The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

Joseph: 00:04

Hello, and welcome to the four zero four Media Podcast where we bring you unparalleled access hidden worlds both online and IRL. Four zero four Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404media.co.

Joseph: 00:31

I'm your host, Joseph. And with me are four zero four media cofounders, Sam Cole Yep. Emmanuel Mayberg Hello. Jason Kebler.

Jason: 00:40

What's up?

Joseph: 00:41

And we're also joined by our regular contributor, Matthew Gull. How are doing, Matthew?

Matthew: 00:46

I'm doing alright. How are y'all doing?

Joseph: 00:47

All good. All good.

Jason: 00:48

So I'm excited. I'm fired up.

Joseph: 00:50

Hell good day. Yeah. Good. Well, why don't you tell people why you're having a good day? I don't know if you're revealing that.

Jason: 00:57

I got my printer working. Printer.

Sam: 01:01

There's not any printer.

Jason: 01:02

It's like printer from 1995 to work. I'll be doing an article and probably a video and more, but it's a risograph printer that I bought on eBay that was not working. And through it's taken me, like, a month to get it to work. I don't know how long it's gonna work for, but today, we had a a massive breakthrough. I've been looking at wires.

Jason: 01:24

I've been changing gears. I, you know, replaced this little thingamabob, which is a a roller that was broken. I it's just it's just so exciting. So I'm so excited. Because I

Emanuel: 01:35

know you're excited. Heard of a midlife crisis like this before? I haven't.

Joseph: 01:40

It's a new one.

Matthew: 01:41

Yeah. Everyone needs a project.

Sam: 01:44

Speaking of projects, Galt, have you beaten Silksong yet?

Matthew: 01:47

No. I've not. I'm 12 arc raiders now. Not

Joseph: 01:50

Silksong. Up?

Matthew: 01:50

This is, like, months ago. Yeah. No. I I gave up. I'm done.

Matthew: 01:53

It beat me. It's fine.

Jason: 01:55

I'm gonna show YouTubers my printer. Okay? Because you're on YouTube. This is the type of thing you get.

Joseph: 02:02

Can't look at the printer. While you're rotating the camera very, very slowly, how difficult was it to repair? You said it took a month, but, like, was that you just had to find the right information or what?

Jason: 02:14

Well, I needed parts from China, which thanks to the tariffs are harder and more expensive to get. So that took, like, three weeks to come in. And then there's a Discord for risograph printing that is full of very, very helpful people who are giving me some advice. But I have pretty much like all risograph printers are very old. This is from 1995, but this is like a very old machine.

Jason: 02:44

Like a lot of people who actually keep these working are working on machines from, the early two thousands. And so, basically, there's very few videos on the Internet about how to do anything on this particular device. I found three YouTube videos of working of this device working. One was in Romanian, one was in, I believe, like, Thai, and then one was in Russian, and then there was one that was in Spanish. And all of these videos were, like, twelve seconds long and were showing different things.

Jason: 03:21

So I was, like, freeze framing the videos trying to, like, make my machine look like their machine. The back of it is also just full of, like, wires and PCB boards and things like that. The the, like, long and short of it though is that there is a single guy who teaches people how to fix these, and he travels around the country, and he has like an encyclopedic knowledge of all of them. And so he ultimately, like, got on a Zoom call with me and talked me through how to fix it, told me what to buy, that sort of thing. And then I've been like messaging back and forth with him over the course of like two weeks trying to get it to work.

Jason: 04:02

And today, I finally got it to work. It's not working super well, I will say, but

Joseph: 04:08

The we are making printout looks okay. What what are you what are you gonna print from it potentially?

Jason: 04:17

Okay. So so for those who don't know, risograph printers are from Japan. Sorry. This is not scheduled. Just a just a riff.

Jason: 04:25

There there are printers from Japan that are really inexpensive to print high quantity number of things on. So they print really dark, and then they have, like, you can put different colors of ink in it. They have these, like, huge drums, and you pull the drum out, and you, like, put another drum in. So you can print one color at a time, and then you layer the colors. And it's kind of like a digital silk screening,

Matthew: 04:53

more

Jason: 04:53

or less. And so you can get, like, all these different cool colors on, and people use them to print zines on. This is like a business card of someone that is is risograph printed, and I just have it on my desk because I went to this printing fair and met this woman. But, like, you can get these really cool, like, colored layering images on them. And so we printed zines on them back at motherboard.

Jason: 05:20

I printed some posters on them for our South by Southwest event, and, you know, I wanna print zines and print stuff for four zero four media. So I found, like, inexpensive one on eBay that was not working, and now it's sort of working. And I have two colors. I have black and I have green. So I gotta find some new colors.

Jason: 05:40

Dude. But that's that's good. Good start. Good start.

Joseph: 05:42

I mean, that's the four zero four media colors. So Yeah. I guess you need white well, you have the white paper. So well, maybe not. Yeah.

Joseph: 05:48

Yeah. Well, that's great. And as said, you'll probably do an article on it, and I'm sure we'll publish videos and that sort of thing. The last bit of housekeeping before we get to the stories is that I'm gonna open the articles to make sure I get the date right. On the November 19, that's next Wednesday in a week's time, you listen to this when this episode comes out at 1PM Eastern, we are doing our latest FOIA forum.

Joseph: 06:16

This is the livestream events that we do. We say it's an hour. It actually usually goes on for two hours, something like that. Of course, don't have to stay for the whole thing, but we usually tell people, hey, here's how we do Freedom of Information Requests. Here's how we get records from the government, all of that sort of thing.

Joseph: 06:33

And this one is going to specifically be about our flock reporting and how researchers got these network audits that showed the local cops are doing lookups for ICE in the nationwide surveillance system. Then we covered the abortion stuff as well and this massive wave of coverage around the country and impact and all of that. We're going to show you the specific requests used, the language and tell you all about that sort of thing. This is only open to paying for reformed subscribers. You have to be on the supported tier, which is $10 a month.

Joseph: 07:10

I I had to think about that for

Matthew: 07:11

a second.

Joseph: 07:12

And then you sign up for that, and you'll be able to get the link to the livestream from the site, which I'll put in the show notes. But, that's Wednesday, November 19 at 1PM eastern. If you can't make it for whatever reason, when you do become a paying subscriber, you get access to the whole archive of FOIA forum videos as well. So, yeah. If you're interested in learning how to get governments from records from your local government or police department or whatever about that sort of thing, please come check it out.

Joseph: 07:47

Alright. As for this week, let's go to our first story. Again, this is one written by Matthew. The headline is a small town is fighting a 1,200,000,000 AI data center for America's nuclear weapon scientists. So I'm just gonna kinda kinda do it in the chronological order of the article, Matthew, which is you open with a specific person, KJ Pedri.

Joseph: 08:14

What who who are they and and what is their background exactly?

Matthew: 08:19

Petrie is a citizen of Ypsilanti, Michigan, and she and her grandfather was a rocket scientist who worked on the Trinity, which was the the first nuclear detonation in the world, dramatized in the movie Oppenheimer. This is that explosion. And where we kind of find her at the beginning of this article is speaking at a city council meeting where they are discussing the issue of this data center coming in. And she talks about her grandfather and says that, you know, he was violent, and he was lonely, and he was an alcoholic, and that it was the work of working on nuclear weapons and everything that came after Trinity that, like, did this to him. And she doesn't wanna see that kind of spiritual impact hit an entire town that she loves and lives in.

Matthew: 09:19

And it I it was a really powerful image, and it's something that I've heard from other people I've met whose families who are descendants of people that worked on the Manhattan Project or worked at Trinity that this kind of it messes with them, and it messed with the family in the aftermath. So I thought that that was a pretty good place to open this.

Joseph: 09:39

Yeah. Totally. So that brings us to this data center, which obviously mentioned the headline as well. Well, what is it exactly? What are we talking about, and what is it for exactly?

Matthew: 09:53

So it's vague, which is part of the problem, I think. But it is this $1,200,000,000 data center that's being that's proposed to be constructed in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratories, which is in New Mexico, which are the people one of the labs around the country that work on America's nuclear weapons. They do other things, but primarily it's nuclear weapons. And it's being in collaborate it's being built in collaboration with the University of Michigan. And Ypsilanti is one of the proposed sites for Ypsilanti Township, which is distinct from the city itself, but we can probably get into that a little bit later.

Joseph: 10:35

Yeah. So so it sounds like we only know the contours of the plan. Right? And as you say, Elise Pedri has some history with this sort of technology and the development of it and the the very human impact that that can have on people as well, why are other residents against this data center beyond them? Because it's obviously not just one one person who is is pushing back against this.

Joseph: 11:07

It is essentially, you know, a a large part of a small town. Why are other residents pushing back against the building of this data center?

Matthew: 11:15

For all the reasons that everyone pushes back against a data center or is unhappy that a data center is is built in their area, Sound quality goes down. Data centers use a lot of water, and people have reported that live next to data centers have reported lower water quality, water bills increasing, and the same thing happens to electricity. It taxes the power grid for these data centers to be built. And the people of Ypsilanti, in addition to being worried about, you know, contributing to nuclear weapons projects, are worried about all of these quality of life issues that would affect them if a data center comes in. And the university has tried to get ahead of this and has their FAQ about the project is basically saying, we fought through all of this, and, you know, we're gonna do x y and z to mitigate all of these issues, but Ypsilanti remains unconvinced, it seems.

Joseph: 12:13

Yeah. That just reminded me actually, and I think Jason edited this. Apologies if I'm putting you on the spot, Jason. But a while ago, back in June, we published this other piece with the headline, a black hole of energy use, Meta's massive AI data center is stressing out of Louisiana community. Just what was sort of the top level of that?

Joseph: 12:36

Because it sounds like it's very, very similar to what Matthew was talking about.

Jason: 12:40

Yeah. So I mean, I think this is something that we are going to start covering more often because it is one of the biggest like it it's like a huge deal, which is to say, like, AI companies are building these data centers all over the country right now. There was actually someone in Virginia who ran for, like, the house of delegates there or the state house who or, like, a state lawmaker who ran on an anti AI data center platform, like, which maybe we'll talk to them at some point. But, basically, this this data center in Louisiana was Mark Zuckerberg's is Mark Zuckerberg's big plan to build a Manhattan sized data center. And by that, I mean, like, literally the size of Manhattan.

Joseph: 13:27

Yeah. There's there's an image in the article I'm looking at right now, and it's like a purple overlay of a map of Manhattan. The vast majority is purple, and that would be the actual size of the data center. It's nuts.

Jason: 13:39

Yeah. It's it's gigantic. And so, I mean, these companies are sort of going state by state, community by community, trying to find the best energy deals, more or less, and the best, like, land deals. And so, you know, this is in Louisiana in an area that is, like, economically struggling. And, you know, Meta is trying to build this $10,000,000,000 data center there.

Jason: 14:04

It will run partially on fossil fuels, at least to start. Probably will run on on fossil fuels for quite some time, actually. And, you know, they're making all these promises about all the jobs that it's gonna bring in and and all that sort of thing. And if you do look at the jobs report, it's like a lot of the jobs right now are in data center construction. But once the data centers are actually built, they don't require that many employees to actually run.

Jason: 14:32

And so there's, like, this huge open question as to whether these are actually going to be good economic prospects for the cities that are giving tax breaks and and subsidies and all all that sort of thing. And so I think that the the piece that we did in about Louisiana and Meta is a really good one, a really important one. But as Matt, you know, just mentioned and and sort of, like, as we're seeing, this is playing out all over the country right now. It's especially playing out in places with pretty inexpensive energy, inexpensive land, and then also places that are close to Internet backbone. So, like, places where the gigantic cables that come into the country are.

Jason: 15:17

And, yeah, it's it's it's an important environmental issue. It's an important economic issue. A lot of them are being run with fossil fuels, so on and so forth.

Joseph: 15:25

Yeah. I'll try to remember to put a link to that one in the in the show notes as well. But going back to your story, Matthew, and and this latest one, can you just tell us a little bit more about the town? Like, how big is it? What is it what is it like normally when there is data center?

Joseph: 15:43

Yeah.

Matthew: 15:44

Let me let me put this to to the group actually because I've been getting some pushback in my characterization of the town from people.

Joseph: 15:51

Okay.

Matthew: 15:51

At what point at what population is a town still a small town?

Joseph: 15:59

Like officially? I think

Jason: 16:02

I think like 25,000.

Joseph: 16:04

I was gonna say 20.

Matthew: 16:05

Okay. So we're right on the line with Ypsilanti. Okay. Ypsilanti, the town itself is about 20,000. And it was part of a bigger metro area that is or metro area is part of a bigger area that's like Ypsilanti Township that is like 50,000.

Matthew: 16:21

It's about 20 miles or twenty minutes away from Ann Arbor, which is like the big college town in Michigan. And so it's this place, and there's lot of places like this in Michigan where it's pretty cheap to live, and there's a lot of people that live there that have connections to the university and are highly educated, and then it abuts also like a lot of lower income communities and a lot of people that have been there for a very long time. And so it's like this kind of it's kind of like that old college slash town y like divide that that happens in a lot of America. It's it's that kind of place. And one of the like two of the proposed locations that are talking about building this data center, one is in a park that people that I spoke with, a lot of them had fond memories of.

Matthew: 17:15

One of the guys at the city council meeting testified, like, why would you build it in this this park where we've already got all this nice green? This is ridiculous to do here. And then another place they're talking about doing it is a kind of a disused autonomous vehicle testing ground where it's already a little bit concrete, but it's unclear which of those locations will be it will be built in.

Joseph: 17:37

There's a weird irony to build it over the autonomous vehicle place that Yeah. Didn't pan out or something. Yeah. It's a bit strange. So how is the fight actually playing out?

Joseph: 17:50

As in what is what has happened? What happens next? Is it is it council meetings? Is it petitions? Like, what is actually happening?

Matthew: 17:58

So there's a lot of, like, grassroots organizing and protests and people just kind of going door to door and showing up at, meetings and making people understand, like, what this is and why they don't want it. But a lot of the focus of the story was in early October, the Ypsilanti City Council actually voted to officially affirm like, we don't want this here and we are going to use whatever means necessary, whatever means in our power to fight. Like, yeah. Sorry. Important clarification.

Matthew: 18:34

So that means, like, I talked to Amber Fellows who's kind of a person that spearheaded the like the charge here, and she said that that means like putting pressure on local authorities that were are gonna control like licensing and like approval processes for construction and like making sure that it's part of the the city's goal to make sure that this thing isn't built here. And it also means kind of the the city of Ypsilanti has now officially applied for something called the Mayors for Peace, which is this global organization of cities that are officially opposed to nuclear weapons. And it's a thing that was that was started by survivors of Hiroshima.

Joseph: 19:23

Gotcha. So is it just now we see what happens basically? Like, you've captured this snapshot and now do you have a feeling which way it might go? I mean, you don't wanna predict too much, but what's the vibe?

Matthew: 19:38

I think, unfortunately, that and this kind of fits into this other thing I'm working on that I'm that we're hopefully gonna get out this week. That the way the current federal administration has described AI is that it's a national security issue and that it's a Manhattan project. And in service of that, it is using it's clearing the way to get these data centers built because it's an important part of that project. And the University of Michigan has a lot of power inside the state, and it would probably be pretty trivial for it to just do this anyway. So I I I It is We're going to see these fights play out across the country.

Matthew: 20:31

I think Ypsilanti is just like one small snapshot of it, And I know that they're going to fight tooth and nail the whole way and maybe try to keep this thing as delayed and unpleasant for the university as possible, but I just it a David and Goliath thing, and it is an overwhelming amount of power that the university has and that the Los Alamos National Laboratory has.

Joseph: 20:57

Right. Yeah. That makes sense. Just before you go, I wanted to ask one thing and flag this other story you did, the headline and this is from the October. House of dynamite is about the Zoom call that ends the world.

Joseph: 21:12

So I purposely did not read this article when it came out and I'm gonna read it later today. It's just about this new film on Netflix about, you know, a looming nuclear disaster. I thought it was excellent, and I was totally groped by it. I thought it was awesome. As the resident nuke expert in so many different ways, what did you make of it?

Matthew: 21:40

I really loved it. It kind of messed me up a little bit actually because I know that it it was I was sitting and watching it with my wife, and she was asking me questions. She was just like, well, this is stupid. Why didn't they just do x, y, and z? And like I turned around.

Matthew: 21:53

I was like, well, we this is the way it would kind of play out. This is like what we've built. It's just like like a person with not much knowledge of of these nuclear issues is watching this pretty procedural and pretty realistic in in a lot of aspects kind of blow by blow of like what a nuclear strike might look like and what decisions America would have to make in the aftermath of it, and seeing it all is ridiculous, and it is. And like that's there's we've we've been very lucky in the nuclear wonk space in the last few years because the the issue has gotten very popular again in pop culture. You know?

Matthew: 22:32

I'm gonna get to watch a season two of Fallout this month.

Joseph: 22:36

Right.

Matthew: 22:36

That's a that's a that's

Jason: 22:37

Fallout's coming out again? New season?

Matthew: 22:40

Yeah. A couple weeks soon. Yeah. Like, that's that's wonderful. But it I'm just excited that there's something like this that's so well directed and really tackles the issue realistically?

Joseph: 22:57

Yeah. Like, it was full of farce and tragedy and people messing up and people being scared and just like, I know. It it really, really gripped me.

Matthew: 23:11

Do you do you launch the nukes at the if you're if you're Idris Elba?

Joseph: 23:15

Oh my god. So without spoiling, I would say that my calculation was you wait to see if it detonates at the target that it says it's going to detonate and then you retaliate based on that because then you will have more information.

Matthew: 23:35

So you would retaliate then?

Joseph: 23:37

Well, it depends. If it goes off, yes. If it doesn't, no.

Matthew: 23:41

So so I just

Joseph: 23:43

don't mean to over list an ethical words.

Matthew: 23:45

Joseph Cox, if America is is struck by a nuclear weapon, you will retaliate with the full force of our arsenal.

Joseph: 23:52

If if you put a six up. 60 Yeah. I'm a whole

Sam: 23:59

we talk about threads? Should we talk about threads, Galt?

Matthew: 24:02

Somebody's remaking threads, aren't they?

Sam: 24:04

Are you shitting me? No.

Matthew: 24:05

I'm not shitting you. I'm pretty sure someone's, they're talking about remaking threads. Please. No. Like a new version.

Sam: 24:11

Threads is a movie about what happens after the nuke strikes and the people who survive, and it is the most horrifying movie I've ever seen in my whole life.

Joseph: 24:19

Oh, I haven't seen that.

Sam: 24:20

It made me wanna it's like solidified my sense I would be running toward the mushroom.

Joseph: 24:25

Get over with. Right.

Sam: 24:26

Yeah. You do not wanna live through that.

Joseph: 24:29

Again, I'll try to remember to put that link. I I've made myself update the show notes in real time on this, so I'll try to remember as soon as we've done But, Matthew, thank you for joining us and talking about those. After the break, we're gonna be talking about well, people are three d printing whistles in Chicago to combat ice. We'll be right back after this.

Sam: 25:07

And we're back. The next story that we're gonna talk about is Joseph's. The headline is the latest defense against ice, three d printed whistles. So, I mean, the headline really captures it.

Joseph: 25:23

I guess.

Sam: 25:24

But they're making something that's, like, slightly different than your typical schoolyard, like, coach whistle. So walk us through just to establish, like, what exactly are they three d printing? What's the effort going on here?

Joseph: 25:37

Yeah. So maybe I should just say what three d printer is. I feel like people will know, but I might as well just say it right. There is this small to medium sized device that you can they're so cheap now, relatively cheap, you know, a couple $100 that people have at home and you just need to get two things, the materials necessary to print whatever object you're making, obviously, and a design. And maybe you make that design, maybe you download it offline.

Joseph: 26:05

Of course, I mean, this is part of the media's fault as well. And, you know, I include basically everybody who's covered three d printing in that and that people often associated with the three d printing of firearms. So we've covered that as well because it's very fucking interesting as well. But in this case, people are three d printing whistles that they can use to warn their local community about the presence of ICE officials. And sometimes they come with a little message which says, hey, you do free short blasts on your whistle to say that ICE is nearby or you do free long ones to signal there's a code red, whatever that might mean in the context, I think it'd be pretty obvious, And then includes the hotline for a local immigrant to refugee rights support group.

Joseph: 26:57

So people are printing, making, building these in bulk, basically, dozens if not hundreds of whistles at a time, and then they're getting handed out. I I I guess, Sam, before we move on, like, you had a you had a three d printer, right, or your partner did?

Sam: 27:16

Yeah. There was a three d printer in this household. It was old. It was from, like, two like, ten years ago or something. It was, like, ancient and I think inherited from someone else.

Sam: 27:27

And it never I think, like, ten years ago, the main project of having a three d printer as is the main project of many many pieces of hardware is, like, many DIY things is the effort of making the thing work is the project. So I think they've come a really long way since then. Ours just it never aligned. The bed was never aligned correctly. It just struggled.

Sam: 27:51

So it was a huge pain in the ass. And when I read this, I was like, how are people three d printing that many whistles that fast? Because mine would take weeks to because I would I found it pretty handy when it did work because I would print, like it's like my TV stand needed to be raised, like, an inch. So I printed little feet for the TV. Was like, that's not that's not something that I could go buy.

Sam: 28:14

So I just printed little plastic pieces to put the TV on. So, anyway, I was pretty impressed when I saw this. And I guess I it made me feel like, oh, shit. Like, this has actually come a really far away since my old one.

Jason: 28:26

May I explain a use of a three d printer?

Sam: 28:28

I knew you would have one, so please.

Jason: 28:30

Well, there's there's a tiny little part I need for this resow that is not made anymore because it's from 1995. And so the community has modeled the tiny little part that I needed, which is like this little bushing that you, like, shove a rod into. And this guy three d printed it for me and mailed it to me. So

Joseph: 28:50

Used a three d printer to fix some other printer printer. Nine nine five, and then you're gonna print out the instructions to do that on that printer. Yeah. It's amazing. It's pretty cool.

Sam: 29:01

Buy your own three d printer probably.

Jason: 29:03

No. No. No. No. No.

Jason: 29:04

No. No. No. No.

Matthew: 29:08

No. That's, like, conversation.

Jason: 29:11

The next time Please continue.

Joseph: 29:13

Yes. Sorry to continue.

Sam: 29:15

Yeah. The devil on his shoulder says buy three d printer. He's gonna be on eBay right after this. Yeah. So situation.

Sam: 29:22

That's kinda what that's what we've we're the perspective we were coming from is people mass printing all these whistles to warn people about ice. And where a lot of these printing efforts are happening and the whistle thing, I think, really got very popular. I don't know if it started there, but somewhere that it's been really useful is Chicago because Chicago is enduring a really serious, really intense ice presence right now. Like, ice is occupying Chicago basically right now. It's Operation Midway Blitz is what they're calling it, and there's been quite a bit of violence directed at protesters and just bystanders.

Sam: 30:03

People who are not even protesting have been subject to ICE's violence. And people are using the whistles to warn community members when ICE is around. So do you wanna just talk a little bit about the importance of the the effort to have this, like, really lightweight, easy, you know, no language barrier required type warning system, which I think is so interesting.

Joseph: 30:30

Yeah. The no language barrier thing is very important. You're right to Blow. Say that.

Matthew: 30:38

Yeah. Exactly. I could hear

Sam: 30:40

it like down the street if someone was blowing a whistle. You know?

Joseph: 30:42

Exactly. So, yeah, whistles have become really, really important in Chicago. People were buying them and well, they're not reselling them. The people were buying them off Amazon or whatever and then giving them out or they were buying them themselves for a while. It's not like the three d printers came along and invented whistles.

Joseph: 31:04

Obviously, that's not the case, but there's been these big events in Chicago that I was reading about in local press and in Reuters as well where hundreds of people would gather together and they would get whistles and they would pair them with instructions on how to use the whistles. Obviously, everybody knows how to use a whistle. It's more, again, that blow it three times to say ice is around or something like that. So there's some sort of consistency in how they're being used. So it's been very, very important there.

Joseph: 31:34

Someone else I spoke to on the ground, a local resident, Justin, who actually it's funny. I followed them on Blue Sky and Twitter when we still use that platform and all of that sort of thing because they were actually information security and now they're doing something like this. And they just mentioned that you go to a grocery store in Chicago or you go to a restaurant and people are handing out whistles if you go there. So they're very readily available, and they've been in use for a while. It's just now, oh, some people are three d printing them.

Joseph: 32:11

And I think that's very interesting for a number of different reasons. Think we'll get into into into a minute. But, you know, that changes how people can get hold of them and how and how quickly sort of they can be sourced as well.

Sam: 32:26

Yeah. For sure. And, yeah, I think the question that I keep seeing come up on social media and the response to the story that a few people, not most people, most people are like, this is rad. We love it. But most many people are like, why not just buy a whistle?

Sam: 32:42

Why not just buy a bag of whistles on Amazon or whatever or go to the hardware store? It's like, first of all, can imagine Chicago, whistles are being are getting sold out, like, in physical stores.

Joseph: 32:52

It's a fair point. Yep.

Sam: 32:53

And I don't know that for a fact, but, like, I would think this is a very in demand item, and it's probably hard to keep them stocked in, like, your regular mom and pop hardware store or sports store or whatever it is. But what would you say to why why three d print the whistles? And what did the people that you talked to who are doing this on the ground say to that kind of, like, oh, why not just buy them type of comment?

Joseph: 33:21

Yeah. I mean, it's funny that one of the responses from people who obviously didn't read the article and you always get that. We've been doing this for ten years through the absence of social media. We see that every time. But people would say here, yeah, why don't you just get one from Amazon?

Joseph: 33:37

It's so cheap. Literally, one of the people I spoke to who is making these whistles says it is cheaper than getting them on Amazon. According to their sort of back of the napkin math, it would be like, I don't know, 30 to 50¢ per whistle on Amazon. Obviously, that's still pretty cheap, but three d printing, it's like 20, you know? And I mean, there are obvious other benefits as well.

Joseph: 34:01

If you're setting up some sort of big manufacturing operation for whistles, if you're printing hundreds, I don't know, potentially thousands eventually whistles, if you were doing that normally, well, I think if you're trying to build them in that sort of capacity from a manufacturer in China or wherever, they're probably not going to engage with you because that's too few for like a mass production, you know, country like China or factories there or anything. You then have to organize relationships. You have to figure out logistics, shipping them over. Maybe that'd be a pain in the ass with tariffs if there's a really big shipment. Who knows?

Joseph: 34:41

All of this other logistical stuff. Or you download a file off the Internet and you hit print on your three d printer in your home and it can be in people's hands within presumably the same day or something and it allows you to highly customize it. Again, one of the people I spoke to, they said, yes, you can get whistles elsewhere, but this has two other purposes as well. It's solidarity because it's like, hey, I want to do something and I want to contribute. And the other one is that, again, these whistles sometimes come with particular logos on them.

Joseph: 35:12

Some had no kings on there as well or they come with, again, the instructions on how to use them or the hotline for an immigrants and refugee rights organization. So, yeah, obviously, you could buy it on Amazon. And also, maybe people just don't wanna give more more money to Jeff Bezos. That came up as well. So I don't know.

Joseph: 35:33

I just think it's interesting to see that people turn and try to help in all sorts of different ways. This didn't make it into the article just because it wasn't the focus. But, you know, I'm talking a lot to some of the rights groups on the ground in Chicago and they say, you know, we have people three d printing whistles. We have people in like group chats coordinating, trying to get information out. We have other people looking at flight data much like we do really to warn people about incoming helicopters or anything like that.

Joseph: 36:06

And this is another way that people are trying to help their local community while all of this very aggressive ICE and border patrol, especially activities, you know, keep rocking Chicago in the suburbs.

Jason: 36:20

Yeah. Well, I think also just to highlight, it's like we have seen ICE and DHS arrest protesters there. We've seen people get in trouble for, like, all sorts of things. I I think it's someone also mentioned, like, you don't wanna necessarily have a paper trail. Like, I bought 40,000 whistles on Amazon or I bought 40,000 whistles at Home Depot or whatever.

Jason: 36:44

Like, I I think that that is also, like, from an operational security standpoint, it's like it's at least something to keep in mind.

Joseph: 36:52

Yeah. And I don't think this would happen, but we're in pretty weird times in that, yeah, investigating somebody who orders 40,000 whistles and gives them some trumped up bizarre conspiracy charge or something like that or, you know, we even see the Trump DOJ demanding that Apple remove particular apps, which are first amendment protected speech. Who knows if the Trump administration could get on you for, like, buying a shit ton of whistles? I it's not outside the realm of possibility, like, anymore.

Sam: 37:28

Yeah. For sure. Yeah. It makes me I mean, so it makes me think of Portland, which I'll get to in a second, but it I think people people think very, like, literally and tangibly in these cases sometimes, but a lot of the purpose of mutual aid is to, like, aid like, detract yourself from the systems that you're trying to critique or work around or whatever it is. So like Jason said with the paper trail or like you said, Joe, with the Amazon stuff, it's like, we're trying to build something that is actually, like, a community coalition and not keep feeding money into the systems that are making this whole thing worse.

Sam: 38:11

So it's like, yes, it would probably be faster and easier and more convenient and maybe cost, like, 60¢ more to order a shitload of whistles on TMO or whatever. But the point here is to meet people in your community, to help the people in your community directly. There's a guy with a three d printer willing to print out a ton of whistles. Great. Like, that's awesome, and it gets people involved and interested in a way that just doing it directly to your house with overnight shipping probably doesn't.

Sam: 38:46

And the customizability, obviously, is really good. But I was thinking of Portland just because of the inflatable suits thing. And this is something that, like, I don't really wanna get into, like, the the critiques of, like, the suits in other cities. But in Portland, they had a bunch of the suits where people could, like, check them out, like a library. So if you're going to a protest, people had a bunch of suits, and you could, like, go borrow one and then bring it back when you were headed home.

Sam: 39:10

So it's not, like, adding more trash to the it's not making an Amazon driver come bring you an overnight suit so you can go to No Kings, you know, which, like, a lot of people did, and that's fine. But I think there's a big difference between using them at a porta a protest in Portland and checking it out from, like, a inflatable suit library run by your local mutual aid group and, like, overnighting a Pikachu suit. I don't know. I mean, it's just it's a it's a totally different thing that we're talking about when you're talking about people actually DIYing things that are disrupting like this, which is, I think, cool, and that's why we're covering it. So why don't we get into, like, what the actual impact of the whistle system is in Chicago?

Sam: 39:55

Because you named some examples of, like, where this has actually been really helpful to people who are targets of ICE.

Joseph: 40:02

Yeah. So, again, spoke to people on the ground, including somebody who does sort of a community patrol near a school in I think just North Of Chicago, if I'm remembering correctly. And they believe they're a high target for ICE and border patrol because they're a very multilingual and ethnic school, so maybe they're going to be targeted because of that. They described how the helicopter was buzzing overhead during Halloween just nearby the school, all of this sort of thing. They said, you know, the the whistles have been useful.

Joseph: 40:40

And then there was a more specific case. There's a couple I saw on social media, but one was somebody it was in the Instagram post was saying that they heard of all of these whistles going on and then they didn't really understand what it was and then remembered, oh, that means ICE is in the vicinity. They then contacted their parents who are immigrants and they were able to warn them so then they weren't going to be at this location. So clearly, it's having an impact. You know?

Joseph: 41:12

I I can't really think of a negative impact of it apart from the tiny little bit of sound it produces. Like, okay. Who gives a shit? Whatever. But from everything that I'm seeing and and reading and being told, it is actually having an impact.

Joseph: 41:26

Now whether is it specifically the three d printed whistles? Don't really know. Doesn't really matter. Some are, some aren't. That's kind of impossible to tell really.

Joseph: 41:37

But Justin, the former information security person resident who's three d printing these, he said, you know, I don't know if people are actually downloading my design. And he was the one who took a Whistle design and added the hotline to it and that sort of thing. But you go on the page and it's been downloaded 20 times. I don't really know why it'll be downloaded 20 times if people weren't using it with a three d printer. Like, there's no use to that file, you know?

Joseph: 42:05

So yeah. I know. It's I think it's interesting and I think it has generated some impact and, you know, I'll definitely keep an eye on it. That said, and I didn't include this in the articles of it because I've only seen it in one place so far. But apparently, border patrol may be done with Chicago in the near future as they're moving on now, but that only came out today.

Joseph: 42:27

So I guess we'll see. Sam, should we leave that there?

Sam: 42:31

Yeah. Let's leave it there.

Joseph: 42:33

Alright. If you're listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you are paying for a full media subscriber, we're gonna talk about how AI is basically supercharging the fight against libraries, education, knowledge, a whole ton of stuff. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at four zero four media dot c o. We'll be right back after this.

Joseph: 43:09

Alright. And we are back in the subscribers only section. This is one that Jason wrote. AI is supercharging the war on libraries, education, and human knowledge. Jason, this is obviously it's not complicated.

Joseph: 43:23

It's just it's a very zoomed out piece where you kinda look at everything that's going on and you've spoken to various people and you contextualize everything that's going on, but it starts with a very particular piece of software I'd never heard of called Class Shelf Plus, which I find even difficult to say. What is that piece of software exactly? Like, what are talking about?

Jason: 43:44

Yeah. So Class Shelf Plus is made by a company called Children's Literature Comprehensive Database. I actually think that, like, this is an instructive situation, but it's hard for me to say, like, how, like, widely used this software is because this is brand new. It's a brand new thing, but it is very, like, emblematic of what we're gonna talk about. And so, basically, it is like an AI powered book cataloging software, like library tech software.

Jason: 44:19

And so what it does is if you run, like, a school district's library system or if you run, like, a a library in an elementary school, you basically, like, use it to add all of the books that you have in your library. And then it uses an LLM to scan through these books or, like, what is known about these books. And then it it gives what it's called a traffic light rating system where, like, green is, you know, this is suitable. Yellow, it might have sensitive content. And then red where it it, like, may have been banned somewhere.

Jason: 45:02

And so, essentially, what it's doing is it is doing it is, like, automating book bans, like, more or less. That's not what the company says, but

Joseph: 45:12

Right.

Jason: 45:13

That is like they they call it compliance software. And so, basically, like, there's all these states that have passed legislation that say, you know, you can't have books that teach LGBTQ issues or you can't have books that teach things about systemic racism and and things like that. Specifically banning that, there's many states that have given, like, oversight privileges to the legislature or to, like, a political body rather than the individual school or individual librarian. And so it's being sold as like a compliance software where basically, like, the the school district can program in, like, here's what what is banned or what is supposed to be banned, and then it will kind of, like, automatically say, like, okay. Here's here's what's banned and here's what's not.

Jason: 46:04

And so, I mean, the the long and short of it is basically, like, the book bans that legislators and, you know, exclusively the right wing at this point are pushing on libraries and pushing on schools are really hard to implement because there's so much subjectivity involved, and there's usually a lot of kind of like red tape where a book needs to be challenged, and then there's like a hearing, and then there's like a back and forth and and all of this. And so, like, some of the librarians that I've talked to is like, well, you know, we don't know what's in this book. Like, we we haven't gone through all of the books, and so we're not gonna, like, proactively take books out of circulation because of whatever law. And so

Joseph: 46:51

But even though the AI tool or maybe even people have said, hey, get rid of that book.

Jason: 46:57

Well, what I'm saying is that before this software, like Right. Right. These laws are getting passed, but then the actual, like, implementation of them is like a nightmare and a mess. And so what what's happening is, like, in some cases, like, not all the books are getting banned, and that is that is, like, good. That's a good outcome because the, you know, censorship efforts are, like, really ridiculous.

Jason: 47:21

And so what this company is coming in and there's other ones that have, like, offered similar things and they're saying, like, no. We're just gonna, like, go through and and and AI is gonna tell you, like, what which books are bad and which bad books are good, more or less.

Joseph: 47:35

Yeah. So so the company says, hey. This is this is a good tool. It is neutral, but we think it's a beneficial tool because it's just gonna tell you how to comply with the law. Librarians, obviously, are saying that, well, this is a an engine of censorship essentially.

Joseph: 47:53

It is allowing the censorship to happen. Has the company responded to that criticism? Like or do they just say, no. They're wrong and we're a neutral technology blah blah blah?

Jason: 48:04

That's what they said. Like, I emailed them and they that's what they said. They're basically like, we are we're just like helping these overworked librarians, you know, comply with the law and it's designed to here's what they said. They said, quote, this process is designed to assist districts in meeting legislative requirements and protect teachers and librarians from accusations of bias or noncompliance. And then they also said, quote, it allows districts to make the majority of their classroom collections publicly visible, supporting transparency and access.

Jason: 48:40

And and so, I don't know, like, you could see why they're like, oh, we can help out with this problem. But what librarians have told me is that, you know, these these AI systems, they have, like, different biases in them. They also like, the people who want to load, who want schools to use this type of software are the types of groups that are, like, pushing book bans and that don't trust librarians to do their jobs and don't trust teachers to do their jobs. And and so, again, like, this is, like, an example that was raised to me when I was talking to librarians for this story. This is just, like, one of many, many, many, like, quote, unquote technological fixes that, you know, are kind of being pushed on teachers and librarians and the federal government and and all that sort of thing as being like, oh, this computer will do your job for you.

Jason: 49:35

And, you know, the the way that that actually plays out is very often in a censorship way or in a way that doesn't encourage critical thinking or or sort of is like antithetical to these types of of jobs.

Joseph: 49:50

Yeah. So the piece opens with that, like this concrete new trend and piece of software, but then it sort of zooms out because you and and Emmanuel especially have been covering a lot of what's going on with AI and libraries. You have AI slot books where, you know, shelves are being flooded with them and as Emmanuel's reported, like, librarians have to basically fight them back and try to get AI slop out of out of their buildings. You have software like this. You have other things just and and maybe just more broadly, like and I think you say this in the piece, just this general shift towards AI and everything all the time forever or whatever.

Joseph: 50:35

So when you zoom out a bit, Jason, what are librarians telling you? Like beyond that software?

Jason: 50:44

Yeah. So I actually decided to write this piece after speaking to a single person who who, like I I just met them. Her name is Maggie Tokuta Hall. She's a cofounder of Authors Against Book Bans, and she has written several books that have been banned. You know, they're children's books that deal with one one of them is about how her grandparents met at a Japanese internment camp during World War two, and that book was banned from various school districts for being anti American because it talked about this very dark period of American history.

Jason: 51:22

And she had been following four zero four media for a while and she was like, you guys do really good coverage of AI and you do really good coverage of libraries. Like, why haven't you put it all together? Because the war on censorship and education and all of this is really being supercharged by AI maximalism, by, you know, big tech, like, all that sort of thing. Like, it's it's not they're not different things. They are the same thing that is pushing from two different angles and putting a lot of pressure on librarians.

Jason: 51:59

And then I sort of expanded that out because it's also the same thing that's happening to teachers right now, which we've written a lot about. It's the same thing that's happening to government workers. And it's really just like this like, the idea that AI can replace human labor or things that like, replace human expertise and judgment is one that is really favored by the, like, war on expertise in general. So the like, the Doge cuts, for example, where they go into the federal government and they lay off zillions of people, and then they're like, well, we're gonna replace them with AI.

Joseph: 52:37

Or or or we use AI to determine the cuts in the first place as well.

Jason: 52:40

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And then same thing really with with teachers. It's like, well, you should allow your students to use AI because they're gonna need to use it in in the workplace.

Jason: 52:52

And it's like, well, we've talked to people in the workplace and they're saying that AI is, like, fucking up their workplace as well. And so it's it's sort of like playing out across all of society. And, you know, I I talked to four different librarians or educators on the record for this piece, and then I ran the ideas past like a bunch of other people, and they're like, no. This is a connection that we've been making for quite some time. It's, you know, our library administrators or library boards are coming to us and saying, you need to use AI to make your card catalog more efficient or to determine which books are are good or not.

Jason: 53:31

You know, Emmanuel did an amazing piece about Hoopla, which is this company that does, like, ebooks for libraries that's just getting flooded with AI slop. And so you have librarians just, like, deleting stuff off of that app, you know, using a lot of time there. And then also, it's like these ideas are only really popular because of this long running movement by, like, the Heritage Foundation and others on the right to, like, denigrate expertise, to, like, denigrate librarians to say that, you know, they're teaching your kids to be woke, like, all this stuff. They can't be trusted. And it like, in that environment of distrust, you know, Elon Musk's, like, grok looks like, oh, well, this will be unbiased.

Jason: 54:28

And then, of course, like, AI is super biased, but but people don't necessarily know that.

Joseph: 54:35

Yeah. Totally. I guess just the last thing is this was reported with support from the MuckRock Foundation. We've mentioned it briefly on, I think, the podcast. Yeah.

Joseph: 54:48

Like, top at some point, I think. But just what is that again exactly and sort of what do we have planned that you can I know we're still working stuff?

Jason: 54:57

Yeah. Yeah. So the MuckRock Foundation is, you know, the nonprofit associated with MuckRock, which is the platform that we use to file public records requests. We proposed this project a couple years ago where we're like, well, we wanna file a bunch of FOIAs in a quasi systemic way about educational censorship and book bans and and all that sort of thing. And so we're gonna be covering this a lot more.

Jason: 55:23

You know, we've started getting some of the FOIAs that we've started filing back, and they will become articles, and we'll publish all the documents and stuff like that. And I'll just stress again, like, there's been a lot of people who've been doing work like this for a long time, but, you know, I think that we we have, like, a pretty unique perspective on the stories that we find interesting. Like, I think we're gonna try to find where, like, technology intersects with book bans and how they're being automated and and all that sort of thing. Emmanuel, I'm curious what you think of of all this just because I feel like you've been doing the best reporting on what librarians in particular are facing. I just, like, happened to talk to a lot of librarians recently and decided to do this piece, but you've you've really written a lot about, like, how their job's been messed up by AI.

Emanuel: 56:19

The the the only thing I would emphasize is everything you said is true, and then there is the other angle to it, which it's not just librarians. It is any person whose job involves the curation of information of any kind. So the same goes for Wikipedia editors. Right? So it's like, in addition to everything you said, everyone is just dealing with this onslaught of AI generated content.

Emanuel: 56:48

And, obviously, if your job is curating information, you're on the front line and you're dealing with that. So we're seeing it with libraries. We're seeing it with Wikipedia, and we're also seeing it with, like, things you wouldn't necessarily think of as information curation, but think about I don't know if we reported on this, but it's like all the literary journals or actually, we did publish a story about it, about about the the preprints, no longer accepting submissions unless they're vetted in some way. So it's like a lot of places where you're accepting manuscripts or papers or whatever, they're just blowing their hands up and saying, like, we actually don't have the manpower to to deal with this, so we're changing the process and making it less open. And I just find that really interesting, and I would we actually last time I mentioned this on the podcast, I did hear from Wikipedia editors.

Emanuel: 57:44

That's where a lot of the story stories we did come from. So it's like, if you're on the front lines, whether librarian, Wikipedia editor, or something we don't even know about, and you're dealing with AI generated content flooding your systems, I would love to hear from you because it's one instance where we're not only reporting on the problems, these are also people coming up with the solutions. And we're seeing we're seeing that with librarians and Wikipedia editors, and I think that's like a small glimmer of hope in in how we we deal with this with this stuff.

Joseph: 58:16

Yeah. Sounds sounds good. I think that is a good place to leave it. So with that, I'll play us out. As a reminder, four zero four Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers.

Joseph: 58:31

If you do wish to subscribe to four zero four Media and directly support our work, please go to four zero four Media dot c o. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week, and you'll get early access to our new interview episodes as well. This podcast is made partnership with Kaleidoscope. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast.

Joseph: 58:58

That stuff really, really does help us out. This has been four zero four Media. We'll see you again next week.