Brian Beach
haikubrian.bsky.social
Brian Beach
@haikubrian.bsky.social
Proud papa/dad/husband. Choral singer. Aspiring linguist. CTO at Backblaze. Usually in Indiana, sometimes on Maui. He/him or They/them.

My primary social media hangout is on Mastodon @haiku_brian@hachyderm.io
Reposted by Brian Beach
Reposted by Brian Beach
This is such an excellent point and media should be reporting it this way. (This is in reference to Miller’s preposterous but still dangerous claim earlier today about the executive branch considering suspending the writ)
The headline is deeply misleading. You can’t suspend habeas corpus just “for migrants.” As we’ve seen, ICE will pick *anyone* up. If you have legal status but no right to habeas corpus, you’ll have no ability to challenge your detention or deportation. Suspension for some is suspension for all.
May 10, 2025 at 12:58 AM
Reposted by Brian Beach
Reporters:

Here's a simple question that will generate viral stories.

"How exactly is it Marxist?"

The response will be a dodge, so you've got to stay with it and follow it up.

"No, you said DEI was Marxist. What did you mean by that? Specifically?"
May 5, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by Brian Beach
"[18F's] ideals and practices are things that we can adopt in our work wherever we are—working in the open, admitting when we’re wrong and how we’re doing better, improving stuff iteratively, documenting our lessons, and being willing to share what we’re learning with others." — @ronbronson.com
Leading the Field: Ron Bronson — Code for America
A conversation with a critical service designer and scholar
codeforamerica.org
May 5, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Reposted by Brian Beach
Contrasted with NYT, here's a newspaper exercising responsible editorial judgment.
May 5, 2025 at 7:54 PM
Good read on the computer systems at the Social Security Administration, and why DOGE is going to fail to modernize them. Written by people who know how to do this kind of work, and who understand the SSA.

#LegacySystems #COBOL #SSA #doge

www.wethebuilders.org/posts/what-i...
What it really takes to migrate COBOL, and why DOGE will fail | We the Builders
Federal technologists with modernization experience (including COBOL) explain the requirements and complexities of migrating a legacy system.
www.wethebuilders.org
April 29, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by Brian Beach
PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081
April 25, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Brian Beach
Say. This.
Walz: If you say you love freedom but you don't believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love is not freedom, it is privilege.
April 24, 2025 at 12:23 AM
Reposted by Brian Beach
«Putin says» why are media reporting these things still? Putin lies every single time. At least be factual: «Putin claims yet again (though it’s been a lie every single other time)…»
April 22, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by Brian Beach
1/ I have coached a bunch of people before doing their first public talk, and a lot of people feel «there are lots of people much more knowledgeable than me on this topic» and I felt that way too. So here’s why that doesn’t matter.
April 20, 2025 at 2:07 PM
The opposite of authoritarianism, kleptocracy, and oligarchy is COMMUNITY. They win when we're isolated and scared. We win when we work together and build community.

#democracy #community #NoKing

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Trump is creating a selfish, miserable world. Here’s what we can do | Michael Plant
The president is both a symptom and a cause of unhappiness and mistrust. But we can respond by rebuilding our social fabric
www.theguardian.com
April 18, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Reposted by Brian Beach
Criminals deserve due process because due process is literally how we determine whether someone is, *in fact*, a criminal
April 14, 2025 at 11:51 PM
Reposted by Brian Beach
Forget about the legal case.

A man was wrongly deported and placed in a notorious prison with leaders of a gang out to get him.

Anyone with an ounce of basic human decency would fix the mistake and return that man to the United States
April 13, 2025 at 1:51 PM
I'm happy to be in the move slow and fix things box.
My cartoon for this week's @newscientist.com
April 13, 2025 at 11:50 PM
Reposted by Brian Beach
We will be having our event at The University of Hawaii Maui College. The event will be from 4:00 pm to 5:30. 4/19/25

Maui Indivisible put the first flyer together and then @50501hi.bsky.social helped make a beautiful flyer for every island.

#peacefulprotest #50501movement #maui #indivisiblehawaii
April 11, 2025 at 5:39 AM
Reposted by Brian Beach
I pray you’ll read my latest. We are being challenged as a nation and this is a test we must pass.

open.substack.com/pub/sherrily...
Americans Must Prepare to Fight for the Citizenship Rights of U.S. Prisoners
Trump's Plan to Render U.S. Citizens to Foreign Jails Seeks to Exploit Americans' Disinterest in the Rights of Prisoners
open.substack.com
April 12, 2025 at 8:40 PM
Every human deserves due process.

No human should be in a place like CECOT.

"Have you no sense of decency?"
I hate to say this, and it gives me the chills just to think it, but CECOT is on (and not a short way down) the road to Auschwitz.
April 12, 2025 at 10:09 PM
Reposted by Brian Beach
Important for all of us but especially journalists.
Kidnapping.

Capturing a person against their will without due process is called kidnapping.

Transporting them to another country without due process is called human trafficking.

A squalid extrajudicial prison for people found guilty of no crime is called a concentration camp.
stop calling things deportation just because they call it deportation.

-You cannot legally deport people without due process.

-You cannot legally deport citizens.

-They are defining down deportation to break the law.
April 8, 2025 at 11:09 PM
Reposted by Brian Beach
The only way forward, that I can see, requires both courage and collective action. If we’re not going to fight for our students and our scholarship, then what the hell are we doing anyway?
University presidents, the time is now! Unshackle the general counsel's office! File all the lawsuits! Release the faculty upon the op-ed sections! Write to your alumni, parents, and donors! You have nothing to lose but a tiny percentage of your enormous endowments... www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/u...
Trump Officials Freeze $1 Billion for Cornell and $790 Million for Northwestern
The funding pause amid civil rights investigations into both universities sharply escalates the Trump administration’s campaign against elite colleges.
www.nytimes.com
April 9, 2025 at 1:02 AM
Reposted by Brian Beach
This is a video of PBS travel guy Rick Steves at the Edmonds WA Hands Off event, giving a speech which I think is one of the BEST explanations I've seen for the average person of what is going on now and it is 🔥🔥🔥. You are going to want to watch this. youtu.be/86hnPrWozUo?...
Hands Off National Day of Protest - Edmonds, WA
YouTube video by R
youtu.be
April 6, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Reposted by Brian Beach
Do not look away.
April 6, 2025 at 4:34 PM
We need more people in power like Günther Thallinger, board member at Allianz SE, a giant insurance company. And more headlines like this one in The Guardian today:

"Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism."

#climate #capitalism

www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer
Action urgently needed to save the conditions under which markets – and civilisation itself – can operate, says senior Allianz figure
www.theguardian.com
April 3, 2025 at 10:50 PM
I'm a big fan of "working in the open." I frequently remind people at work to share widely with their colleagues, except for the rare case where things need to be secret. Being aware of what is going on avoids misunderstandings and streamlines work.
18F advocated for "working in the open.” That doesn’t mean discussing sensitive information on unsecured platforms—it means respecting FOIA, opting for open source software, and sharing knowledge as widely as possible. 18f.org/working-in-t...
Working in the open
For over 11 years, 18F has been proudly serving the American people to make government technology work better. We are non-partisan civil servants. 18F has worked on hundreds of projects, all designed ...
18f.org
March 26, 2025 at 9:54 PM
Reposted by Brian Beach
I told my students last week what my actual contract salary was. The entire room gasped.
When my students heard how much I made, they were outraged. Adjunct professors make peanuts, and full-time professors aren't making that much more.
I told my sister-in-law my salary last night & she was totally shocked. she was like, “I was sure you were in the six-figures.” she works in medical administration & makes 20K more than me a year

just so everyone knows—assistant professors in English lit DO NOT make six figures.
March 22, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Reposted by Brian Beach
Seriously.
White supremacists hiding the achievements of non-white people is a pretty good indication that they know white people aren’t supreme.
March 20, 2025 at 3:35 AM