screen and when I was done proposing my idea she just shrugged and said "that's not something we want to invest time into." I then asked her if she thought these skills were more necessary today than yesterday and compared to 5 years ago - basically establishing that this is only going to get worse not better. She just repeated that "this isn't what the BOP wants to do."
It's worth mentioning what those ACE classes currently consist of. The ones I saw while I was in prison ranged from basic math/arithmetic (addition, multiplication, very basic algebra) to poetry and origami. Which is interesting because it would paint the picture that people in prison are dumb or not learning anything, whereas they actually are learning quite a lot since they have little else to occupy themselves with besides books - especially during COVID times (since we were essentially locked down the entire time during the pandemic while I was incarcerated)
I met many inmates that were learning complex math and physics, computer programming and I met some that had never seen the "real world" in any capacity with Bitcoin or other emerging technologies that had a decent grasp of how they operated from the various books they had read.
But at the same time, you want them to go out as a better person than they went in (else there is no point in releasing them).
Punishing people after their release is not benefitting anyone.
The interest in punishment is from politicians who want to appear "tough on crime" to their electorate. Those policies aren't tough on crime, though. They're tough on criminals in all the ways that lead to more crime in the end.
https://twitter.com/ianmiell/status/1299742361854054401
"""One example of the insanity:
"Enter mobile number to register" OK, 0793...
"You already have an account with that number"
"Enter mobile number to get recovery details" OK, 0793...
"You do not have an account with that number"
Turns out you have to put 44793..."""
This is part of what "accessibility" covers, it's not just providing alternative text for images. A11y also deals with overcoming cognitive barriers, for example people with ADD benefit from a clear, easy-to-follow hierarchy of information.
For this person (and many others) accessible means easy to learn, and easy to follow.
Edit: She mentions "Corrlinks" which provides a sort of "email" like service to Federal prisons. So this person was in a US Federal Prison.
Pretty crazy.
Theres a very strong “lock them up and throw away the key” mentality in many Americans view of justice.
I got really into this issue maybe two years ago, and it's been pretty sickening to observe. Things like multiple states denying surgeries based on alleged "one good eye" policies. Replacing in-person visits with virtual ones.
Sure, there's profit involved, of course. For example, there are pushes to get rid of prison libraries and their books and music and switch instead to tablet devices, so that the families of incarcerated people (those in prison might be making as little as literal pennies per hour) can be charged subscriptions by various companies. But even that is driven by costs involved in checking donated books for contraband. At the end of the day, we need to incarcerate fewer people for shorter periods of time -- and I'm not just talking about non-violent offenders, either.
The person in this twitter thread served 30 years. Let's start there.
I don't have any hope nor interest in try to "rehabilitate" rapists, murderers or child molesters. I don't even want them locked up for life, that's a waste of money and isn't enough punishment. I want the problem solved, I want them to get the death penalty.
>particularly when it comes to minorities. Given how much they are so overrepresented in commiting crimes, I don't even know how you can minimize that beyond just keep improving the system, regardless of the sentence.
Anything above 0% is too much
The American Library Association has a good list of book donation programs here: https://libguides.ala.org/book-donations/bookstoprisons
After the pandemic subsides (whenever that may be), the Bureau of Prisons has a guide on how to help out the recently/incarcerated here: https://www.bop.gov/jobs/volunteer.jsp
Here's a good piece on how a volunteer can help save lives (maybe this can be you!): https://prisonwriters.com/prison-volunteers/
The Google-world guy stood out. I felt for him. The film's epilogue shows him successfully getting a job as a building supervisor, but what are we doing for people like him? Employment services in my state offer free computer courses to people seeking jobs, but is that enough? And are the services in other states more spotty?
i believe that one
"Persona: The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests (2021)"
Exploring the unexpected origins of America's obsession with personality testing, this documentary takes a look at the profound ways that ideas about personality have formed the world around us.
Probably not. I'm sure some programs exist like that, but it's complicated. In the US, most prisoners are in State, not Federal prisons. Every state, and even every prison, has different programs and rules. Also, in general, US culture views prison as pure punishment and not rehabilitation.
Prison furlough programs existed in all 50 states in the 1980s, and "almost 10 percent of state and federal prisoners received a furlough in 1987". [2][3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_Door_(advertisement)
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/12/us/study-says-53000-got-p...
[3] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/05/13/willie-horton-...
I also recall that there was a little fandom controversy at the time where people complained that it wasn't really a time travel story and what was this jerk Spider Robinson trying to pull anyway!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callahan%27s_Crosstime_Saloon#...
it says almost all these stories were published in Analog, that's where I remember the controversy over its lack of the more fanciful sort of time travel fans back then were used to took place.
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your memory works better than mine. It took me awhile to dig out the memory of what was the second Callahan's Place story I ever sold. Since it had been over a year since my first sale, and I'd collected 14 rejection slips since, it's a happy memory, which always helps.
Yes, the story you remember was "The Time Traveler," if I'm remembering right. But the controversy part is just a bit of an exaggeration. I wish I could check my memory against Ben Bova's excellent one, but my recollection is, what actually happened was he got one or two letters complaining that that story was not science fiction. Ben wrote back to both that first of all, he felt it was, that science fiction did not necessarily have to contain machinery of any kind—just change—and concluded by saying, come on, you've got a complaint about one story out of the hundreds you've read here, and you threaten to cancel your subscription? You have that right, and I'm sorry you feel that way; have a nice day.
Then he told me privately that he'd checked, and nobody had canceled their subscription. But it made a great story, so we both retold it over the years.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. As Dizzy Gillespie said about Charlie Parker, no Ben, no me. In his last years, he used to tell me he was starting to feel like one of the last legionnaires still defending Fort Zindeneuf, and now it's my turn.
Thanks for reminding me what an uncannily lucky sumbitch I am and have been.
—Spider
-------------------
at the bottom he had the following inspirational quote
We like believing the best
because nothing needs to be done about it,
and the worst, because nothing can.
—James Richardson
While caring for (or just carrying) a child. After an injury or stroke that limits your mobility. Living with chronic conditions. Changing technology or losing access to your go-to tools. Traveling to areas with a digital divide in some way. And many more...
We've made the case for the for some sets differently abled people-- I'm hard pressed to find a developer who doesn't consider keyboard navigability for those who can't use a mouse-- but you need to rethink interactions at a base level and we're just getting started with that. There's a lot of work to do here.
Up/down arrow keys work like this on every notable browser, every notable platform. Up arrow makes the content go down.
It was much harder than I expected. Clicking a mouse was something they just didn't understand - they used their whole hand! Had to get them to use just a finger. Many other concepts were difficult to convey as well.
I think things have changed a lot since then (we have drastically better widespread tech literacy now), but it was an enlightening experience.
This student wanted to know exactly what to do when he encountered an error. I showed him my thought process for how I’d work my way back to a good known state and he was enraged.
Computer literacy is in no small part a willingness to experiment and be unafraid of what can happen (or at least enough basic knowledge to know how to avoid the really sharp edges that can in fact cause harm).
It’s a very difficult thing to teach.
The prison system is an example of both.
First, 30 years on the inside...crazy. I don't think it is possible to put that in perspective. Cellphones were uncommon, the internet was still using "prodigy" and the likes, pagers were the "in thing". Forget trying to use the internet...these people have issues with the "number of decisions" in the grocery store (it is one of those areas where people quite literally freeze up, if you don't know feel free to look up the commissary options this person has had for 30 years). Nothing looks the same, not neighborhoods, cars, clothing, people... You have been staring at guards for the last 30 years and an PA announcement has told you when/where to move and when to eat. Every day has been on repeat...
Now...30 years has passed and they let you out. What do you do...nothing but choices and a nearly constant flood of situations and experiences which you don't fully understand. Every task is something new to learn. And if you ask for help you are likely going to need to explain why you don't understand this stuff which may cause those people who were willing to help to second guess themselves and/or judge you. You have nothing...assume your family/friends have mostly moved on (this happens even when you are not in prison often) and your only hope to have enough to get back on your feet is to fill out the mountains of forms required to get a portion of what you really need to live. Now imagine your only way to get those forms is to use the internet...it is very fortunate this person had a case worker who was willing to spend the time to help...many don't.
There is a non-zero amount of recidivism which is intentional. People get out and then decide the world moved on without them. They were better off not having choices or options they did not understand. Often, the hoops of parole are too much and they prefer to "top out" their time so they are not required to do things like keep a job which has paystubs (often you get paid way more under the table, as well as having bosses who don't undervalue your pay due to your criminal past), or find proper housing (halfway houses are required often for parole if you do not have someone who will vouch for you in a written letter). Not to mention that staying sober is hard at times, decide to get drunk on the wrong night or share a joint with someone and you are likely to face repercussions from your Parole officer.
It is a difficult situation. I have nothing but the utmost respect for the case manager. She very likely kept this person from either reoffending or worse killing themselves.
The programs on the inside are often not the best (depends on the state, program, and facility...some are private). If you think there is any way you can or would like to help in this situation maybe get in touch with some of the halfway houses or probation offices in your area. Your tech skills and abilities to navigate paperwork are much more valuable than you might understand. From there...you could look into possibly helping inside the prisons too (there may be other restrictions). Maybe even just look into mailing some books to the library there (last I checked they had to be shipped in by the vendor/bookstore). That book on Python may very well be the thing that changes their life...and possibly society.
I know people in their 50s who pretend that "they don't need this technology" or "I can just go to the bank if I need something". Sure, if you're in your 80s you might want to dodge most of the digital stuff. But in your 50s? You're gonna have to live with an increasing digitalization for multiple decades.
Rant: If you are not an IT person and need to work with Excel and PowerPoint for the next 20 years then ffs sit down and learn the in-depth tools and tricks in the tools over the span of two weekends.
They aren't some SaaS company that moves things for fun
People who don't know how to drive don't blame it on cars.
1. He opened the data export in Excel.
2. I told him the number for which I needed some additional information.
3. He started scrooling in this 1k + entries Excel file.
4. …
5. I ask: Can you press CTRL + F and type in the number?
6. …
Normal people don't have those, and every second of the thousands of hours it'd take to gain them would be miserable for them. Not everyone enjoys this crap. Most aren't born with the kind of good abstract and/or spatial reasoning abilities that makes this stuff relatively easy to figure out, either.
I imagine there are other reasons you value than time and space convenience. Why do you feel the physical trip is more valuable?
Yea that way much slower and much less convenient compared to online banking.
About the only thing I'd do with a bank in person (other than ATMs) would be either special transactions--much of which you can handle over the phone or on-line these days--or if I still had to deposit sheafs of checks like I did when I had a business years ago. (Though I assume these days most people would pay digitally in some manner.)
I've observed over the past year that even brokerages and the like that pretty much used to require going into a branch have discovered that's actually not necessary.
I don't care so much about the speed of transaction logs but that I can access my records, pay bills, transfer money, etc. with a few clicks.
I switched dentists for a similar reason; prior dentist kept a buffer of patients waiting to optimize their throughput. I had a dental appointment yesterday [at the newer place] and I was annoyed that I arrived 15 minutes early, because I know they make it a point to bring patients in exactly on time. Sure enough, 2:00 hits and I get called back.
They typically only staff the drive-through when the bank lobby is also open, or a half-hour later. One of the lanes will also usually have an ATM and a dropbox for after-hours service.
As another example with online banking switching banks effectively becomes zero friction. When Ally slashed rates it took a couple days to move nearly all funds out to a savings account with a much better rate.
Not to mention nearly all brick and mortar stores have savings account rates that are effectively zero. My first interest payment when I was a new Ally customer was basically what I got the entire ten year period I was at bank of america
It definitely is not. How is keeping track of random cash purchases in your head easier than a computer doing it for you automatically and instantly?
Online banking also makes it very easy to manage my cards to ensure I'm never paying interest since the first interest payment usually totally eats up any savings from cash back.
I prefer going to bank if I have time.
Even the largest bank like Feds can have 3 trillion dollars operation error. https://thespeakernewsjournal.com/us/bank-wires-worth-trilli...
Knowing what I know and the kind of security that is in online banking does not bring any confidence in me.
I mean, go ahead and do what you want, but if checking recent transactions makes sense for online banking, it probably makes sense for offline banking too.
There's not functionality in there to shoot myself in the foot.
Here in Australia most banks have closed down branches in many smaller communities over the last 20 years.
Many of the 'standard' accounts that people have either only one in-branch visit per month, or none at all - and charge a fee for it.
Credit Unions and Building Societies are not much better, if at all.
There's also a growing number of online-only banks which don't have any physical branches, and all your interaction with them is online or over the phone.
- being able to mange banking while traveling internationally (or to a state/province that does't have a branch)
- 30 second transfers between accounts (or to other banks)
- few minutes to open a new account
- see posted (and pending) charges within a day or two instead of a month (I regularly import for my budgeting software)
I'm a developer and actually do consider myself a little bit of a luddite. But online banking is helpful to me over traditional banking.
I didn’t say each point was of equal value or frequency. I was just trying to list some benefits for someone that asked.
Here in the UK, the only time I've needed to step into a bank in the last 10 years is to have a meeting about my mortgage. Our online banking services are so good there's literally no reason to have brick-and-mortor banks for day-to-day tasks.
For me, not having to travel to a bank and wait in a queue to do basic tasks such as transferring money is such an advantage.
When I was young, after opening my first checking account, I fat-fingered a transfer from checking to savings online and the bank software interpreted this as me trying to transfer more than I had, so it happily proceeded to give me a large cash advance and then charge me $75 for the trouble, and another $35 for the NSF fee.
Now, maybe because I work in software, and maybe even moreso because I have literally written checking account software - I do not use online or mobile apps for non-trivial banking things. I call a person. Or I walk up to a person. I verify everything they are doing before they do it, and by acting as my agent during more complicated tasks they assume liability if they fat-finger something or mess something up (so far).
For the curious: the online form had separate inputs for dollars and cents, and some JS regex removed punctuation marks. So when I typed "1,0,period, 0, 0", instead of trying to transfer $10, it transferred $1000. I absolutely breezed through the "verify the amount step".
It would have been nice to have a notice pop up when they dropped the decimal, the same way so many forms do for the "invalid character" in my last name. (But I have no strong feelings on the subject whatsoever.)
On the phone they couldn't even understand what I'm talking, ton of a security questions... I gave up.
I tried online and had some issues. Some code didn't work even if I had it saved.
Physical much more efficient. I can just relax 10m and get my things done just by saying 1 sentence
You must live somewhere with an extremely temperate climate.
SUBTEXT: If you live somewhere with things like "snow" or "ice" or "Winter Storms" you'll change your tune once you begin to seriously worry how slowly you'd die after you break your hip on a sidewalk that's more snow-covered ice than concrete.
It sounds "so karen", but it's very difficult to ask for a manager online, and very difficult to refuse in-person.
Honestly this is kind of blowing my mind. I've only been to the bank one time in probably a decade, and it was when I needed a $30k check to buy a car. Even my mortgage was done mostly over email (though they did send a guy out to have me sign paperwork.)
Recurring payments (e.g. rent, internet, power etc...) are handled through automatic orders which I had setup once. For the very rare cases where I need to pay a bill "manually" there are service machines in the branch office's lobby, which is about 5 minutes walking distance from my home.
(No, I no longer do this. I'm just old enough to remember a time before online banking existed when the hot new thing was being able to check your balance via the automated phone system.)
I'm in early 20s and I almost never used smartphone nor I'm not about to get one
I'm SE.
Even IT people don't know their tools as much as I'd like them to. Taking time out like this, to get to know the tools, is a worthy effort for all.
I should still improve my knowledge of git, gradle, intelij, various command line tools, docker and so on.
That by itself isn't to much but all this stuff comes on top of just staying up to date with the plattform you are working on and learning the next framework or library which you immediately need. Looking at you, android and your yearly updates, Kotlin, and a dozen jetpack libraries.
Until the IT people decide to change technologies on you because we do it so often to ourselves.
Except Excel. I'm pretty sure that's immortal.
Technology exists for people, not the other way around.
If you're a boomer, you were in your 40s when windows 95 came out, and internet was common in average households in your 50s - no excuse.
For prisoners who were incarcerated, surely the rehabilitation and release process educates on basic information age technology like going to a library and using a computer to access public services
And no, Threader doesn’t solve it or help (even taking for granted the extremely unlikely assumption that I was willing to migrate the thread to another service and navigate to that other service just to read it).
This is interesting in conjunction with the story itself, a man having a hard time adjusting to digital interfaces.
So much of it is caused by the abject poorness of digital interfaces foisted on us that we just accept and stumble through.