Greetings and good morning. I’m writing this on my bus first thing before I even check overnight twitter. I have no idea who won what last night and I feel good about my decision to put off reading analysis for as long as possible.

Pinboard

I signed up for Pinboard yesterday as a way to collect links I find during the day. It’s $11/year and I feel like I’ve heard good stuff about the guy that runs it? But I don’t know him to say for sure.

The fun thing about life in the 21st century is that that I can count on one hand the number of dudes that I can unflinchingly vouch for and the rest are all a question mark. I’m not saying that there’s ONLY five good dudes (or women, for that matter, because they’ve disappointed me too) in the professional spheres I inhabit. I’m saying I’ve been taken by surprise way too often to trust anyone any more.

I mean, once Larry freakin Lessig writes an op-ed saying “actually taking money from sex traffickers is fine” what is there left to believe in?

There’s a free speech lawyer dude - who I’m not naming not because I don’t want to show up in his google alerts but because I legitimately can’t remember his name at 6:30 am - but he has some deeply held hatred against women. He gleefully recounts his free speech battles in law school where he’s still (in the 21st century) referring to the head of the women’s law student group by mysogynistic slurs. And dudes I used to respect (and a lot I’ve always known are trash) are like “he’s great!” I’m pro-free speech but maybe we should elevate the defenders that don’t hate women. Just a thought.

That was a long digression but anyway Pinboard is cool, possibly the owners is too.

More Lady Business

Female Legal Tech founders aren’t getting invested in. I wish I could say I was surprised.

Atrium Closes Down

I don’t care.

Seriously, I saw the news right before I fell asleep, shrugged and turned out the light.

A megarich dude (who is a billionaire partly because of work and creativity but also because of sheer luck), who only experienced the legal world as a client, decided to “disrupt the legal industry” and opened a hybrid shop that served a really niche client base, got more money and press than I’ll ever see in my life to do it, and gave up after a few years. And I’m supposed to feel how about this? And we’re supposed to extrapolate what about the legal world?

New PACER Bill

I have a almost Pavlovian response that when someone mentions PACER, I immediately yell “PACER SUCKS.” This is especially bad for my professional existence when the person saying it is a federal judge. Hypothetically. <cough>

There’s some new legislation coming that may help some of the issues, although most things (except lifetime judicial appointments to 35 year old Federalist Society members) are dying in the Senate, so we’ll see.

Conference Updates

Law via the Internet just announced their call for papers. I’m still really hoping to go, but I also think I might need a new roof, sooo…

SubTech, which I definitely am going to, did bunch of website updates and got their slack channel going. Again, it’s invite only but you should definitely ask to go.

Open Access Saves Lives

My maternal grandma’s parents died in the 1918 influenza epidemic. As a result, my grandma’s was raised by her non English speaking grandparents and basically there are trickledown effects that I feel in my life today, 102 years later. So maybe that’s why I feel so strongly about COVID-19?

Anyway, I saw column that maybe this is a good time to advocate for OA scientific knowledge. Access to information is a human right and will save lives. But also let’s not forget that there are going to be real lives destroyed in this coming pandemic so watch how you say things.

Speaking of COVID-19, Everylibrary has a good resource guide.

Moving from Plague to Natural Disasters…

Growing up on a farm, my life revolved around the weather. So I’m always a little surprised that people don’t have things like weather radios. Severe weather is only going to get worse as climate change progresses. My second favorite WGN meteorologist has this to say.

She recommends this one.

Halfway through the week. We can do this!