Category Archives: Culture

The secrets we keep

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I now know that saying you work at Apple is like saying you work at the government. Which part matters a lot.

I worked in Security, Engineering, and ARchitecture (SEAR) for the last 5 years as an Engineering Project Manager (EPM). I had a key role in helping Contact Key Verification, Blastdoor, Advanced Data Protection, Forgotten Passcode, Legacy Contact, Child Safety, and some hardware improvements ship. I was doing infrastructural work to continually improve security across the keychain, certificates, cryptography, authentication, insight and detection, endpoint security, and sandboxing. I made sure we got our certifications. I helped Red Teams and fuzzing to be effective. Not all at the same time. But 2-4 releases in flight at a time, and 3-6 teams on board at a time.

A lot of what I worked on I can’t talk about. And I will continue to not talk about until they ship. That was the problem.

I thrive on talking to a wide variety of people about whatever they’re passionate about. I invest in my network, and my network loves me back. It is deep and powerful. I love getting groups of folks to discover something collectively that is new to each of them. I love making weird connections between groups to help them be better. Apple works on the pushing-a-pimple-out-of-a-circle innovation route, a choose-the-best-from-set-options route, and I work the novel-graph-connection-to-make-something-new route. And it was slowly crushing my spirit.

At first, the company was big enough that I was still able to make graph connections. But that wore out quickly as we ran into disclosures and folks not being able to talk about what they actually knew and were passionate about. I still did senior-level technical project manager work while not in my lane. I tracked projects, I mentored folks. Things shipped. But I struggled. I wasn’t happy. I didn’t have anything to talk about with my husband or son when I got home from work. Reed, at one point, pretended that I worked a miniature golf course experience production company. When I vented about a coworker (the only part of work I felt comfortable talking about with non-disclosed folks), he’d sagely nod while thinking “ah, hole 3 is really coming together.”

I tried this experiment for 3 years of trying to have non-productive hobbies. You know, cross stitch and stuff. And it just didn’t work for me. I applaud the folks who can turn off, I will fight for our rights to have time to do things that are not governed by capitalism. I read sci-fi in bed for sure, but I didn’t like trying to take up spare hours on weekends not organizing people. I’m like a Border Collie or something. And I want to talk to people about it. I want to be able to make sense of the world by connecting what I know to what other people know. It’s hilarious to me that Apple TV is what Severance is on. I get the “surprise and delight” thing, but ends up I do not like surprises or getting them.

Securing a billion people without them having to care or notice is a pretty compelling argument, so I stuck with it for 5 years. I worked with many incredible, driven people. But for me, the same reason I struggle with role playing tabletop games is the same reason I struggled at Apple — I am my whole self, with all of its facets, all of the time. I can keep a secret (snitches get stitches!), but I can’t keep a whole part of my life secret.

So, I’m looking for work. Here’s my portfolio of things I’ve done. Here’s my resume. And I’m dipping my toe back in with the disaster zine, digital estate planning, security consulting implementation with Myeong at Tiny Gigantic, and facilitation gigs in the meantime. Let me know if you have a me-shaped hole, because trying to do not-me-shaped things sure didn’t work. I’m a work horse, and I’m good, and I also really like sharing.

June Joy : Deciding to throw Priceless!

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When one of my dearest friends found out I was planning to move from the Boston Area to the Bay Area, he put me in touch with the planners behind Priceless to give me some extra social safety net and ways to plug in.

Priceless is an anticapitalist campout with about 1150 attendees on the Feather River in Northern California. It’s historically happened July 4th weekend, and has been running for.. 18 years? There was one year it got cancelled due to fires, and a Half Price during Covid, and some other anomalies. It has 3-4 stages with different sorts of music (here’s the sampler set that got me hooked), lots of art, and was (until this year) entirely volunteer run. Our food vendor (paid for in advance) is the only thing that involves money on site for the festival. It’s wonderful. And until this year, it had sold out every year, within a very short period of time.

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Approaches to Conflict

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We’re already seeing people being disappeared. I think we’ll see more of that, and people fighting back, and a possible escalation of violence between civilian factions, and between civilians and the government. I think things will get kinetic soon. I think it’s important to be deliberate in how we approach the incoming conflict, to not be swept up in it. So I’ve been having conversations with friends and neighbors about what this might look like, and how we want to approach things. This blog post is inspired by those conversations, but I’m not going to name everyone here because that would be bad opsec. These are friends with direct experience with conflict, and/or are deeply researched about it.

So first, to set the tone, there are already groups saying we’re lined up for a genocide against trans folks in the US. People who know how these things go say we’re headed there. We need to be aware of this and fight it, not “wait it out.” It will only get better if we make it better. So this is a post not about theoreticals, this is a post about how I’m approaching something that seems certain at this point. Friends say we’ll probably look like Columbia, and suggest Lederach as a person to read, although I haven’t yet.

I’m balancing two views here, both from people I have direct contact with, and both of which are born of deep experience. One is about how some communities decide to opt out of conflict despite it happening all around them, and the other is about being willing to be in conflict with bullies scaring the bullies away in post-disaster zones. From that, I’ve decided my goal is to not be in conflict, and to be ready to defend myself if that approach doesn’t work. And I know you can’t prepare for peace and war at the same time, but also I’m not setting strategy for a country. The Quakers would disagree with this approach, and point out that nonviolence does not mean passivity, and that putting violence on the table tends to optimize for violence and limit approaches to responding to violence. Regardless of how you choose to engage, hold close to the fact that violence isn’t the norm, and we should work to return to a peaceful baseline. Be loud about violence being abnormal and not acceptable. If you go a nonviolent route, make it clear that fighting, if it’s going to happen, happens outside of your space. The people being violent can do it in their own spaces. 

Most of the ways communities have approached opting out of conflict had to do with being connected with their neighbors and always welcoming more people in (if they adhere to the nonviolence). That’s harder after eviction culture and being hyper individualistic — I will forever beat the drum of bringing unknown neighbors baked goods to try to get to know them. Maybe go talk to your local security forces about how they’re thinking about the incoming conflict and what they see their role as — some have already started making statements about never working with ICE. Further afield, having such far-flung communities means having early warning systems for where the violence WILL start, so stay in touch with those loved ones who live in other places and talk about what the local happenings are. 

When Marshall, author of Opting Out of War, came to talk to a small group of us about his research, he told us about the differences between Sarajevo and Tolisa in Bosnia, and how Sarajevo buttoned down in neighborhoods and fell into local violence, and Tolisa united and welcomed others and avoided much of the violence. An impromptu peace demonstration in Sarajevo was fired upon, killing some protestors, and the movement fell apart and so did the city. Marshall focused on holding a broad circle, anticipation, communication, and relationships with security forces to help stave off conflict. In his book, he also talks about throwing a good party as part of the trends in communities that opt out of conflict. 

In that conversation, we also talked about how we need to only persuade a few percentage points of the population to oust Trump. But that means talking to people who might not be aligned with you politically, and what that might look like. I’d recommend the Better Conflict Bulletin for thinking on how to approach those conversations. I’ve started making bets with people online — define thresholds and timelines and check back it. It forces people to acknowledge risks to their world view, a clear story, and a bid for connection. Offering to build bridges can also be seen as traitorous by either end of the spectrum, and that’s problematic to avoiding armed conflict. 

I’ll still be going to the range with neighbors because shooting is meditative and fun, and because I won’t tolerate people bringing violence to my neighborhood. But I will do so while putting 90% more time and effort into nonviolent approaches, and hoping desperately that path is the one I’m allowed to take.

How are y’all thinking about these things?

Additional reading from Marshall:

  • Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works
  • Chenoweth, Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know
  • William Ury, The Third Side
    • He describes 10 roles for people to play in reducing conflict. It’s an interesting way to think about tapping into people’s strengths and finding the gaps in your organization or your work.
  • Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy
  • Sharp, 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action
  • Peter Ackerman, Strategic Nonviolent Conflict
    • Sharp and Ackerman’s organization: The Albert Einstein Institution (https://www.aeinstein.org/). Gene Sharp was instrumental in moving the ideas of nonviolence into secular language from religious. Here in 2025, he’s probably more intellectually influential than King or Gandhi.
  • Srdja Popovic, Blueprint for a Revolution
    • Popovic’s organization: CANVAS (Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies) (https://canvasopedia.org/). The publications page has good resources that are also, dare I say it, fun. 
  • Martin Luther King, Jr, Letter From a Birmingham Jail
    • In my opinion, one of the finest strategy documents ever written.

Participating in nonhierarchical organizations

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Network/nonhierarchical organizing is my preferred methodology over hierarchy (that was a joke where I put my preferences into a hierarchy). And while I’ve written a fair amount about organizational structures on this blog, I’ve never really talked about what I expect of participants in a network beyond defining governance models. So this is about that. 

Intrinsic Motivation

I learned this term from Debbie Chachra, and I love it. You can learn a whole lot more in this video and in this book, but the basics are this:

  1. Purpose – You gotta know why you want to do something. In networks, this is usually either the thing the network has decided is their collective purpose together, or people joining the network are signing up to the already-stated purpose. Purpose can shift over time, and it’s good to check in on, on occasion, without getting too navel-gazey. 
  2. Scaffolding – You gotta know if you’re on the right track towards your goals within that purpose, and are making progress against that track. In networks, we usually use documentation and skill shares from folks who have already tried it in this or another context. 
  3. Autonomy – With shared purpose guiding you and scaffolding pointing the way, you gotta be able to make decisions for yourself and move without someone else telling you what to do. Because in a network, people (generally) don’t tell each other what to do. There is coordination without control.

Do the work

If you’re present, you should be contributing towards the purpose. This of course includes caring for people doing more directly related work, mentoring, etc. But separate out the philosophical navel-gazing discussion time and people from the work at hand. It’s so much fun to have those philosophical discussions! It’s even important for the purpose of the group and how you communicate that to others. But if you’re not contributing, get out of the way of the people who are and just read their newsletter instead of distracting them. 

Self awareness and integrity

Because no one is telling you what to do, and no one is tracking your work, it is vital that you have enough self awareness to notice if something is going off the rails, or your ability to deliver has changed. You then need to communicate with others about how things are going, even if it’s bad news. Otherwise a competent person who is well resourced quietly working on their own looks the exact same from the outside as someone who is in over their head and can’t deliver. 

Communication

Here, I look for transparency and sharing space. Talking about what your part is in a way that opens up the space for others to weigh in as well is vital. And I’m always a big fan of the rule of N – speak 1/Nth of the time, whether that means taking up more or less space than you’re prone to!

It’s also important here to speak only for yourself. If someone is missing from the room, work to bring them into the room. But speaking for others is paternalistic and you often get it wrong, anyway. The number of productive conversations I’ve seen derailed because someone started concern-trolling about something they barely understood on someone else’s “behalf” is staggering. 

It’s also fun to look at the COINTELPRO guide to disrupting and delaying effective action, and to just avoid doing those things. 

Why I know what I’m talking about

I’ve done a lot of network organizing since I got started in 2009. First organizing hacker and makerspaces to share skills and a 501c3 umbrella for Jigsaw Renaissance and School Factory; then connecting disaster and humanitarian technology groups to each other and responses via Geeks Without Bounds and then UN OCHA’s Digital Humanitarian Network; and now with an art and music campout festival called Priceless. I even considered being an academic for awhile on this topic and how it overlaps with hierarchical orgs at the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab and the Harvard Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Technology. Phew.

What I’m doing to prepare

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I realized on Friday that all my experience in organizing marginalized frontline populations in times of crisis is really going to come to bear on the upcoming years. This time, we even have some time to prepare, and lots of foundational work has already been happening in our communities by those who haven’t been served by ANY administration that’s been in power.

Find your people

Ideally, you already know some of your neighbors. But maybe you don’t! Capitalism and eviction culture lead to not knowing who’s around you. It means we have less solidarity and less strength against the ruling class. If you don’t already know your neighbors, start getting to know them! Get comfortable knocking on doors with cookies. Be open to who you meet. More and more people are uncomfortable with the status quo, even if they voted differently to you. Remember that the uniting cry of the Zapatists was “¡Ya Basta!” (“enough!”). You may end up with strange allies, but they will be allies nonetheless.

Have a good sense of who you can trust with what. Some folks are excellent at helping people feel welcome, but also don’t have a good gauge of how discrete a new person can be. Some folks are good in a crisis but otherwise aren’t dependable. Etc. There are many things you can trust someone with, have a good sense of who to trust with what.

Be open to new folks showing up, but also be aware that there will be lots of attempts at infiltration as time goes on, especially as you become more known. Each person having a story and a personal contact who can vouch for them goes a long way, but also just behave as if you’re already infiltrated.

Scope your focus

I have chosen to focus on my state and county. If a trans kid from Florida shows up on my porch, Reed and I will talk about housing them. However, I can’t do anything about trans kids in Florida at this point. I can keep giving money to Planned Parenthood in the Midwest and the South, and I can keep giving money to Translifeline, but other than that, I need to hone my focus close to home. Maybe you’ll pick a specific cause to focus on rather than a geographic one. But regardless, pick something that matches your area of influence and stick to it. Else we all go mad and burn out.

I also really liked this article that’s being passed around, that has four areas of focus: protect people, disrupt and disobey, defend civic institutions, and build alternatives. I think it’s good to know which frame folks are using when they’re asking for action. I also think it’s important that all four of these bases be covered (or intentionally left out) when organizing a broader group.

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Looking in the mirror after body horror

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I was pregnant as an agender person, and it was hard, but it didn’t destroy me.

The tenses in this one are a doozy. I use “breast” in here a lot as I believe it’s already a gender-neutral term.

Before being pregnant, I was pretty ok with my body shape. My breasts were small enough to bind but also present enough to wear cute dresses in. My hips were present if I chose to accentuate them, but also disappeared in men’s style clothing.

I got misgendered my entire pregnancy by medical professionals. They even had my pronouns in their system! But calling people “mama” all day is a hard habit to break, and it happened all. the. time.

Willow about 7 months pregnant in front of a mirror, swollen

And also — my breasts grew 2 cup sizes. My hips expanded. Not as much as they might have if Locke had completed his damn pregnancy, but still. My fairly androgynous figure was gone. I couldn’t bind anymore. After pregnancy, it wasn’t just medical professionals that were seeing me as femme, based on my newly acquired hourglass figure. I was Uncomfortable. I was hiding in bland clothing. I couldn’t look at myself in a mirror. I shied away from sexy times. I was, and I mean this with all the dark humor in the world, “not feeling myself.”

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A subtweet from a small town queer

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So, I help produce an art and music campout that happens in California every summer. I’m on the People team (dealing with conflict, consent violations, etc) and am a general coordinator for the overall event. I’ve done this on and off for about 5 years of the 18 years it’s been running. And after this year, I have to say: are the straights and younguns ok? This entire entry is a subtweet to both straight people and young people who seem to think they can’t be in community with their exes.

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Calling artists and authors to help with a response zine!

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As some of you know, I have cared about crisis response for a long time. And now, as a side project, as furthered recently at my birthday conference, I’m working on a guide for the formal sector to interact with the informal. I’m also starting work on a zine for informal groups to know what’s up in times of crisis. The informal groups are harder to reach as you don’t know who they are in advance, and so our goal is to make this zine something the formal sector is willing to hand off, something that is findable online, and something that activist groups might seek out themselves in advance.

I’m really excited about it, but it’s also a LOT of work. And I’m not the only person with writing or artistry skills out there, so I’d like to use this as an opportunity to commission some work. There’s a form at the bottom of this blog post to sign up for a section if you’re interested. What follows immediately are short write-ups of areas I think need better words and/or a piece of art to express.

Basics of response

Reviewing in an informal way things about WASH and food safety, plus common sense for physical safety for collapsed buildings (unit 7) etc. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, it’s worth moving carefully. Would require some independent research to figure out what is being detailed by official sources.

Data safety

You’ll be setting up some basic things immediately – a place to chat (mailing list, Signal group, etc) and a place to store information (wiki, Google Drive, etc). When a crisis first kicks off, data is gathered fast and loose, and access is given to anyone who might be able to help. That is expected and we get it. However, after time wears on and things stabilize a bit, some thought needs to be given to data retention and security, including who has access to what.

Limit how many administrators you have. Use secure-enough tools, limit who has access, send over encrypted channels. Retrofitting is a pain, but is worth the pain. Do your best in the moment, without sacrificing efficacy.

This would be a conversation we have to flesh out details you might be interested in and to highlight what I think is important and reasonable here.

Sustainability & leadership

At odds with a do-acracy, it makes more sense to select each other for leadership positions. Be wary of narcissism, usually indicated by someone wanting full ownership of something. Quiet, competent leaders are great in American cultures. This is something for conversation if you don’t already have a background here.

Self and community care

Support your leaders, IE if they’re a single parent, get them child care support while they coordinate. Taking at least one day off a week is necessary. You cannot go all out indefinitely, and your work will suffer if you try to. Rotation of duties is an excellent way to build resilience of responsibility in your community and to strengthen things by knowledge sharing. Feeding the group is important work. Etc. This would be great for someone passionate about governance structures and self care. Happy to have conversations about this and the sub topics to deepen the thinking here, but if you’re already familiar with self organizing structures, you’ll have a great start.

Documentation

Documentation often seems like the BIGGEST waste of time, but it is SO important. It will help you with handoff to other people (sustainability), it will help you communicate and coordinate with other groups (impact), and it will help you tell your story later (learning). Share outward as much and as often as you can handle, it will help everyone, and they in turn can help you.

A documentarian can be see as an apprentice to a role, writing down what they’ll do as they learn about it. This builds resilience in your group in multiple ways.

Happy to have a conversation about this one, but if you already love libraries and/or wikis, you’re probably set here.

Dealing with money

Eventually, someone will probably want to give you money, or you’ll start running into ways that you’d like to get money to spend on certain things rather than always coordinating material goods directly. Some groups, like Occupy Sandy, just estimate that they’d like 10% to fraud and that it would cost 15% in overhead to track, and so just gave away cash to projects based on donations flowing in. Other groups, like Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, ended up forming a 501c3 so they could better accept funds to pay for people’s airline tickets. Each comes with risks and benefits. This would be a conversation with me and some other folks to get you set up on models and information.

Failure modes

Formalizing your group in different ways (often done to deal with the money problem) leads to different types of failure. People who form businesses (disaster capitalism) usually end up failing as a business because they thought their one-off crisis lessons applied everywhere else. Right-wing response groups over optimize for centralizing power, especially when things are going sideways, which leads to bits of the group breaking off to do their own things. Leftist response groups fail to build consensus around the next actions to take and dissolve. A conversation can be had here.

Some tips for interacting successfully with the formal sector

Like it or not, the formal sector is probably going to show up at some point and try to deploy to your area. Here are things to know about how they work and what they expect that can help everything run more smoothly. I’d write the intro to this section, but the subsections can all be conversations if they’re not clear enough already.

Have a person the formal sector can talk to

A broker liaison could be someone who has done CERT training or that otherwise has worked within a command structure before. They should be open to understanding where the formal groups are coming from, but firm in what will and won’t be accepted by the community. They will need to be available for lots of informational meetings. This is how the formal sector thinks of these folks. If someone wants to prepare for this in advance, FEMA’s independent study is great.

Flying drones

Drones are a really great way of checking out your area to see what is going on. However, if any planes are up in the air, the drones have to come down. Low flying planes are used to take photography for damage assessments to see where resources should be sent, as well as being used occasionally to deliver supplies, so they’re an important part of response and shouldn’t be interfered with (unless you’re in an adversarial environment).

Rule of thumb

If there is a SERIOUS safety issue, like a hazardous spill, if you cannot cover the entire area from view while holding up your thumb, you are too close.

Where and how your formal sector colleagues can talk with you

Formal entities can (and should!) be held accountable for decisions they make and actions they take. This means all communication has to be audit-able, which means they can’t talk to you on something like Signal. Their systems are also often locked down so they can’t install the latest and greatest new collaboration tool. Being willing to join them where they’re at (if they can get you an account) and/or to find new third places is a key component to opening up communication.

Interested in helping out?

Interested? Here’s a form to fill out to indicate interest! I’d love to see responses in by July 22nd. When estimating, please be kind to yourself, but while I’m making Bay Area money (NOT software engineer money), I also have a kid and stuff. I have worked as a contracting artist before and will limit myself to 2 revision rounds on each thing. You will absolutely be credited in the zine. You’re welcome to reach out to willow dot be el zero zero at gmail if you have any questions or want to see how progress is going.

Where the Internet went Wrong

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The Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society had its 25 year reunion this past week. I spent two years with BKC, one as an affiliate and one as a fellow. Between that and being at the Center for Civic Media, I had some of the most stimulating years of my life to date. My understanding of the world and my place in it transformed to something more nuanced but also more powerful. And while I’ve lost touch with some of the folks, many of us still talk.

At the reunion, things were generally framed as past, present, future; with the breakout groups and lunch convenings I loved in my time there. The main thread that came out through most of the conversations, was “what did we get wrong?” Or perhaps in our more gracious moments, “what have we learned?” In that context, there were a few recurring themes in the circles I ran in for the 2 days of the conference:

  • Defending free speech and exclusion of regulating speech didn’t land us where we expected
  • Lack of intersectionality and limiting who has a seat at the table has constrained what we can learn and do
  • Influence in law and regulation not transferring sufficiently to market forces left us with blind spots.
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The expression of anger

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One of my characteristics I’m most proud of is how even-keeled I am. It served me well in disaster response, it’s served me well in interpersonal dynamics, it’s served me well at work. But it wasn’t always the case – I was a very angry child, and I’ve had to actively learn to be calm through self-discipline, meditation, and empathy.

I had good examples in this – I have never heard either of my parents so much as raise their voices. The only slammed doors in the house were from my brother or me being angry, and then getting grounded for it. We are good Midwestern quiet people.

However, now, when I get angry, I immediately shift into must-win-at-all-costs-including-being-mean mode. I may be quiet, but I can be a cutting jerk.

I don’t trust a relationship until I’ve been in a disagreement with the person. How people navigate a misunderstanding or difficulty, and whether or not they can fight fair with each other, is vital to me knowing if a relationship is sustainable or not. So when Reed and I had our first disagreement, it was interesting. He is a big dude, and he emotes a LOT. (This is one of the many reasons why I love him – he cannot hide how he is actually doing, so I have no anxiety about anticipating what’s going on with him.) This didn’t scare me, as I can handle myself physically (he would never actually hurt anyone, but it can still be scary to have a big human waving their arms with a raised voice). And when I got mean, he responded with “do you really mean that?” which I didn’t. So we enable the other person to fight fair with us. It works out well.

But as our relationship continued on, I started to judge Reed more for his expression of anger. He would slam doors, yell (not at me or anyone else), and stomp. It seemed like a loss of control to me. Initially, I thought it was just the price of admission and I could deal with it. But when we had a kid, I didn’t want the behavior modeled. In talking about it, Reed also didn’t want the holding in of anger (and just getting mean instead) to be modeled for Locke. So we had to figure something out.

In talking to my therapist, friends, and Reed more, the consensus has been that expressing anger, so long as it isn’t directed at someone, is actually healthy. My Midwestern sensibilities are shook.

So for Reed, we have a ranked list of things that are always ok to do, things that are on me to try to work on being ok with, things that should really be avoided, and things that are never ok. He’s done a good job of adhering to the list, and now instead of responding to him expressing anger with “please stop doing that,” I say something like “thank you for picking from the top of the list.” For me, I’m working on muttering angry things when no one can hear, and writing angry emails but not sending them. We’re both making progress at meeting each other.

It still feels like a loss of control, but also just being quiet jerk when I’m angry isn’t a reasonable reaction, either. Eager to hear more thoughts on this topic if anyone has them.