If you have a Ring camera, you're working with ICE.

Make whatever decision you think is right, but make it an informed one.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/16/amazons-ring-to-partner-with-flock-a-network-of-ai-cameras-used-by-ice-feds-and-police/

I lost a friend over my article about the murder of Renee Nicole Good.

He was angry I called out the underlying misogyny.

He was mad I didn’t give ICE the benefit of the doubt.

He made it personal.

He told me my “stupid clown hair” is why people don’t take me seriously

Everything he said to me was dripping with disdain and misogyny.

There was no debate.

There was no respectful disagreement.

In under five minutes he had attacked my intelligence, my politics, my appearance and my writing.

This is not normal behaviour.

He literally proved my point.

Had I taken the bait I’m convinced that I would have been called a “f*cking b*tch” by the end of the conversation.

This is what MAGA is doing to men.

It’s emboldening them.

It’s validating their bigotry.

I assume this person was always hateful and misogynistic on some level … but now he no longer feels he has to hide it.

He literally said as much.

He said “I never told you in the past because I wasn’t allowed. Now I am.”

Why is he allowed to tell me now??

Why does he feel justified in lashing out with rage and insults over something that has nothing to do with him?

It’s because of what happened to Renee Nicole Good.

We all watched a woman get shot in broad daylight and there’s been zero consequences

We’ve watched rapists, pedophiles and abusers go free for years.

Every woman who’s ever experienced abuse knew exactly what Jonathan Ross meant when he said “f*cking b*tch”

He didn’t fear for his life.

He was enraged she didn’t fear for hers.

My friend was enraged I dare speak out for a “lesbian leftist”.

He was enraged I didn’t remain silent, complicit and demure.

He was apparently also enraged I didn’t realize he hated my hair and change it to please him.

Make no mistake, there is a war against women going on.

This regime wants to make us “less than”.

They want us afraid.

They want us in the home serving our husbands and having children.

They want us seen and not heard.

They don’t want us resisting.

Which is why we must keep speaking out.

We must refuse to go back.

My life is better off without this person in it, and thankfully I can walk away.

Not everyone can.

Speak up if you see someone being hurt.

Protect your friends and neighbours.

Challenge misogynistic talking points.

Demand justice for Renee Nicole Good.

Don’t cower. Don’t be afraid. Don’t give up.

#reneenicolegood #abolishice #uspol #fascism #ableism #misogyny

#Vale Wes Smith ❤️‍🩹

my 90 year-old dad died last night after a very long life, a long decline, multiple hospitalisations, and the last couple of months spent in hospital & a repat facility

lots of complex feelings for me, but I’m glad he no longer needs to struggle in difficult circumstances (largely of his own creation, but still ❤️‍🩹)

when he was young, he travelled the world in the Merchant Navy in the loud, hot bellies of large cargo ships amongst the enormous engines with pistons several times taller than himself. he only spent a short time in each port – a tasting menu, you might say – but he felt that he had seen the entire world by the time he got married

he worked many jobs in his long career, most of them spent bending metal to his will, often shaping machines into new forms to perform tasks for which they were never originally designed. he worked long hours to provide financially for his family – which he saw as his main duty in life – but also because he loved working with machines & solving engineering problems born of metal. grease. electricity.

he was a fitter & turner, a boiler-maker, a repairer & maintainer, a “keeper-runnerer”, a tinkerer. he used tools to design & make other tools to make machines. I’m sure that some of my own interests & skills were influenced by growing up watching him execute his craft, hearing him talk about his work, & being dragged along to yet another industrial robot exhibition 😩😜

he was a life-long learner, and my own love of 🤔 – or at least facility with – computers & electronics & code (oh my!) were things he saw (and understood) and supported. in the late 1970s or very early 1980s he took a programming course (which was the spelling at the time 😜) at the local TAFE, and he took me along – a rare opportunity in that era. my first hands-on experience with code at 11 or 12 years old was in the form of mapping out & writing programmes down by hand on graph paper & then encoding them on a stack of mark sense cards with a B2 pencil to be fed into a card reader (and drawing that all-important diagonal line down the side of the stack with said pencil – #IYKYK 😆)

it wasn’t long until I had begged sufficiently & got my very first computer (that we absolutely couldn’t really afford), a #CoCo – the original #TRS80 #ColorComputer model in “battleship grey” with 16K RAM 😲, later upgraded to a whopping 64K 🤯 🤯

I still have that computer over 40 years later 😊

after he retired, he always had several ambitious plans on the boil (less charitable folks might call them “hare-brained schemes” 🙃), including a petrol-powered all-terrain tracked wheelchair for a friend who wanted to be able to travel off the beaten path under his own (metaphorical) steam. it would have ended up weighing about a tonne & absolutely would never have worked (safely), but he was determined to “help” a friend & excited to work on solving an interesting engineering challenge, once again bending metal and machinery to his purpose du jour

he was happiest noodling in his workshop, oil- & grease-stained hands deep inside a machine, wielding – or welding – a new tool of his own design. I always associated the smell of machines and ozone with his presence. until after he retired I never saw his hands unstained by years of ingrained, immovable grease

in his later years he discovered #3Dprinting and became a journeyman #maker of sorts. he was exceptionally proud (and a bit obnoxious) when he was able to “teach the professionals at #U3A a thing or two” about his new hobby. his idea of a conversation had always been (impatiently) waiting for you to take a breath so he could tell you the next thing he was interested in – usually unconnected to whatever you’d shared 💁‍♀️

he used a succession of smallish 3D printers to make many, many Japanese-inspired lanterns (into which he stuffed various strings of coloured flashing lights) and Chinese-inspired dragons, amazed & delighted that additive manufacturing was able to create interlocking objects right off the print bed – after having spent a lifetime creating sometimes-intricate interlocking components using tried-and-true subtractive manufacturing processes. he gave most of these prints away to others – whether they wanted them or not 😆

he was a fitter & turner, a boiler-maker, a repairer & maintainer, a “keeper-runnerer”, a tinkerer

and he was my father

#Vale Wes Smith ❤️‍🩹
1935-2025

#GNUWesSmith
#XClacksOverhead