Frances Haugen Exchange during her UK Parliament Appearance

Frances Haugen is an American data engineer and scientist, product manager, and whistleblower. She disclosed tens of thousands of Facebook's internal documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and The Wall Street Journal in 2021.  She also answered questions and discussed her impressions with members of the UK parliament. The C-SPAN record runs well over two hours and the exchanges stuck me as much more thoughtful than the Congressional appearance. This seven-minute exchange covers some of the challenges involved with parental oversight and access to data 

Container ship bottlenecks are choking the economy

Ryan Peterson is founder and president of Flexport.

First to market with a purpose-built cloud software and data analytics platform, Flexport today serves more than 10,000 clients and suppliers across more than 200 countries, offering a full range of services, including ocean, air, truck and rail freight, drayage & cartage, warehousing, customs brokerage, financing and insurance – all informed and powered by our software platform.

 This Thread is worth keeping.

Yesterday I rented a boat and took the leader of one of Flexport's partners in Long Beach on a 3 hour of the port complex. Here's a thread about what I learned.

First off, the boat captain said we were the first company to ever rent his boat to tour the port to see how everything was working up close. His usual business is doing memorial services at sea. He said we were a lot more fun than his regular customers.

 
The ports of LA/Long Beach are at a standstill. In a full 3 hour loop through the port complex, passing every single terminal, we saw less than a dozen containers get unloaded.

 
There are hundreds of cranes. I counted only ~7 that were even operating and those that were seemed to be going pretty slow.

 
It seems that everyone now agrees that the bottleneck is yard space at the container terminals. The terminals are simply overflowing with containers, which means they no longer have space to take in new containers either from ships or land. It’s a true traffic jam.

 
Right now if you have a chassis with no empty container on it, you can go pick up containers at any port terminal. However, if you have an empty container on that chassis, they’re not allowing you to return it except on highly restricted basis.

 
If you can’t get the empty off the chassis, you don’t have a chassis to go pick up the next container. And if nobody goes to pick up the next container, the port remains jammed.

 
With the yards so full, carriers / terminals are being highly restrictive in where and when they will accept empties.

 
Also containers are not fungible between carriers, so the truckers have to drop their empty off at the right terminal. This is causing empty containers to pile up. This one trucking partner alone has 450 containers sitting on chassis right now (as of 10/21) at his yards.

 
This is a trucking company with 6 yards that represents 153 owner operator drivers, so he has almost 3 containers sitting on chassis at his yard for every driver on the team. He can’t take the containers off the chassis because he’s not allowed by the city of Long Beach zoning code to store empty containers more than 2 high in his truck yard. If he violates this code they’ll shut down his yard altogether. With the chassis all tied up storing empties that can't be returned to the port, there are no chassis available to pick up containers at the port.

And with all the containers piling up in the terminal yard, the longshoremen can’t unload the ships. And so the queue grows longer, with now over 70 ships containing 500,000 containers are waiting off shore. This line is going to get longer not shorter.

 
This is a negative feedback loop that is rapidly cycling out of control that if it continues unabated will destroy the global economy.

 
Alright how do we fix this, you ask? Simple. And we can do it fast now,
When you're designing an operation you must choose your bottleneck. If the bottleneck appears somewhere that you didn't choose it, you aren't running an operation. It's running you.

 
You should always choose the most capital intensive part of the line to be your bottleneck. In a port that's the ship to shore cranes. The cranes should never be unable to run because they're waiting for another part of the operation to catch up.

 
The bottleneck right now is not the cranes. It's yard space at the container terminals. And it's empty chassis to come clear those containers out.
In operations when a bottleneck appears somewhere that you didn't design for it to appear, you must OVERWHELM THE BOTTLENECK!

 
Here's a simple plan that @POTUS and @GavinNewsom partnered with the private sector, labor, truckers, and everyone else in the chain must implement TODAY to overwhelm the bottleneck and create yard space at the ports so we can operate against.

1.  Executive order effective immediately over riding the zoning rules in Long Beach and Los Angeles to allow truck yards to store empty containers up to six high instead of the current limit of 2. Make it temporary for ~120 days. This will free up tens of thousands of chassis that right now are just storing containers on wheels. Those chassis can immediately be taken to the ports to haul away the containers
2. Bring every container chassis owned by the national guard and the military anywhere in the US to the ports and loan them to the terminals for 180 days.
3. Create a new temporary container yard at a large (need 500+ acres) piece of government land adjacent to an inland rail head within 100 miles of the port complex.
4. Force the railroads to haul all containers to this new site, turn around and come back. No more 1500 mile train journeys to Dallas. We're doing 100 mile shuttles, turning around and doing it again. Truckers will go to this site to get containers instead of the port.
5. Bring in barges and small container ships and start hauling containers out of long beach to other smaller ports that aren't backed up.

This is not a comprehensive list. Please add to it. We don't need to do the best ideas. We need to do ALL the ideas.

 
We must OVERWHELM THE BOTTLENECK and get these ports working again. I can't stress enough how bad it is for the world economy if the ports don't work. Every company selling physical goods bought or sold internationally will fail.

 
The circulatory system our globalized economy depends has collapsed. And thanks to the negative feedback loops involved, it's getting worse not better every day that goes by.
I'd be happy to lead this effort for the federal or state government if asked. Leadership is the missing ingredient at this point.

John Miller's Will (December, 1806)

 This is my file copy of a Facebook post July 10, 2021. 

JOHN MILLER'S WILL
This link is for my Kentucky family and others tempted to imagine they have no connection with the institution of slavery.  
It can be found in the online transcript of a genealogy book History and genealogies of the families of Miller, Woods, Harris, Wallace, Maupin, Oldham, Kavanaugh and Brown (1907).

In the name of God, Amen, I, John Miller, of Madison County, and State of Kentticky, do make and ordain this my last will and testament, revoking all others by me heretofore made. In the first place, it is my will and desire that all my jtist debts be paid by my

Exectitors hereafter named as soon as conveniently may be after my decease. I give to my beloved wife, Jane Miller, during her natural life, and no longer, the plantation and tract of land whereon I now live, including the tract which I purchased of my son, Robert Miller, and also the tract I purchased of Cornelitis Maupin: also all my negroes, live stock, household and kitchen furniture, all my unmentioned estate, after satisfaction and payments of my just debts, bequeaths and devises, hereafter mentioned, for and during the said term of her nattiral life, to be in full satisfaction of and in lieti of dower in my real and personal estate.

I give to my son, Robert Miller, and his heirs forever, twenty acres of land to be in a square and to be taken off of the east corner of my tract of land on which the town of Richmond stands. Also, one negro.

I give to my son, William Miller, and to his heirs forever, and to my son, John Miller, Jun'r, and to his heirs forever, the tract of land on which the said town of Richmond stands, to be equally divided between them, by stich division line as they may agree upon, but it is to be understood that the devise is not to include or extend to any property I may hold within the boundary of said town, nor to any part of said tract I may have sold by written or verbal contract, nor to the part before devised to my son Robert.

I devise to my son, Thomas Miller, and to his heirs forever, one tract of land lying in the said county near the said town of Richmond which I purchased from Elijah Gaddy, containing one hundred acres. Also, two negroes.

I devise to my son, Delaney Miller, and to his heirs forever, one hundred and forty acres of land, being part of the tract whereon I now live, which I purchased of my son, Robert Miller, and Cornelius Maupin, to be laid off of the south end of said tract, and not to come nearer to the dwelling house than three hundred and fifty yards, to extend up the line between me and John Patrick and the improvement for quantity. Also, two negroes.

I devise to my son. Garland Miller, and his heirs forever, the balance of the aforementioned tract of land whereon I now live, be the same, more or less, except the part already devised to my son Delaney Miller, to be laid off in the manner and form before mentioned, or any other way they may agree upon to suit themselves, to have and enjoy the same after the determination of the other therein before devised to his mother. I, also, give him two negroes.

I devise to my son, Joseph Miller, and his heirs forever, one tract of land lying on the waters of Paint Lick Creek, deeded- to me by David Wells, containing two hundred acres, be the same (more) or less. Also two negroes.

I give to my daughter, Anna Reid, one negro.

I give to my daughter, Elizabeth Kavanaugh, one negro.

I give to my daughter, Jane Lackey, two negroes.

1 give to my daughter, Frances Miller, three negroes.

I give to my sons Delaney and Garland each, and to my daughter Frances, one horse and saddle, and two cows and calves, and one bed and furniture, to be paid them at the time of their marriage, or attaining the age of twenty-one years, whichever shall first happen,

to be allowed to them out of the estate in my beloved wife's hands, by my Executors, if she should be then living, and if she should not be then living, give them the value of said articles in cash, the value to be ascertained by neighbors — one chosen by my Executors, one by such child entitled thereto, and a third chosen by these two; it is to be fairly understood that if I should, in my life time, give to any of my children a negro, and other property herein devised or given, that it is to be considered satisfaction of the devise or bequest of such negro, all as far as it answers the description herein given. It is further to be understood that the negroes herein given and devised are not to be paid to my said children until after the death of my wife, unless she shall choose to part with them, in which case she may at any time pay to any one, or more, any, all, or more of said negroes, with the assent of my Executors, or the survivors of them.

Should any of my children die before me, the devise and bequest herein made to said children are to stand good and effectual to the heirs of such person — according to the laws of descent in the Commonwealth. 

JOHN MILLER, L. S.

Signed as the first part of my will.

Presence of us.

WM. GOODLOE.

his

WM. X KARR.

mark

Continuation of John Miller's Will:

"I constitute and appoint my friends, William Irvine, Robert' Rodes, Executors of this my last will and testament. I empower them to make convey — for my lands which at the time of my death I may have sold, and unconveyed, either by written or verbal contract. I, also, empower them to divide my negroes according to the division of them herein made, as equal as may be. I do, also, empower them to sell and convey, as to them may seem best, all my lols in the town of Richmond, and to dispose of any part of my personal estate, if necessary, to raise money for the payment of my debts, and the residue, if any, from the sale of the lots, and collections of my debts, to pay the same to my wife. I declare my wife is not to give security for the keeping of the property left her, nor is she to be answerable for its depreciation in value, etc. And, whereas, I have at sundry times given to my children who have grown to years of maturity, a negro, or negroes, etc., I do now ratify and confirm to them all and every gift which I may before have made, and do declare that when I have delivered them any negro without an express stipulation to the contrary, that it is to be considered a gift.

All my estate left after the death of my wife, and not herein otherwise disposed of, I give to my daughters, Anna Reid, Elizabeth Kavanaugh, Jane Lackey, and Frances Miller, to be equally divided between them, and I wish it to be understood that whereas I have by deed given to my daughter, Elizabeth Kavanaugh, and her heirs, a part of a lot in the town of Richmond of the value of fifty pounds, now unless the said gift can be rescinded, and the said lot or the value thereof to be equally divided between the brothers and sisters, she is not to receive any part of my estate as last above mentioned devised to Anna Reid, Elizabeth Kavanaugh, Jane Lackey, and Frances Miller. Shall each of them have received the sum of fifty pounds, should there be any balance, it is then to be equally divided between them.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and affixed my seal this 24th day of February, 1806.

Signed in the presence of JOHN MILLER, L. S.

WILLIAM GOODLOE.

his

WILLIAM X KARR.

mark

At a court held for Madison County on the 5th day of December, 1806, this will was proved to be the last will and testament of John Miller, dec'd, by the oath of William Karr, a witness thereto, as the law directs, and William Goodloe, another witness thereto, who

swore he subscribed his name to said will in the presence of said

deceased, which was ordered to be recorded.

Attest: WILL. IRVINE, C. M. C.

(This QR image appears at the Facebook link and at the web link above, but is not active in this blog post.)

Addendum...
This link has since vanished but I found multiple copies available via ABE Books which has a multitude of out of print books.

"You didn't object when..." Social Media Meme

This appeared in my Facebook timeline, dated September 2019.

Dear Republicans

You didn’t object when you heard Donald Trump say he likes to grab women “by the pussy.”

You didn’t object when he kicked the American media out of the Oval Office and handed two Russian spies classified data entrusted to him by one of our allies.

You didn’t object when he likened our intelligence community to “Nazis.”

You didn’t object when he stood before the Memorial Wall of Stars at Langley and told lie after lie about himself and the election.

You didn’t object while at the Helsinki Summit, he met behind closed doors with the Russian President.

You didn’t object to him banning the American Press from covering that meeting.

You didn’t object when he emerged from that meeting and sided with the Russian President over the findings of our own intelligence community.

You didn’t object when the Trump campaign admitted to accepting Russian offers to help him defeat SecState Clinton.

You didn’t object when he stood before the cameras and said; “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find 30k e-mails that are missing.”

You didn’t object when the Russians responded that VERY DAY with stolen emails.

You didn’t object when it was confirmed that the basis for the Trump Tower meeting was a total fabrication. That it had nothing to do with adopting Russian children, and everything to do with swinging the election.

You didn’t object when it was revealed that Trump himself floated the cover story of adoptions from Russia.

You didn’t object when it was confirmed that his campaign staff had met with Russian agents over 150 times, after claiming they had never met with them at all.

You didn’t object when the Trump campaign declined to inform the FBI about the Russian advances.

You didn’t object when Trump’s campaign manager gave internal data on four key battleground states to agents working for Putin.

You sure as hell didn’t object when those very same four battleground states miraculously shifted towards Trump on Election Day.

You didn’t object when Trump kicked his Attorney General out of the room and asked the FBI Director to let his National Security Advisor off the hook for lying about his contacts with Russian agents.

You didn’t object when Trump fired that FBI Director for declining to let Flynn off the hook.

You didn’t object when Special Counsel Robert Mueller said he couldn’t establish a conspiracy, largely because so many of Trump’s staffers lied during their interviews, and because Trump himself refused to submit to a live interview.

You didn’t object when Special Counsel Mueller cited no fewer than ten instances of the president himself obstructing justice in his report: an impeachable offense.

You didn’t object when it was revealed he cheated on his wife with a porn star.

You didn’t object when it was revealed that he paid off that porn star to the tune of $130,000.00 to buy her silence just prior to the election, an illegal attempt to hide relevant facts from the electorate.

You didn’t object when he withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA, which was the first and ONLY treaty that’s successfully kept Iranian nuclear ambitions in check.

You didn’t object when he pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accords.

You didn’t object when he scuttled the Obama administration’s clean air and water standards.

You didn’t object when he opened up vast tracts of protected wilderness to his friends in the oil and mining industries.

You didn’t object to the myriad cases of violations of the emoluments clause.

You didn’t object when he mocked a disabled man at one of his rallies.

You didn’t object to the recently-discovered military stopovers at Trump properties in Scotland.

You didn’t object when after mass shooting after mass shooting, he wouldn’t lift a finger to protect even little school children from gun violence.

You didn’t object when he started putting tariffs on everyone from China to Turkey, which have undeniably hurt millions of people around the world and shaken the stock markets.

You didn’t object when he gave the corporate farming industry $26B in compensation for their losses due to his tariffs.

You didn’t object when he channeled $3.6B in Pentagon appropriations to his wall on the Mexican border.

You didn’t object when Trump called out against “Islamic terrorism” on multiple occasions, but never once for terrorism by white nationalists.

You didn’t object when he forcibly separated little children from their parents.

You didn’t object when he confined those children to chain-link paddocks.

You didn’t object when a whistleblower revealed the president had on multiple occasions said things that potentially undermined our nation’s safety and security.

You didn’t object when the Trump Organization misappropriated $500,000 from a kids’ cancer charity and funneled the money directly to groups that were connected to Trump’s adult children.

You didn’t object when he got caught trying to blackmail the president of Ukraine into smearing a likely Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, in an elaborate extortion scheme that undermined the national security of both the United States and Ukraine.

You didn’t object when his Chief of Staff admitted to it, and said “Get over it. We do that all the time.”

You didn’t object when his personal lawyer, his personal consultant, and his army of sycophants at Fox News have repeatedly and consistently lied about ALL of the above for three excruciatingly long years.

So here’s my question for you: What about any of the above do you believe entitles you to the right to call yourselves “patriots?” In anything other than today’s bizarro-world, you wouldn’t even make the rank of American. When this nightmare ends, we’ll remind you of just how patriotic you were during these days.

Notes about radicalization

 Three links this morning I don't want to lose.

1. Thread by Iyad el-Baghdadi
2. Reply to that thread from Melissa @mkverslon mentioning the backstory of Derek Black and
3. The Terry Gross interview of Frank Schaeffer

I have been aware of Iyad el-Baghdadi for years. He is a Palestinian expat and activist who has lived several places over the years and has never given up his vision for a Palestinian homeland. This video tells more about him than I can describe in words.
His Twitter thread reflections this morning strike me as insightful. 

A confession that I want to approach respectfully (but honestly). When I compare the radicalization story of my (20-year younger) former self to the radicalization stories of people who got sucked into white supremacism, one main difference really surprises me 

What truly surprised me was that while my sense of grievance (as a Palestinian Arab Muslim kid growing up in the Middle East) was based upon real, hard stuff. Meanwhile theirs was based upon "feeling" persecuted. It just seems to me that what broke my psyche was far heavier stuff 

Obviously this is a very personal observation and I could be very wrong. It could be that I'm not empathetic enough with their experiences; or these experiences could be distant. I only intimately know my own story. I'm just putting this out there to see how right or wrong I am 

But interesting to ask this question at scale. Are people who get radicalized due to immense pressure more de-radicalizable than those who get radicalized absent immense pressure? After all if it's immense pressure, the pressure can ease or normalize or counter-balance somehow 

*In 2015 (in the context of ISIS) I noted that people who get radicalized due to "local grievances" (family killed, displaced from homes, property stolen etc) are actually *less* ideological and more de-radicalizable than the foreign fighters who are coming from Western countries 

I don't know anything about Melissa, the Twitter account leaving the Derek Black link, but she is clearly someone who has given a good deal of thought to this subject. I wish I had time to find out more about her but at the moment these notes are my mission.

The Washington Post link is long, illustrating how a young man reared to be a radical extremist eventually discovers how deluded his thinking has been, along with that of his father and the peer group in which he grew up. This is how it ends...

Don [Derek's dad] asked Derek about the theories that had emerged on the Stormfront message thread. Was he just faking a change to have an easier career? Was this his way of rebelling?

When Derek denied those things, Don mentioned the theory he himself had come to believe — the one David Duke had posited in the first hours after Derek’s letter went public: Stockholm syndrome. Derek had become a hostage to liberal academia and then experienced empathy for his captors.

“That’s so patronizing,” Derek remembered saying. “How can I prove this is what I really believe?”

He tried to convince Don for a few hours at the restaurant. He told him about white privilege and repeated the scientific studies about institutionalized racism. He mentioned the great Islamic societies that had developed algebra and predicted a lunar eclipse. He said that now, as he recognized strains of white nationalism spreading into mainstream politics, he felt accountable. “It’s not just that I was wrong. It’s that it caused real damage,” he remembered saying.

“I can’t believe I’m arguing with you, of all people, about racial realities,” Don remembered telling him.

The restaurant was closing, and they were no closer to an understanding. Derek went to sleep at his grandmother’s house. Then he woke up early and started driving across the country alone.

Every day since then, Derek had been working to put distance between himself and his past. He was still living across the country after finishing his master’s degree, and he was starting to learn Arabic to be able to study the history of early Islam. He hadn’t spoken to anyone in white nationalism since his defection, aside from occasional calls home to his parents. Instead, he’d spent his time catching up on aspects of pop culture he’d once been taught to discredit: liberal newspaper columns, rap music and Hollywood movies. He’d come to admire President Obama. He decided to trust the U.S. government. He started drinking tap water. He had taken budget trips to Barcelona, Paris, Dublin, Nicaragua and Morocco, immersing himself in as many cultures as he could.

He joined a new online message group, this one for couch surfers, and he opened up his one-bedroom apartment to strangers looking for a temporary place to stay. It felt increasingly good to trust people — to try to interact without prejudice or judgment — and after a while, Derek began to feel detached from the person he had been.

But then came the election campaign of 2016, and suddenly the white nationalism Derek had been trying to unlearn was the unavoidable subtext to national debates over refugees, immigration, Black Lives Matter and the election itself. Late in August, Derek watched in his apartment as Hillary Clinton gave a major speech about the rise of racism. She explained how white supremacists had rebranded themselves as white nationalists. She referenced Duke and mentioned the concept of a “white genocide,” which Derek had once helped popularize. She talked about how Trump had hired a campaign manager with ties to the alt-right. She said: “A fringe movement has essentially taken over the Republican Party.”

It was the very same point Derek had spent so much of his life believing in, but now it made him feel both fearful for the country and implicated. “It’s scary to know that I helped spread this stuff, and now it’s out there,” he told one of his Shabbat friends.

He also wondered whether he would ever be able to completely detach himself from his past, when so much about it remained public. He was still occasionally recognized as a former racist in graduate school; still written into the will of a man he had befriended through white nationalism; still the godson of Duke; still the son of Chloe and Don.

Late this summer, for the first time in years, he traveled to Florida to see them. At a time of increasingly contentious rhetoric, he wanted to hear what his father had to say. They sat in the house and talked about graduate school and Don’s new German shepherd. But after a while, their conversation turned back to ideology, the topic they had always preferred.

Don, who usually didn’t vote, said he was going to support Trump.

Derek said he had taken an online political quiz, and his views aligned 97 percent with Hillary Clinton’s.

Don said immigration restrictions sounded like a good start.

Derek said he actually believed in more immigration, because he had been studying the social and economic benefits of diversity.

Don thought that would result in a white genocide.

Derek thought race was a false concept anyway.

They sat across from each other, searching for ways to bridge the divide. The bay was one block away. Just across from there was Mar-a-Lago, where Trump had lived and vacationed for so many years, once installing an 80-foot pole for a gigantic American flag.

“Who would have thought he’d be the one to take it mainstream?” Don said, and in a moment of so much division, it was the one point on which they agreed.

The Terry Gross interview is self-explanatory and straightforward. It was in 2008 and the link remains active so I don't feel the need to drop quotes here.