You have never walked anonymously. You may have believed otherwise, pulling a hood over your head or choosing the busy side of the street, but the truth has been catching up for years. The way you shift your weight from one foot to the other, the cadence of your stride, the particular rhythm of your fingers on a keyboard, even the micro-fluctuations in your voice when you order a coffee: all of these patterns are, increasingly, as identifiable as your fingerprint. And unlike your fingerprint, you leave them everywhere, involuntarily, continuously, without ever pressing your thumb to glass.

Artificial intelligence systems can now identify individuals through subtle behavioural patterns and voice characteristics with startling accuracy. Gait recognition software deployed on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai can pick you out of a crowd from 50 metres away, even with your back turned and your face completely covered. Voice biometric systems in banking can authenticate your identity from a few seconds of speech. Wi-Fi signals bouncing off your body as you walk through a room can betray your identity through walls. The question is no longer whether these technologies work. It is what their proliferation means for the very concept of being unknown in a public space, and whether truly private human interaction remains possible in an age of pervasive, ambient identification.

The Expanding Biometric Frontier Beyond the Face

For over a decade, the surveillance debate has centred on facial recognition. Cities have banned it. Activists have marched against it. Researchers like Joy Buolamwini at the MIT Media Lab have exposed its profound racial biases, demonstrating through her landmark 2018 Gender Shades study that commercial facial analysis systems from IBM, Microsoft, and Face++ misclassified darker-skinned women at rates as high as 47 per cent while achieving error rates below 1 per cent for lighter-skinned men. Her work, co-authored with Timnit Gebru, catalysed a reckoning that led every audited US-based company to stop selling facial recognition technology to law enforcement by 2020.

But while the world was arguing about faces, a quieter revolution was unfolding. Behavioural biometrics, the science of identifying people through how they move, type, speak, and interact with the physical world, has advanced rapidly and without the same degree of public scrutiny. Unlike facial recognition, which requires a camera pointed at your face, behavioural biometrics can operate at a distance, through obstacles, and without the subject's knowledge or cooperation. This makes it, in many respects, a far more consequential threat to anonymity than the technology that has dominated headlines.

The gait biometrics market was valued at USD 1.25 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 3.41 billion by 2032, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 13.38 per cent. Security agencies accounted for roughly 44 per cent of that market in 2024, with Asia-Pacific expected to see the fastest growth at 15.15 per cent annually through 2032. These are not speculative projections from fringe analysts; they reflect sustained investment by governments and corporations in technologies that identify you not by what you look like, but by what you do.

Gait Recognition Comes of Age

The idea that every person walks differently is not new. Forensic investigators have long known that gait is distinctive. What is new is the ability of AI systems to extract that distinctiveness from ordinary surveillance footage and match it against databases at scale.

The Chinese AI company Watrix, incubated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has developed gait recognition software that extracts a person's silhouette from video and analyses its movement to create a model of how that person walks. According to Watrix CEO Huang Yongzhen, the technology has been trialled by police in Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing, and a pilot system operates in Hubei and Guangdong provinces. The system can identify individuals from up to 50 metres away, from any angle, even when faces are covered and in darkness. “With facial recognition people need to look into a camera,” Huang told the South China Morning Post. “Cooperation is not needed for them to be recognised by our technology.”

The accuracy Watrix claims is striking: up to 96 per cent. The company, which was inspired by a US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) study, has been in discussions with security firms in Singapore, India, Russia, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. Security officials in China's Xinjiang province, where the Uyghur Muslim population faces intense surveillance, have also expressed interest. The technology is not merely supplementary to existing surveillance; it fills the gaps that facial recognition cannot reach. It operates in conditions where faces are obscured, where lighting is poor, and where subjects are unaware they are being watched. Every person's posture, Huang has stated, is unique, like a fingerprint, and gait recognition is capable of identifying targets from any angle.

Nor is Watrix alone. In September 2024, NEC Corporation launched a gateless biometric authentication system capable of authenticating 100 people per minute while they are in motion. The system, initially deployed at NEC's Tokyo headquarters in July 2024, combines face recognition with gait-based matching technology to identify individuals in crowded areas without requiring them to stop or present credentials. NEC, which has been ranked first in face recognition benchmark tests by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology since 2009, has deployed its biometric technology in more than 50 countries and across 80 airports globally. The new system is being offered in Japan, the United States, and Singapore, and uses deep learning to re-identify tracked individuals even after they pass behind obstructions or through dense crowds.

The Voice That Gives You Away

Your voice is another behavioural signature that AI systems are learning to read with uncomfortable precision. Voice biometrics analyse characteristics including pitch, tone, cadence, and the physical properties of your vocal tract to create a unique voiceprint. Financial institutions have been early adopters: customers can authenticate transactions simply by speaking. The technology is marketed as frictionless and secure, a way to eliminate passwords and PINs. But a voiceprint, once captured, is not a password. It cannot be changed if compromised. And the infrastructure for capturing voice data is already ubiquitous: every smartphone, every smart speaker, every customer service line.

But the same technology that verifies your identity can also compromise it. Voice recordings are biometric identifiers as sensitive as fingerprints or retinal scans, yet they can be captured from a distance, harvested from voicemail messages, or scraped from social media posts. According to the 2024 Javelin Identity Fraud Study, American consumers lost more than USD 47 billion to identity fraud that year, with AI-generated synthetic identity fraud and voice cloning driving much of that figure. A survey by BioCatch found that 91 per cent of US banks are reconsidering voice biometric authentication due to AI cloning risks.

The threat is not theoretical. In April 2025, Hong Kong police dismantled a deepfake scam ring that used AI-generated video and cloned voice attacks to open accounts at HSBC, resulting in losses exceeding HK 1.5 billion, approximately USD 193.2 million. The UK government has published a briefing note on the ethical issues arising from public sector use of biometric voice recognition technology, acknowledging the tensions between convenience, security, and privacy. Some institutions store biometric voice templates indefinitely or share them with third-party vendors for AI training purposes, often without the knowledge of the individuals whose voices are on file.

The US Department of Justice has affirmed a broad definition of biometric identifiers that encompasses facial images, voiceprints and patterns, retina and iris scans, palm and fingerprints, and behavioural data such as gait and keyboard usage patterns. This definitional expansion matters because it signals that regulators are beginning to recognise what technologists have known for some time: the body is a broadcasting device, and everything it broadcasts can be recorded, analysed, and matched to an identity.

The Invisible Biometric Layer

Beyond gait and voice, there exists an entire category of behavioural biometrics that most people never consider. Keystroke dynamics, the study of how you type, can identify individuals based on the timing between key presses, the duration for which each key is held, and the rhythm of your overall typing pattern. These measurements, captured at millisecond precision, create a biometric template that is unique to each person and extremely difficult to replicate.

Research published in Discover Applied Sciences in 2025 highlights that keystroke dynamics can be used for continuous, real-time authentication, with any deviation from established typing patterns triggering an alert for possible unauthorised access. A 2024 study published in Sensors demonstrated that deep learning architectures combining convolutional and recurrent neural networks achieve high effectiveness in identifying users based on typing patterns. Forensic applications are also emerging: regardless of the number of machines a person uses, their typing pattern persists, making keystroke dynamics a potential tool for identifying anonymous online activity.

The transparency of this technology is part of what makes it so consequential. Keystroke dynamics require no specialised hardware. They operate via backend software implementation, and in most cases users are entirely unaware they are being profiled. This passive, invisible collection of behavioural data represents a fundamentally different kind of surveillance from a camera on a pole or a guard at a door. It is ambient, continuous, and nearly impossible to evade. Research from MDPI in 2023 also found that keystroke authentication is influenced by the language being typed, meaning bilingual users produce distinct profiles for each language, further enriching the data available for identification.

Wi-Fi Signals as a Surveillance Medium

Perhaps the most unsettling frontier in behavioural identification is the use of ordinary Wi-Fi signals to detect, track, and identify people. Wi-Fi sensing exploits the way radio signals interact with human bodies: as you move through a space, you cause reflections, refractions, and attenuations in the Wi-Fi signal, and these disturbances encode information about your body shape, movement patterns, and activities.

A comprehensive 2024 survey published in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks documents how researchers have used Channel State Information from Wi-Fi signals to identify individuals based on their unique gait patterns, achieving accuracy rates above 90 per cent. Unlike camera-based systems, Wi-Fi sensing works through walls, in complete darkness, and without requiring any device to be carried by the subject. The technology leverages existing infrastructure, requiring only standard Wi-Fi access points and receiving devices.

Research published in Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence demonstrated human activity recognition through walls using deep learning models applied to Wi-Fi CSI data. The PA-CSI model, which combines phase and amplitude analysis with attention mechanisms, has achieved accuracy rates of up to 99.9 per cent on benchmark datasets. A specialised system called WiFind can detect, localise, and estimate body pose through walls, debris, and smoke, using nodes costing under USD 150 each.

The implications are stark. A person walking through a building equipped with standard Wi-Fi infrastructure could, in principle, be continuously tracked and identified without any visible surveillance equipment, without their knowledge, and without any possibility of covering their face or altering their appearance to avoid detection. Wi-Fi technology has evolved from its initial 802.11 standard to Wi-Fi 6 and the anticipated Wi-Fi 7, with each generation improving the resolution and sensitivity of sensing capabilities. The physical world is becoming readable in ways that were previously confined to science fiction.

Regulation Struggles to Keep Pace

The regulatory response to behavioural biometric surveillance has been fragmented and reactive, consistently trailing the technology it seeks to govern. The most significant legislative development has been the European Union's AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689), which entered into force on 1 August 2024 and began enforcing prohibitions on certain AI systems from 2 February 2025.

Article 5 of the AI Act prohibits real-time remote biometric identification systems in publicly accessible spaces for law enforcement, with limited exceptions. It bans AI systems that scrape facial images from the internet or CCTV footage, and prohibits biometric categorisation systems that deduce race, political opinions, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation from biometric data. Violations carry fines of up to 35 million euros or 7 per cent of global annual turnover, whichever is higher.

Yet the Act contains significant exceptions for law enforcement, allowing real-time biometric identification for targeted searches of victims of abduction or trafficking, prevention of imminent threats, and prosecution of serious crimes, all subject to judicial authorisation. These carve-outs have drawn criticism from organisations like European Digital Rights (EDRi), which argues they may legitimise the very practices the Act purports to ban. As a Stanford Law School analysis noted, despite omitting an outright ban on facial recognition in publicly accessible spaces, the AI Act will probably show its full potential in the years after its entry into force.

In the United States, Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act remains the strongest state-level protection, granting individuals a private right of action and statutory damages of USD 1,000 per negligent violation and USD 5,000 per intentional violation. BIPA class action settlements totalled more than USD 206 million in 2024, including the landmark Clearview AI settlement in which class members received a 23 per cent equity stake in the company, valued at approximately USD 51.75 million. In August 2024, Illinois amended BIPA to limit damages to one violation per person regardless of how many times data was collected, a change that contributed to a sharp decline in new filings. Clearview AI itself had amassed a database of more than 60 billion facial images scraped from social media platforms, news websites, and other publicly accessible online sources, prompting the wave of litigation.

San Francisco became the first US city to ban government use of facial recognition in May 2019, with Supervisor Aaron Peskin declaring, “We all support good policing but none of us want to live in a police state.” Yet even this landmark ordinance had limits: it carved out exceptions for federal facilities and did not apply to private businesses. Moreover, in the five years since the ban, San Francisco police admitted to circumventing it on six separate occasions.

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office launched its AI and biometrics strategy in June 2025, focusing on situations where risks are highest and public concern is clearest. The ICO plans to set a high threshold of lawfulness for AI systems that infer subjective traits, intentions, or emotions based on physical or behavioural characteristics. Public polling cited in the strategy found that 54 per cent of UK adults have concerns about facial recognition technology impacting civil liberties, and that concern about AI use for welfare eligibility has risen from 44 per cent to 59 per cent between 2022 and 2025.

When the Wrong Person Gets Caught

The dangers of these systems are not abstract. In January 2020, Robert Williams, a Black man living in Farmington Hills, Michigan, was arrested outside his home in front of his wife and two young daughters by Detroit police. He was detained for thirty hours in an overcrowded, dirty cell. The arrest was based on a facial recognition match from a blurry surveillance image of a shoplifting suspect at a Shinola store in Detroit. Williams was actually the ninth-best match in the system's results, and detectives had not investigated his whereabouts before making the arrest.

Williams' case, brought to public attention by the ACLU and the University of Michigan Law School's Civil Rights Litigation Initiative, became the first publicly reported instance of a false facial recognition match leading to a wrongful arrest. On 28 June 2024, the parties reached a groundbreaking settlement that established the nation's strongest police department policies constraining law enforcement's use of facial recognition, including a prohibition on arrests based solely on facial recognition results and mandatory training on the technology's risks and its higher misidentification rates for people of colour.

Williams' case was one of three known wrongful arrests in Detroit where police relied on facial recognition technology. All three individuals wrongfully arrested were Black. This pattern underscores the findings of Buolamwini's Gender Shades study and raises a critical question about behavioural biometrics more broadly: if the training data and deployment contexts of gait recognition, voice identification, and other behavioural systems reproduce the same biases, the consequences for marginalised communities could be severe. The Pew Research Center found in a 2022 survey that 28 per cent of Black adults said police would definitely make more false arrests if facial recognition were widely adopted, compared with just 11 per cent of white adults.

Surveillance and the Death of Free Assembly

The surveillance theorist and Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff has described surveillance capitalism as “the unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data.” Her framework, articulated in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019), identifies a fundamental shift in which human experiences are extracted, computed, and sold as prediction products. “We are not surveillance capitalism's 'customers,'” Zuboff writes. “We are the sources of surveillance capitalism's crucial surplus.”

When behavioural identification systems operate in public spaces, they do not merely observe; they transform public space itself. Research consistently demonstrates that surveillance produces measurable “chilling effects” on freedom of expression, assembly, and political participation. A qualitative study published in the Journal of Human Rights Practice (Oxford Academic) documented, through interviews with 44 participants in Uganda and Zimbabwe, how the fear of surveillance undermines trust and interpersonal relationships, creating spirals of paranoia and mistrust that directly affect the right to freedom of assembly.

These findings extend well beyond authoritarian contexts. In the United States, the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration found in a survey of 41,000 households that one in five Americans avoided online activity because of concerns about government data collection. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has highlighted studies showing that government surveillance discourages both speech and access to information on the internet. When people know they are being watched, they change what they say, where they go, and whom they associate with. The extension of these chilling effects from the digital to the physical realm, through gait recognition cameras, voice identification microphones, and Wi-Fi sensing systems, represents a qualitative escalation.

Amnesty International's Ban the Scan campaign, launched in 2021, has mapped the surveillance landscape of New York City, documenting more than 25,500 CCTV cameras across the city and revealing that the NYPD used facial recognition technology in 22,000 cases since 2017. The campaign found that the most surveilled neighbourhood across three boroughs was an area in Brooklyn with a population comprising 54.4 per cent Black residents, underscoring the racialised geography of surveillance infrastructure. Amnesty further documented how facial recognition was used at Black Lives Matter protest sites in 2020 to identify, track, and harass people exercising their rights to peaceful assembly.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is preparing a thematic report, expected at the 62nd session of the Human Rights Council, analysing the impact of digital and AI-assisted surveillance on assembly and association rights, including chilling effects. A 2025 study in Big Data and Society, examining Extinction Rebellion protests in The Hague, revealed that surveillance technology produces effects beyond traditional chilling, including what researchers termed “hyper-transparency” and “hyper-alertness” among both protesters and police.

The Rise of Anti-Surveillance Fashion

The proliferation of behavioural identification systems has given rise to a counter-movement that sounds like it belongs in a cyberpunk novel but is entirely real: adversarial fashion. These are garments, accessories, and cosmetic techniques designed to confuse, disrupt, or defeat AI surveillance systems.

Artist and researcher Adam Harvey pioneered this field with his CV Dazzle project in 2010, which used cubist-inspired makeup patterns to defeat facial detection algorithms. The technique, named after the dazzle camouflage developed by British painter Norman Wilkinson for Allied ships during the First World War, works by obscuring key facial features until recognition systems can no longer detect a human face. Harvey followed this with HyperFace in 2016, which takes the opposite approach: rather than hiding faces, it floods the environment with false face-like patterns printed on fabric, exploiting algorithms' preference for the highest-confidence facial region.

More recently, the Italian company Cap_able has developed a patented process that algorithmically generates adversarial patterns, translating them into knitted garments that retail between USD 300 and USD 600. These garments combine visual adversarial patterns with infrared protection, aiming to disrupt both optical and thermal surveillance. Researchers have also published work on thermally activated dual-modal adversarial clothing that can defeat both visible-light cameras and infrared sensors simultaneously.

However, as technologist Adam Harvey himself has cautioned, “Camouflage, in general, should be considered temporary, but especially technical camouflage that targets quickly evolving algorithms.” The arms race between surveillance systems and countermeasures is inherently asymmetric: updating a neural network is cheaper and faster than redesigning a wardrobe. Moreover, the very act of wearing obviously adversarial clothing in a public space draws human attention, potentially marking the wearer as suspicious even as it confuses the machines.

The video surveillance industry, enhanced by AI, is projected to grow from USD 3.90 billion in 2024 to USD 12.46 billion by 2030, according to market research. Against this scale of investment, adversarial fashion remains a niche countermeasure, meaningful as a statement of resistance but limited as a practical solution to the erosion of anonymity.

Europe's Border Experiment in Behavioural Biometrics

While much of the debate about behavioural biometrics focuses on domestic surveillance, the technology is also reshaping the boundaries of national security and border control. The European Union's PopEye project, funded through a Horizon Europe grant of 3.2 million euros, represents a significant step towards integrating gait recognition into border security infrastructure.

PopEye, an acronym for “robust Privacy-preserving biOmetric technologies for Passengers' identification and verification at EU external borders maximising the accuracY, reliability and throughput of the rEcognition,” aims to identify individuals on the move, at distances of up to 200 metres, without requiring them to stop. The project combines gait recognition with 3D facial recognition, addressing the limitations of each technology when used in isolation.

The project follows a 2021 Frontex study that examined gait recognition in depth, suggesting that video, radar, and floor sensors could be used to identify people by how they walk. Led by the European Association for Biometrics, PopEye involves partners including the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Idiap Research Institute, KU Leuven, and Vrije Universiteit Brussel, among others. Pilot programmes are being conducted at the external borders of Romania and Finland, with the Finnish Ministry of Interior and Romanian Border Authorities serving as key participants.

The project's emphasis on privacy preservation and compliance with the EU's AI Act and GDPR reflects an awareness that the technology it develops operates in a sensitive legal and ethical space. Researchers from VUB and KU Leuven are leading efforts on integrated impact assessments to safeguard human rights and data protection. Yet the fundamental tension remains: a system designed to identify people at a distance, without their cooperation, is inherently a surveillance technology, regardless of the procedural safeguards that surround it.

The Economics of Knowing Who You Are

The security technologist Bruce Schneier, a fellow and lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School and board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has written extensively about the economics of surveillance and the asymmetries of power it creates. “It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state,” Schneier has warned. He has illustrated the collapsing cost of surveillance with a telling comparison: covert human surveillance of an individual costs approximately USD 175,000 per month, while obtaining location information from a mobile provider costs as little as USD 30 per month.

Behavioural biometrics push this economic logic further still. Gait recognition can operate using existing CCTV infrastructure. Keystroke dynamics require only software. Wi-Fi sensing leverages networks that are already installed in virtually every commercial and institutional building. The marginal cost of identifying one additional person approaches zero, which means the economic incentive to deploy these systems is enormous and the barriers to mass deployment are vanishingly small.

This economic reality creates what Schneier has called an alliance of interests between corporate and government surveillance. Corporations collect behavioural data for authentication, fraud prevention, and customer profiling. Governments seek the same data for security, immigration enforcement, and law enforcement. The data collected for one purpose inevitably becomes available for others, a phenomenon that privacy advocates call “function creep.” The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has already issued guidance stating that biometric information, including keystroke frequency and behavioural monitoring, used in employment decisions must comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Zuboff's analysis cuts deeper. She argues that “the power to predict human behaviour is the power to modify human behaviour, and this is what surveillance capitalism is all about.” When every public interaction can be linked to a known identity through behavioural patterns, the entire notion of a public sphere where individuals can move, speak, and associate without being tracked becomes an anachronism. The right to privacy, she insists, is not merely about data protection; it is about the conditions necessary for human autonomy: “what should become data in the first place, that is where the line has to be drawn.”

What Remains of Anonymity

The question this article set out to address, what does the rise of AI behavioural recognition mean for anonymity in public spaces, has a disquieting answer. The technological trajectory is clear: identification systems are becoming cheaper, more accurate, more pervasive, and harder to evade. They are moving beyond the face into the body's every motion and utterance. They work through walls, in darkness, and across distances that make consent meaningless.

The regulatory response, while significant in certain jurisdictions, remains fragmented and reactive. The EU's AI Act represents the most comprehensive attempt at governance, but its exceptions for law enforcement create significant loopholes. BIPA has produced substantial financial penalties in the United States, but it is a single state's law, and its recent amendments have blunted its deterrent effect. The UK's ICO strategy is still in its early stages. Globally, there is no coherent framework for governing technologies that can identify people from their walk, their voice, or the way they type.

What is at stake is not merely a technical question about privacy settings or data policies. It is a question about the kind of society that emerges when public spaces become zones of continuous, ambient identification. Research on the chilling effects of surveillance demonstrates that when people believe they are being watched, they modify their behaviour, self-censor their speech, and withdraw from political participation. The extension of surveillance from visible cameras to invisible behavioural identification systems does not reduce this effect; it amplifies it, because there is no way to know when you are and are not being observed.

Truly private human interaction in public spaces, a conversation with a stranger that no system records, a protest march where participants cannot be individually identified, a walk through a city where your movements are not logged and matched against a database, is becoming technologically impossible. This does not mean it will vanish entirely; enforcement gaps, technical limitations, and deliberate resistance will preserve pockets of anonymity. But the default condition of public life is shifting, from one where anonymity was assumed to one where identification is the norm.

The technologies being installed today will outlast the political conditions under which they were deployed. Gait recognition cameras placed for counter-terrorism will not be removed when the threat recedes. Voice identification systems built for banking will not be dismantled when fraud declines. Wi-Fi sensing capabilities embedded in building infrastructure will persist indefinitely. The question is not whether these technologies will be misused, but when, by whom, and with what consequences for the freedoms that depend on the ability to move through the world unrecognised.

Bruce Schneier put it plainly: “Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.” In a world where your walk, your voice, and your keystrokes are all that stand between you and identification, that protection is being quietly, systematically, irreversibly eroded.

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References and Sources

1. Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru. “Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification.” Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, Vol. 81, 2018. http://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a/buolamwini18a.pdf

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6. Stanford Law School. “No. 91: EU Artificial Intelligence Act: Regulating the Use of Facial Recognition Technologies in Publicly Accessible Spaces.” https://law.stanford.edu/publications/no-91-eu-artificial-intelligence-act-regulating-the-use-of-facial-recognition-technologies-in-publicly-accessible-spaces/

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11. ACLU. “Williams v. City of Detroit.” https://www.aclu.org/cases/williams-v-city-of-detroit-face-recognition-false-arrest

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20. MDPI/Applied Sciences. “Authentication by Keystroke Dynamics: The Influence of Typing Language.” 2023. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/13/20/11478

21. Bruce Schneier. “The Eternal Value of Privacy.” Schneier on Security, May 2006. https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2006/05/theeternalvalue_of.html

22. Biometric Update. “PopEye to strengthen EU border biometrics with gait recognition integration.” October 2024. https://www.biometricupdate.com/202410/popeye-to-strengthen-eu-border-biometrics-with-gait-recognition-integration

23. Mozilla Foundation. “How to Disappear: The Rise of Anti-Surveillance Fashion.” https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/nothing-personal/anti-surveillance-fashion-privacy-ai/

24. GOV.UK. “Briefing note on the ethical issues arising from the public sector use of biometric voice recognition technology.” https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-sector-use-of-biometric-voice-recognition-technology-ethical-issues/

25. Pew Research Center. “Public views of police use of facial recognition technology.” 17 March 2022. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/03/17/public-more-likely-to-see-facial-recognition-use-by-police-as-good-rather-than-bad-for-society/

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

CeCe is Freaky Again

#nsfw #CeCe

CeCe still had impeccable fashion sense, piecing together outfits from thrift stores and online deals that made her look polished, professional. On workdays, she'd tuck away the naked freak entirely. She dressed presentably in blouses and slacks, arriving at the tech firm with calculated efficiency, her brilliant mind dissecting code and prototypes like it was child's play. Despite lacking a degree, her raw talent shone through; promotions came steadily, compensation rising with each one. It was all she had outside our bubble. This was her anchor to stability, so she fought for it tooth and nail. She masked her obsessions behind spreadsheets and meetings, never letting a hint of her porn-fueled world slip.

What no one knew. Her bosses praised her for her dedication to the company.

Her daily transformation to her true self started with her commute home. We were able to save our money and buy affordable cars. It was a fond memory because we picked them out for each other, not for ourselves.

As soon as she pulled out of the parking lot in her small Honda, merging into the city's evening traffic, she'd start undressing—blouse unbuttoned and tossed to the passenger seat, skirt hiked up and shimmied off, bra and panties following until she was completely bare, her curvy body reclining against the leather as she smiled to herself. The steering wheel cool against her bare breasts, the AC teasing her nipples, the thrill of potential accidents or glances from trucks beside her—it was her decompression, a private rebellion before she arrived home to me, naked and waiting.

And yes, she often got out her car wearing nothing but heels and smile carrying her clothes like it was just a normal day. I told her they will kick us out. She just responds with “We pay rent early and no one has complained.” There is no winning when CeCe wants to be naked.

CeCe had developed quite the reputation as “the naked chick,” at our apartment complex. No one ever said it to our faces. Neighbors witnessed some of her naked antics. They would see her strolling to the laundry room in the dead of night, thick thighs flexing as she carried baskets with nothing but flip-flops on, her full breasts swaying freely. Sometimes she would slip out for trash runs, her juicy ass on display under the dim hallway lights. She even took quick naked trips to the mailbox, where she'd stand exposed for a moment, sorting mail before retreating. But it was always calculated. She chose late hours, avoiding family hours when kids might be around. Folks would nod politely in the mornings, pretending they hadn't seen, but whispers floated.

Inside our apartment, our place was a shrine to her addictions: multiple screens flickering with porn tabs. Black women in exhibitionist bliss, gooning sessions that ran for hours. We had dildos and toys scattered on nightstands and shelves, lube bottles within arm's reach. I didn't mind one bit. I didn't want CeCe to feel limited, caged in by judgment. If it weren't for me and my family welcoming her into holidays and support, she'd be utterly alone, adrift in her fixations with porn her only companion.

Speaking of my family, CeCe took to them well. We started small. I took her on a Friday evening to meet my mom. At that time, we were just friends and I kept it that way. My mom is a special needs professional and was well versed in handling CeCe. My mom's name is Mimi. CeCe took to her quickly and I was glad to see that she found another safe person to add to her circle. Mom insisted that CeCe talk to her on a first name basis. That took some pressure off the formalities for her.

Over time my mom and I slowly acclimated her to the rest of the family in small doses. By the 3rd year of us living together, CeCe would breeze through family gatherings with ease. However this peace did not last long.

At gatherings, my aunt and uncle would corner me. My older cousins would watch us and judge. Some of my distant cousins were getting married and starting families.

My bold relatives would say things out of earshot from everyone. They would say things almost every time they saw me: “Tasha, why are you still living with CeCe? You're not getting any younger.” “Find a man, start a family.”

What they said stung, it wore me down but I hid it. Their assumptions about my life, about us. It was all wrong, but I didn't want to tell them. I didn't want to drag CeCe into another stressful family situation. I still have not come out to my mom yet. It was too much. So I just dealt with the comments shielding CeCe the best I could.

However, CeCe eventually overheard them during one fateful Thanksgiving dinner. They had gotten bolder over the past few gatherings and stopped being as discreet as before.

CeCe let it slide the first time, but the second time she heard it, she had enough. She came to my defense fiercely, her voice steady but edged with that calm directness that cut through bullshit. “Our life is more complicated than that,” she said openly, no shame in her tone. “If you have a problem with a lesbian couple, then maybe I don't have any family here either.”

The room went silent, tension crackling, but my mom shut it down quick—standing her ground, eyes flashing at the judging relatives. “Don't you start.” She stared daggers at the ring leaders with a paused silence. “Tasha's happy, and CeCe's family. If you can't accept that, you're the ones missing out.” It was a turning point; my mom had became our quiet advocate. She didn't even know our real status until that very moment, but she stood firm and supported us. I almost cried if it wasn't for how uneasy the moment was.

The ring leader that kept pushing me to settle down said meekly, “I didn't know.” Head down speaking softly. Her fork resting on her plate in shame.

Mom wasn't having it. She was done.

“This gathering is over. Make a plate and leave, this is not how we spend Thanksgiving together. Someone else can try again next year.” The room remained silent. She continued, her strong voice resonating off the walls. “My mother and father, the ones who bought this house would never want us fighting in our house. And if any of you have problems with Tasha and CeCe, now that you know the truth, do not come back here again. I will not stand for anyone judging my babies like this.”

With a knowing silence, my aunt and uncle quietly took their leave. My cousins took their prepared dishes home with them. If they wanted anything, mom just nodded silently. She didn't leave the dinner table. Watching everyone like a sentinel. A guardian.

CeCe just held my hand slowly rubbing my palm for comfort. I didn't make eye contact with anyone. I just looked away. I didn't want everyone to find out like this, but I guess they had to find out eventually. I wasn't embarrassed. I just didn't want CeCe to have another bad family moment. Once everyone left, I told my mom “I'm so sorry, I didn't mean for this to happen.” CeCe was the first one to respond and she gently slapped my hand.

“Shush, I'm the one that spoke up. None of this is your fault in the slightest. I just couldn't sit by and let them pick on you.”

My mom sat and observed. She looked at us differently now as if the nearly 4 years we had been living together finally started to click. “It all make sense now.” She said with a knowing fascination. There was no judgement. She was letting reality settle in.

My mom is amazing.

After that day, my mom stepped up in ways I never expected. She decided to keep family gatherings between just us from that day forward. She didn't mind. It was less work. If her siblings wanted big gatherings, they would have to step it up from now on. Just like me, she devoted her free time to nurture CeCe. She knew the events that lead us to dropping out of college and her breakdown being exposed to everyone in her dorm.

From then on, my mom poured into CeCe like she was her own daughter, inviting us over more often for quiet dinners or longer visits to her house to spend the weekends together. I was really impressed and surprised by how readily she accepted our lesbian relationship. She didn't judge, no prying questions.

She even casually suggested marriage one day, not for romance, but for the legal benefits: She spoke to me quietly, “When CeCe's ready, think about it—health insurance, taxes, all that practical stuff. Love like yours deserves protection.” I was stunned my mom was ok with that. She understood my love for CeCe stemmed from her brightness, her raw talent, her directness, and that unapologetic spirit—you couldn't help but want to support her, to shield her from a world that often misunderstood her fixations.

CeCe felt safe and comfortable around my mom in a way she never had with her own family, opening up bit by bit during those visits. Mom was the curious sort, always observant, and it didn't take long for her to notice how CeCe fidgeted in her clothes—tugging at collars, shifting uncomfortably in seats, like the fabric was an itch she couldn't scratch. One Sunday afternoon, as we sat in her living room sipping tea, Mimi leaned forward with that gentle, knowing smile. “CeCe, honey, why do you always look so uncomfortable in your clothes? Like you'd rather not be wearing them at all,” she said with a playful smirk.

CeCe froze, her eyes darting to me, but I decided to be candid. CeCe would never have broached it on her own. “Well, Mom, CeCe is basically Eve's half-sister. You can't keep clothes on the girl.”

Mimi's eyes widened in great surprise, her teacup pausing mid-sip. She set it down, a flicker of upset crossing her face. She was not angry, but looked hurt hurt. “Tasha, why on earth did it take so long for you to tell me this? I'm your mother. We both could've been supporting her all this time! It's just us ladies here after all.” She turned to CeCe, her voice softening. “If that's how you are, then be naked anytime you want in my house. I mean it. But let's talk about it, okay? I want to understand your true nature and I need to make sure I'm ready for what I'm giving permission to.”

We had a long talk that afternoon, the three of us on the couch, sunlight streaming through the windows as CeCe slowly peeled off her layers—first her sweater, then her jeans, until she sat there naked, her caramel curves relaxed for the first time that day. I made sure mom was truly prepared, probing gently: “Mom, this isn't just casual—it's extreme more than I can say right now. Are you sure you want the full story? It might change how you see things.” Mom nodded firmly, her professional instructor's empathy shining through, ready to listen without flinching.

CeCe, hesitant at first, told her most everything, her voice steady but vulnerable as she opened up. She explained why her mom got arrested—that frantic night fueled by CeCe's phone confession about loving porn and masturbation, rejecting marriage and traditional life, which sent her mom into a tailspin of control and denial. “Porn... it's everything to me now,” Her voice wavered, quivered, trembling. I held her hand and looked at her willing support telepathically. The woman was brave. She was naked in my moms house confessing her deepest secret to someone else for the first time.

“It started in college when Tasha showed me porn to help after a bad date. I was so sheltered, so shy, but it fixated me—especially videos of black women owning their bodies, exposing themselves. It's my coping mechanism, my high. I have to watch it to cum, to feel regulated.” She slowly gestured to her bare body with a tentative smile.

“I do everything like this—all the time. Laundry, cooking, even working from home. It's very extreme....” She hesitated with a sigh, letting the full gravity of her depraved mind walk into the light.

“I masturbate in public spots. I sent Tasha nudes from the college library all the time. I have done this in parks too. I know its risky, I know its very wrong, I know you are probably shocked too, but it makes me feel alive. It's who I am now.... and I understand if you want nothing to do with me anymore. I know I'm a degenerate freak that will never get therapy to fix this...I don't want to fix this.”

She sighed.. CeCe braced herself, eyes downcast, scared she'd be outcast again, unwanted like with her own family. “I think you will hate me for it,” she whispered, trembling. “That I'd be too much. So I hid the truth. I thought I could stay dressed and pretend while I'm here. You do so much for both of us. I respected your home too much to do such things like this or even talk about this without permission.”

Mom was totally unfazed. She reached out and took CeCe's hand, her expression warm and steady. She turned to me then, eyes misty but resolute. “She's precious, Tasha. Do everything you can to protect her. I see now why you bonded with her—you're her protector and her anchor. Yes, I was hoping my baby would settle down with a man, but I see why CeCe was a necessary detour and truly your calling. You are her rock. You didn't want to take that away from her. I welcome her too, because you showed her you were safe. CeCe is a brilliant and talented woman. In my profession I have talked and dealt with all kinds of unusual situations. To me, this is no different. CeCe is not harming herself. She is thriving with you. Just like you Tasha, I can overlook her 'unique' traits. She's a woman living her life without any shame or apology. I can't help but applaud that. Your secrets are safe with me. I love you both. What you just told me changes nothing.”

My mom got up and hugged the naked woman. CeCe was trembling. She was ready for the worst and instead she was shown love and understanding. CeCe broke down into hysterical crying right there, collapsing into my mom's arms, her naked body shaking with sobs that seemed to release a lifetime of pain. Tears soaking my mom's blouse.

She was so ready for things to go the other way—rejection, judgment—but instead, she found the mom she never had, accepting her fully, flaws and all. The rest of the day was spent comforting her: My mom holding her like a child, rocking gently and whispering affirmations; me stroking her back, wiping her tears, the three of us tangled in a heap on the couch. It was years of hurt, abandonment, judgment, and trauma pouring out, finally letting go because, at last, she was accepted—naked, obsessed, and unapologetically herself.

In Summary: * Listening now to women's basketball with the North Carolina Tar Heels leading the SMU Mustangs 20 to 7 in the first quarter. I plan to stay with this game until it ends, then take care of my night prayers before putting my old self to bed.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night. Details of that regimen are linked to my link tree, which is linked to my profile page here.

Health Metrics: * bw= 225.53 lbs. * bp= 145/86 (65)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 05:30 – 1 peanut butter sandwich * 06:30 – 1 Sonic cheeseburger * 08:15 – 2 crispy oatmeal cookies * 09:20 – beef chop suey * 09:50 – enchiladas * 10:30 – breaded pork chops * 18:00 – cheese and crackers

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 04:30 – listen to local news talk radio * 06:00 – bank accounts activity monitored * 06:30 – read, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials * 13:30 – listen to The Dan Bongino Show Podcast * 15:00 – listen to The Jack Ricardi Show * 16:59 – listening now to the pregame finishing for tonight's NCAA women's basketball game between the SMU Mustangs and the North Carolina Tar Heels. Call of the game will be provided by the SMU Mustangs Sports Network.

Chess: * 12:30 – moved in all pending CC games

It’s been six years since the first time we celebrated our years of existence on the web by launching our long-term Pro plan.

Today, with hundreds of long-term subscribers, we’re putting a new coat of paint on this option, and renaming it Write.as Memberships, to reflect what you get with a 5-year Pro subscription: extra perks, and a lasting spot among a community of writers in our cozy little corner of the independent web.

Write.as users can check out the revamped Membership section (previously called “Long Subscriptions”) today.

This page under the Billing section includes everything about your Membership, including the extra perks you get over the monthly or yearly Pro plan, to be sure you’re enjoying them all.

Renewal

With this, we’re also introducing the ability to easily renew your 5-year membership, starting any time up to 1½ years before it’s set to end.

Since renewal is always a manual process, we wanted to leave a wide window so you can be sure your Pro features don’t lapse. This should also help anyone who wants the chance to get a discount on membership when we run occasional sales, like we’re doing now through February 16, 2026, celebrating our 11 years on the web. When you choose to renew, any existing membership is simply extended by another five years from its end date, no matter when you decide to renew.

Current and past 5-year subscribers will find this new option to renew at the bottom of their Membership page. If you’re eligible to renew, there will be a Renew button — otherwise, you’ll see the date when your renewal window opens up.

Reminders

Since membership doesn’t automatically renew, we’ll soon send out reminder emails to all current and past 5-year members (who haven’t already marked their membership as “cancelled”) to remind them that they can now renew their membership.

Future perks

Besides Membership-only perks like additional blogs, unlimited Free user invites, and the chance to hop on a call with our founder, Matt, we hope to add new perks that are exclusive to Members in the future. You can keep an eye out for that by following along with our updates here, and subscribing to email updates.

Otherwise, we’d love to hear what you think! Feel free to leave us a comment on Remark.as () or on the forum. And always, thanks for writing with us!

Hello again. I hope your week is going well and that you and your family are well.

POTUS is working hard to insure that only his friends are allowed to vote. Enacting the SAVE Act which requires a state issued ID or passport to vote will disenfranchise millions of legal voters who do not have these documents for many legitimate reasons. For example, blind people do not have drivers licenses, yet they are citizens and have a right to vote.

POTUS has been working for years to make sure that Republicans control elections. The NY Times has documented his actions to control voters in this article https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/timeline-trump-administrations-efforts-undermine-elections which appeared on their website.

It shows the many actions that POTUS and his cohorts have taken to make sure that you don't vote at all if you won't vote the way they want. It will ensure that only republicans win elections. Just another example of how POTUS hates Americans and the freedoms the Constitution guarantees all of us.

POTUS Roaster

Thanks for reading these posts. Th read other posts in this series go to write.as/potusroaster/archive.

Please tell your friends and family about these posts.

Along with many thousands of other Melburnians, I met outside the Flinders Street station clocks yesterday afternoon to protest against the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Australia. The protest was organised by Free Palestine Victoria.

Being my first protest since the climate actions in early 2020, I was a bit nervous given the violence at the Sydney protests just a few days prior (Crikey article here, ABC news article here). What made me feel a bit more comfortable was that it was a registered, peaceful protest that Victoria Police had approved.

The Sydney protests on the Monday night were the final trigger for me to join in the march, but other factors had helped out as well. My interest in the actions (and inaction) of Australian politicians had gotten me increasingly angry, and I'd also been frustrated by my own passiveness in not doing enough to stand up for the values I care about.

Being a bit paranoid about geotagging, I put my phone on airplane mode, but in hindsight that was unnecessary. A small portion of the crowd masked up in a clear display – something I interpreted as being done to hide their face instead of avoid disease – but generally people were using their phones openly, mostly organising to meet up with friends in the very large crowd.

When I arrived at Flinders Street, I got a good spot leaning against a fence at a nearby tram stop – and shortly after 5pm the official proceedings started. We heard from five or six speakers, mostly with some kind of story about the war in the Middle East, and giving us plenty of interactive chants all throughout. The one notable exception across the speakers was Gabrielle de Vietri (state Greens MP for Richmond), who pushed a strong anti-Labor message, as Victoria has their state election later this year.

Flag-wise, the vast majority of colours were of the Palestinian flag, with a few Aboriginal flags mixed in as well (several speakers linked Aboriginals and Palestinians through their shared history of oppression, stolen land and colonialism). The banners & placards generally mentioned Herzog and being labelled as inciting genocide by the UN, but Anthony Albanese & Penny Wong were named & shamed in a few as well.

Standing a few metres away from the speakers under the Flinders Street station clocks was the “Jews for Peace” banner. I saw a handful of people in the crowd wearing yamakas, so I can only assume that there was a decent number of people from Jewish backgrounds around. But there wasn't any Israel flags or Star of David-like symbolism being flown around – any signage in the white & blue of the Israeli flag typically had words written in hatred of the Israel government and their actions. Symbolism is a tricky thing: our national flags often represent the official structures that lead our country. For the same reason, I didn't see a single Australian flag. During the protest I empathised with the awkwardness and tension of being a Jew at an event like this; you want to cherish your cultural identity but you also want what's best for humanity.

Some of the speeches referenced those with Jewish heritage in the crowd, usually while making the point that we're all protesting a) against the act of genocide and putting humanity first (regardless of ethnicity), and b) protesting against the horrific decisions that governments (especially the Australian one) are making. I kept thinking of the phrase “no war but class war”; it feels like a lot of my values in recent years unintentionally stem from this phrase.

The speeches under the clocks lasted for a bit over an hour; it was about 6:15pm by the time we were told to start marching down Swanston St, then to turn right up Bourke St, finishing at Parliament. The organisers didn't need to give too many guidelines, but I do remember to “ignore interacting with the people that ignore the plight of Palestine” – i.e. leave the general public alone.

One part of protests that I had forgotten was the chants. It's a bit cult-ish at first but you learn the main chants very quickly, and because you're in such a large crowd it's comforting to scream out the same words over & over. I'm used to screaming out the lyrics to a song I know when live music is playing; chanting at a protest is very same-same-but-different. You learn the words, and therefore you feel like you belong.

I marched with the crowd all the way up to Parliament. There was a few brief pauses in movement (possibly due to traffic clearing up ahead) but it was pretty relaxed otherwise. The chants organically popped up throughout the entire crowd – in some cases you end up being halfway between two different chants so you aren't sure who to yell with. Nobody cares, everyone is just glad that we're all there. Everyone is contributing to the cause by being there and being part of the people power.

I couldn't stay too much longer once the crowd got to Parliament. I listened to the final speaker for a bit, bought an independent progressive newspaper for $5, and then carried on with my evening. I was off to see some live music – VOLA, a metal band from Denmark & Sweden.

Oddly enough, as much as I love going to live music and feeling that fun feeling of experiencing culture, going to the protest and resisting against something made me feel much more alive, present & focused. Instead of passively observing an event or performance, being at the protest was a simple way to actively put your views out into the world, instead of reacting to a post or arguing with people on the Internet. In a world that feels more digital than real, those opportunities & feelings are rare.

#activism #politics #protest #Melbourne #Naarm

Audible Link

Die purpurnen Flüsse ist das vielleicht bekannteste Buch von Jean-Christophe Grangé, wohl auch, weil es davon eine relativ erfolgreiche Verfilmung gibt.

Der Film hat die Geschichte aber an vielen Stellen angepasst und nur selten zum Besseren. Das Buch hingegen erzählt eine packende Geschichte mit grossartigen Charakteren. Und die erstklassige Vertonung von Lübbe Audio lässt das Geschehen noch lebendiger, noch intensiver wirken.

Die Geschichte

Die Purpurnen Flüsse ist der erste Roman in dem der archetypische Grangé Charakter auftaucht; ein Polizist mit kaputtem Hintergrund. Dieser Hintergrund treibt ihn zu grosser Brutalität und fragwürdigen Entscheidungen, dafür erzielt er aber Resultate. Solche Charaktere werden in kommenden Werken des französischen Autors immer wieder auftauchen, hier erhalten wir ihn gleich im Doppelpack.

Dabei sind beide Männer, Pierre Niémans wie auch Karim Abdouf, sehr interessante Charaktere. Zweiteren lernen zudem wir über eine spannende Erzählung seines Hintergrunds kennen.

Pierre Niémans ermittelt in einer Universitätsstadt in den Alpen, nahe von Grenoble. Hier ist ein brutaler und mysteriöser Mord passiert. Die zahlreichen und grausamen Verletzungen und Verstümmelungen der Leiche werden, ebenfalls typisch für die Werke von Jean-Christophe Grangé, ausführlich beschrieben.

Die Suche nach dem Täter führt schier Unglaubliches zu Tage. Die Verbrechen sind unvorstellbar und die Verfolgung und Aufdeckung sehr spannend.

Die Vertonung

Gelesen wird das Buch von Joachim Kerzel, der vielen Grangé Büchern seine Stimme leiht und dabei immer einen super Job macht. Auch hier überzeugt er. Es ist jederzeit klar erkennbar welche Person gerade spricht, sich Gedanken macht oder ob wir dem Erzähler lauschen.

Die wahre Stärke von Kerzel liegt aber darin, die Emotionen der Personen zu vermitteln. Oft spielt er die Charaktere mehr als dass er den Text vorliesst.

Und dazu komm dann der eigentliche Clou der Lübbe Audio Vertonungen: Die Geschichte wird mit Geräuschen und mit Musik unterlegt. Damit gehen sie einen Schritt in Richtung Hörspiel, insgesamt ist das Werk aber immer noch klar als Hörbuch zu verstehen.

Die Musik ist passend gewählt und hilft die Szenen lebendiger wirken zu lassen. Den Trick kennt man aus Filmen, wo die allgegenwärtige Hintergrundmusik dem Zuschauer stets vermittelt wie er sich zu fühlen hat. Dieses Konzept wurde hier in ein Hörbuch übertragen — mit grossen Erfolg.

Das Ganze ist wirklich sehr gelungen und gibt dem Hörbuch eine zusätzliche, nicht zu unterschätzende, Dimension.

Für wen ist es?

Die purpurnen Flüsse sind nicht zu Unrecht das bekannteste Werk von Jean-Christophe Grangé. Es bietet sowohl starke Charaktere als auch eine fesselnde Geschichte. Wer spannende Kriminalromane mag, der wird von dem Buch begeistert sein. Dazu die super Vertonung, die mit der Integration von Soundeffekten und Musik für ein super Hörerlebnis sorgt.

Einzig wer ausführliche Schilderungen von Gewalt und Verletzungen nicht mag, sollte davon absehen, das Buch zu hören. In anderen Werken des Autors sind die Verletzungen zwar noch brutaler und die Beschreibungen noch ausführlicher, leichte Kost ist aber auch das hier nicht.

Recent experience has shown that my schedule (and I'm SUCH a creature of habit!) works best when my night's game to follow is an early one. Tonight I find two early games, both of them NCAA women's basketball games, and both with 5:00 PM CT scheduled start times: SMU Mustangs at North Carolina Tar Heels, and Syracuse Orange at Pittsburgh Panthers. Without a personal attachment to any of these four teams, I'll simply listen to the call of the game provided by the first, strong streaming feed I can pull in.

Hmm... I wonder which game I'll listen to tonight?

And the adventure continues.

Last week I wrote encountering music, singing along, and even quiet reflection while listening as a form of prayer and practice. This week I want to continue that thread with the idea of using headphones to listen to guided meditations through an app or website. There are many of these tools available, some specifically religious in tone, others more secular, and some a mix of those two modes. I have found both for myself and for many of the people I work with, finding deep silence and stillness in the midst of a busy day is hard.

On vacation, or on retreat, or even while we are traveling long distance often creates enough distance from the noise of our daily environment to pause and be reflective. There can even be moments of genuine presence and simply consenting to the power of that moment. At home, at work, in the throes of our daily obligations, it can be hard to create that moment of pause and just be.

There are a lot of sites and tools, some of which only really function with a paid subscription, others of which are free, and still others that offer a pay-what-you-can donation model. I haven’t tried or vetted every one of these tools, but I will offer a starting list for you to explore, and then I’ll speak about three that I do use with some regularity.

I offer these tools with the caveat of my learning from David A Treleaven, author of Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, that meditation is not a substitute for comprehensive mental health care,and that for people with histories of trauma and complex trauma, silent meditation can actually exacerbate symptoms of traumatic recall. There are a lot of wonderful adaptations in the book, and I’d recommend you review them with your therapist or psychiatrist as well as any meditation instructor you work with.

Headspace

Anchored for the most part in a Buddhist mindfulness framework, Headspace is a great tool for beginners learning how to meditate. There are so many exercises to try, from brief reflections for particular times of day, to breathing practices, and semi-guided periods of silent meditation as well. I have been using headspace off and on for about four years now thanks to a subscription that my employer has provided. I enjoy the short form recordings and videos, the breath-work, and even some of the guided meditations, though I have found things like topical webinars, multi-week courses, and the mood trackers less useful for my own practice.

Pray as You Go

This tool is offered by the Jesuit outreach ministry (cue religious order trope joke here) in the United Kingdom. Pray as You Go offers daily audio meditations that include sacred music, lectio divina or sacred reading where we listen to scripture in a prayerful and heartful way, and Ignatian imagination exercises where we are invited to use silent pauses to enter the story, relate to various characters and settings, and explore the passage “from the inside”. After a period of such reflection, the passage is read again, now illumined with our wondering, followed by a time of prayer and intercession for what has arisen during the meditation. The content changes daily, with the addition of an examination of consciousness on Saturday to shift to mode of practice reflection on the week’s prayers.

Centering Prayer

Offered by the good folks at Contemplative Outreach, the Centering Prayer app offers a simple way to engage in this very old practice that dates back to The Cloud of Unknowing, and was revived in the 1970’s and taught by Christian monastics like Thomas Keating and M. Basil Pennington.

The app provides the guidelines, an opening prayer to read, a gentle sound to help us relax into the silence, a timer for the silence, and a gentle sound to welcome us back. Afterwards there is a spot for a short closing prayer. This is minimally guided meditation, as the majority of the time is spent in silence, being heartfully open to what arises, while clinging to none of it. The mind and any thoughts are put compassionately to rest with the soft recall of a single sacred word that is an expression of consent to be in the presence of God. the cadence recommended for this particular practice is a morning and an evening session.

These three are a small but mighty sampling of the tools available for ways to pray with your headphones on. I appreciate the way that they help to muffle the sound of the environment for a moment or two, giving me the gracious pause that helps my practice to really breathe deep.

before I was born, life was a photograph of my parents in their late 30s: younger, skinny, sun‑kissed, sitting by the edge of a pool in the late afternoon holding my blond, chubby baby brother, little indicator finger pointing out to the sky. I hope that after I die, you'll all have the decency to return to that quiet stillness.

/feb26

Sometimes I go on Apple Maps to check random businesses in different cities. Doesn’t everybody? Several months ago, I found a small arts supply store called A Work of Heart in San Jose. Turns out, it was already going out of business and had to sell their entire inventory.

On their website, they were selling a few 12-pack boxes of Blackwing pencils. If you’re familiar with them, they’re great pencils but expensive ($30 for a 12-pack). The red Blackwing 746 pencil I’m using, I only bought one cause a 12-pack is even more expensive ($55 for a 12-pack).

Anyway, I bought a 12-pack of 602s for $20 before tax. What a deal! While it’s sad another mom and pop store had to close down at least I got a chance to help them out a tiny bit. I’ll make sure those Blackwing 602s are used well.

#pencil #artstore #Blackwing

Getting terminated from your job has its pros and cons. One pro is that if you have been trying to get out of your career field of almost two decades and have been dragging your feet, you instantly get a motivational boost (and extra time to act on it) like never before! Another pro is that you become eligible for unemployment compensation if you were fired without cause.

A layoff is “without cause”; and so is discrimination—> Your employer will not implicate itself in a continuous pattern of actions that are illegal/alegal by contesting your unemployment compensation claim. Some would say if your employer did something illegal, then you can file a complaint with the EEOC and/or sue them. Sounds simple? It absolutely is not. Legal battles are costly, time-consuming, and mentally exhausting—like fighting your Homeowners Association. On the other hand, getting unemployment compensation is relatively simple, unlike dealing with your Homeowners Association.

One of the cons of unemployment compensation is that no matter how much money you were previously making, the maximum amount you can qualify for in the state of Florida is $275 per week. That is $550 every two weeks which is how often you will receive the money when you “claim your weeks”. That is $1100 per month which equates to about $7 per hour if you were working a job. And that may pay your mortgage for the month, but you’re going to have to strip or sell a lil’ somethin’ to pay for the electricity, water, phone, internet, automobile, auto insurance, gas, food, toiletries, etc. Add being in the hole with your HOA putting a lien on your house, foreclosing on it, and then afterwards, fining you for your roof tarp. Yes, this all happened to me in one summer!

Unemployment compensation lasts no longer than three months. At that point, you take whatever job you can get and hope that you stick out amongst all the other 100+ people who applied to the same jobs on Facebook—I meant LinkedIn. Meanwhile, your HOA continues to harass you—kicking you while you are waaayyy down in a situation that they could have stopped from the very beginning. HOAs and their property management companies are not for the people, the homeowners. They are for business. And that business is your money.