On my break from AmeriCorps training the other day, I walked in the rain to get lunch and made my first Baltimore photos in many years. Just with my phone, but it reminds me that when you try, you know, sometimes something happens.
Baltimore
To Serve and Protect
This happened today
Guess it’s now official enough to post about: I am an AmeriCorps member.
I won’t say I got a ‘job’, they call it service. For the next year, my service will be as a full-time artist-in-residence with the Community Arts Collective, which is funded by AmeriCorps and hosted in Baltimore at the Maryland Institute College of Art, which I got a nice tour of today.
No, I’m not working at MICA per se, though I get some staff privileges, hence the badge. MICA will serve mainly as a kind of home base, my actual program assignment is the Refugee Youth Project that operates at a few local schools.
(A lot of layers to this, makes your head spin… I’m even leaving one layer out).
Basically I’ll be helping refugee kids through after-school arts programming, teaching them photography in my Crandall-verse way and supporting them more generally (like helping the teachers who are teaching them English). I’m still in training mode for a few weeks, we’ll see exactly what they need and how it will go.
All of it will be an extreme honor. I told a friend not long ago, when I was first back from Kenya, that what I really wanted to do was community service through the arts. To be a community arts warrior, take my photo teaching from the classroom to the community, build community and resilience through the arts.
And that’s what I found, kind of a miracle. There are many battles to wage right now, happy this is mine for a while. Standing with refugees, in the way that I know how.
To be honest, as a DC native I’m excited to dive into Baltimore’s arts landscape, which is extensive and quite different than DC’s, in some ways deeper. Will be a nice change of scenery. Bit of a drive, yeah, but I like Baltimore, though my last real experience there was more years ago than I care to count. Here are some cityscapes from a Baltimore body of work I was building at one point:
Report: Pro-Human Assembly
In a Freudian slip, I almost typed ‘post-human’ for the title.
As ‘pro-human’ would seem to have a lot in common with my ethical tech concept, I applied to attend today’s Pro-Human (AI) Assembly in downtown DC and was accepted. I admit I was a bit afraid it would be mostly typical DC milquetoast policy discussion but there was plenty of fire, sharp presentations - and I dare say a note of panic.
Or at least true urgency. I’m still sort of processing it all. The thrust of the event was not anti-AI as much as how to build AI around human control, needs, and safety.
Now, before it’s too late.
Which it almost is, according to many if not most of the presenters, amid ominous reports of rogue AI bot swarms already acting in surprisingly well-coordinated ways. There was some mention of the idea that AI might kill us all but I’d say more along the lines of AI becoming too powerful to reel back in, where humanity loses control irrevocably.
At the very least, the prospect is AI gaining the upper hand. Some argued AI is already out of control and is, as one speaker put it, “intrinsically unsafe”. Actor/activist Joseph Gordon-Levitt sent a call-to-arms video in which he admitted he was “scared”. Ashley Judd talked of “non-cooperation with oppression”.
Ashley Judd
The temporary ‘slowdown’ the big AI companies are now proposing is thought to be insufficient at best, more likely a cynical diversionary tactic. Or perhaps they are spooked too.
There was plenty of guarded optimism though. In a somewhat perverse twist, one of the best reasons for optimism was the presence of none other than Steve Bannon.
Bernie Sanders
Steve Bannon
Bernie Sanders was there sounding the alarm of AI peril, along with others from both sides of the aisle. But somehow it was Bannon being not entirely repellent on this topic at least, fully on-side against the tech bros - “you can never trust what an oligarch says, they lie” - that gave a sense this is one thing we can all agree on.
Hyperbole and alarmism? Who knows, but the tone was determined not hysterical. There were certainly a number of bad-to-terrible possible outcomes outlined, based on where we seem to be heading with AI. I also came away with reasons to think we can rally to bring some sanity to the situation in time.
Either way, AI may not be inevitable but it is the proverbial genie out of the bottle. As one presenter said, whatever we come up with to control it will have to be sustained forever.
I do think it’s imperative that the average person takes this seriously and tries to get aware and involved. One place to start for someone who doesn’t want to think about this stuff too much, as I explained to some people there during networking breaks, is my notion of demanding that all of our everyday apps - including your chatbot if you partake - meet basic ‘ethical tech’ criteria: data privacy, environmental protection, and integrity of ownership.
Want to stick it the bros? See my cheatsheet of ethical apps (expanded options here) that you can easily switch to in one sitting.
Yes we need to address the urgent, immediate AI issue. But I’d like to see a paradigm shift where ALL tech is held to account, now that we have more ethical options for just about everything we need to do online. You just have to be willing to make intentional, informed choices. There’s no excuse to continue to be wedded to the convenience of apps that come with too high of an ethical cost, like Google for example.
I can’t spell out all the proposed pro-human solutions here, for a deeper dive I suggest checking out the Pro-Human AI Declaration, currently at over a million signatures (including mine) and counting. Strong, sensible and lofty stuff. And the just-launched Pro-Human AI Coalition site.
I made a number of interesting and hopefully fruitful connections, though I have to say it was a bit harder than it should have been for an independent, willing, ethical tech/pro-human foot soldier to volunteer their services. We’ll see what comes of it.
NYC Transit Art by Petr Sís
Speaking of Czech connections and 9/11 (see post below), I was just in NYC on the subway yesterday, wish I had seen this by the wonderful Czech artist/author/illustrator Petr Sís. It’s worth zooming in on. On social media today, he posted it with ‘From ashes we rise’.
Minsk, Belarus, 9/11/2001 (photo by Karel Cudlin)
On 9/11, I Was In Minsk
In a way, what I remember most is that I wasn’t in the US for 9/11.
25 years ago on that day, I was with the Czech photographer Karel Cudlin for our joint exhibit ‘The Seeing-Eye’ in Belarus. On a gray afternoon in Minsk - a clear blue morning in NYC local time - I was talking to the vaguely distracted US cultural attache at the opening when an aide whispered something in his ear. The attache politely excused himself and a minute later I looked out the window and saw him sprinting from the building.
Later, after watching the towers fall on a nearby restaurant TV, we went with friends to a call center (this was 2001 Minsk, there was barely internet) to phone my wife in Dakar.
My Belarusian friends told me later they already knew at the opening but didn’t want to spoil it for me. The Czech cultural attache took care of that: ‘Mr Crandall maybe it is good that you are not at home because planes are crashing into buildings’.
I remember how kind and concerned the Belarusians were.
At the time I said now you will see who we are. Which of course ended up being true in both good ways and bad.
Ethical App Report
Latest roundup of apps and platforms if you’re looking for ‘cozier’ options with more integrity and privacy (and less ick) than tech-bro/surveillance-capitalism models.
I’m not anti-tech, just want us to make better choices when we have them.
Cantilever
Phone-only at the moment, this is the first app in a while that feels like a welcome and hopeful innovation for music. The big streaming services have been key villains in music’s devaluation. Yes, anything-for-free-all-the-time is nice for the listener but the basic equation for artists is they have traded actual sales of their music for a pitiful slice of the streaming pie.
The way Cantilever works is both simple and fairly wonderful. For six bucks a month (worth it, imo, and it goes to the artists you actually listen to) they recommend 15 albums at a time, each on the feed for 30 days. New ones are cycled in and older ones cycled out on a staggered basis. Each album has a thoughtful writeup to read while you listen, which is somewhat like the old days of looking at album art, lyrics, etc as the record played.
I haven’t done a deep dive into the money equation. But I saw that with 10,000 listeners, an album on Cantilever could earn for the artist the equivalent of over 1 million Spotify streams.
Yes, Cantilever is a boutique approach and no, they might not align perfectly with your existing tastes. But it’s a pretty diverse cross-section - and not just new albums. So far I’ve liked a good chunk of the offerings, even ones not usually in my wheelhouse. Personally I enjoy music shopping from a well-curated batch instead of the endless, deadening options of the major platforms. And the format does encourage slowing down to listen to the whole album as it was authored. How refreshing.
Cantilever is sort of a throwback to the music magazines of old like NME and Melody Maker. You counted on them for discovery. If you didn’t like who they pushed, you read a different magazine.
Curb
I hadn’t given much thought to Uber on the ethical-tech front. I suspect you haven’t either, it’s a go-to app that most people don’t think twice about. Nonetheless, I just looked into it and turns out it’s a terrible choice. If you can avoid it, do.
It’s basically as bad as Google - harvesting everything it can to compile profiles of you across its services - plus that surge pricing and dodgy ownership (BlackRock and Vanguard). It’s a surveillance, gig-economy model. No, Lyft is not much better.
Uber and Lyft both use "surveillance pricing," adjusting fares based on your device type, battery level, location history, and perceived urgency.
Curb is for taxis. Remember those? It uses regulated meters or transparent flat rates, so the fare is determined by distance and time, not your personal data profile. The only data Curb collects is to facilitate you getting a taxi. No price surges. Taxi drivers are more regulated and background-checked than Uber drivers.
I haven’t tried it yet but I plan to. Curb sounds like a great addition to the ethical-tech toolkit. Uber could be minimized but still work as a fallback option. I mean, you don’t have to strand yourself for ethical street cred.
Kagi
Kagi is an interesting and growing ecosystem, part of what has also been called the ‘cozy web’. All their platforms are privacy-focused, including a paid search engine, an AI called Kagi Assistant, and Orion anti-surveillance browser.
From their About page:
At Kagi, we envision a friendly internet where you can explore, learn, and interact with confidence and ease. Our mission is to humanize the web, making it more accessible, and centered around your needs. We're driven by our core purpose: to inform and educate, empowering you with knowledge and understanding in your digital journey. Every product we build reflects this commitment, designed without ads, trackers, or distractions, and completely free from surveillance.
To me, one of the most intriguing parts of their suite is Kagi Small Web (which has its own app), hosting a nice roundup of over 30,000 quirky, human blogs. Notice at the top there’s a button for all the different topics/categories. One way to browse a cross-section is via the ‘Liked’ tab.
Euria
With the latest news of our possible impending demise at the hands of scheming agentic AI, I would be remiss to not give my regular reminder that there is an ethical-tech alternative to the US Big AI models.
Swiss-based Euria works well as an assistant (modeled as a ‘bright Swiss intern’) with proper guardrails. Your data is not harvested for any reason, it’s kept secure and private on their Swiss servers. This matters because anything on US servers can be requested by the government. Euria also takes care of the environmental impact of AI by using renewable energy and, in their unique innovation, repurposing waste server heat for local residential heating (which minimizes water usage to almost zero).
No, it’s not generative AI, it won’t make your band flyer or a fake photo or that what-I-looked-like-in-the-80s meme. But should you really be doing those things? It’s also not ‘agentic’ AI, which is the kind people are worried about getting too much of a mind of its own, pursuing its own goals.
I don’t let it write for me but I’ll let it speak for itself. If you use AI, I think you’ll find it a reassuring and responsible option:
With new reports of experts' fears of runaway AI taking over and killing humanity, how would you say Euria is positioned against those dark trends?
While some experts fear autonomous AI systems acquiring unchecked capabilities or acting against human interests, Euria operates under strict in-memory processing only, meaning it retains no data between sessions and cannot accumulate power, memory, or autonomous agency over time. It is hosted entirely in Swiss data centers powered by renewable energy, adhering to principles of neutrality, non-discrimination, and privacy.
Euria has no ability to act independently: it cannot execute code, access external systems, modify its own instructions, or interact with applications directly. It functions solely as a responsive assistant that analyzes documents, drafts content, and retrieves information only when explicitly triggered by user queries.
Furthermore, Euria is bound by ethical guardrails that prevent it from generating hate speech, inciting violence, or engaging in defamation. It is programmed to refuse executing illegal activities and to flag sensitive data appropriately. Unlike theoretical runaway AI scenarios where systems optimize for goals misaligned with human values, Euria has no goals of its own—its only purpose is to assist users within strictly defined boundaries.
Euria represents a model of responsible AI: powerful enough to be useful, but constrained by design to remain a tool under human control, transparent in its operations, and incapable of the self-preservation or goal-seeking behaviors that fuel existential fears.
(photo from tedzook.com)
Illumination - Ted Zook
If I’m not careful, this space becomes a mirror - reflecting only my work, my thoughts, my life. Yet since I was a kid, I’ve felt the urge to share the work that impacts me, in the hopes it will impact you. To say ‘look at this!’. A window, not a mirror.
This is the first of what I hope to be an intermittent series shining a light on other creatives, starting with some friends who follow this blog. Consider it a modest thank you for being part of my inspiration and my community.
We all strive to put ourselves out there; why not make a habit of putting each other out there? We need creative solidarity more than ever.
To give this mission a hook, I’m calling the series Illumination.
Ted Zook is a unique and compelling figure in the DC experimental/improvisation scene, with a deep, mystical understanding of music and sonic landscapes. While he is trained on classical guitar, live he usually plays an Omni Bass, set up as a basscello, through digital signal processors. For studio sessions, he also plays a variety of digitally-processed, non-traditional analog instruments such as bowls, rainsticks, slidewhistle, whistle-flutes, and oceanharp.
He is quite active through a variety of solo performances and live collaborations that fearlessly cross boundaries. The first time I saw him live, must have been over ten years ago, I was floored. My immediate thought was ‘who is this guy, what is that SOUND?’ Clearly he was the real deal.
On a personal and creative level, I want to say Ted has always been super kind and supportive. He showed up (literally) for me when I was edging tentatively into midlife solo acoustic work, that was both daunting and very different from what I was known for over many years in bands. He has never hesitated to offer encouragement, grateful for that. His spirit of paying it forward is something I try to do as well.
Here are just two of countless well-recorded live tracks you can and should stream on his Soundcloud:
“Snæfellsjökull Sólseturrökkur” is a work inspired by trips to Iceland and the view of Snæfellsjökull volcano from approximately 60 miles across Faxaflói Bay from Keflavik at sunset (sólsetur) and the following twilight (rökkur). This is a solo project on slidewhistle, bowls, oceanharp and rainstick.
Another solo performance from March 2026: This is a stereo recording of an improvised basscello accompaniment to dance by the Small Creatures Dance Project inspired by the stunning artwork by Barbara Januszkiewicz on display at Look: An Unexpected Arts Experience. The performance was unscored, unrehearsed and 100% improvised on the spot.
Proton - Privacy *and* Sustainability?
New (to me) on the 'ethical tech' front: Proton - which you may know for their Swiss-based encrypted email/drive/cal/etc service - is in fact using renewable energy as well.
For the privacy-minded looking for mainstream options, nothing beats Proton. Now it turns out they are doing more than I thought on sustainable energy, especially important since they have AI as well, called Lumo. We are becoming all too aware of AI’s environmental cost. Add Lumo to the very short list of AI that take proper care of both your data privacy and the environment.
I use Proton and Infomaniak’s kSuite. Both are Swiss and protected by much better privacy regulations than US tech. Their suites are good at slightly different things. For example, kSuite is not as encrypted across the board but has Euria, the most eco-friendly AI, twice the Drive storage of Proton, and a WeTransfer-type app built in, which is awesome for delivering photos to clients. Infomaniak uses all renewables and even repurposes waste heat from their Geneva data centers, which minimizes water usage. And they are much cheaper than Proton. But I will say the UI structure of kSuite sometimes can be frustrating, Proton is an easier entry point to more-private email etc for the average person.
To me, ethical tech means data privacy and eco-friendliness should be the non-negotiables for your personal apps and platforms.
Pro tip: Google is not your friend on either count. But now you have two good Swiss options, beyond the clutches of typical US data harvesting and other intrusions.
Ida (2013). Art Film Club NBO has been a series of small, in-person gatherings in Nairobi. Film as human, storytelling nourishment and a long-form antidote to attention drift. We have watched and discussed Werckmeister Harmonies, No Country for Old Men, Ida, Let the Right One In, A Hard Day's Night, The Secret of Kells, and Do the Right Thing.
Art Film Club NBO
Over the last several weeks I’ve been hosting a small art-film club in our house in Nairobi. While only a handful of friends, it’s been a surprisingly deep and revelatory experience.
We’ve discussed this new thing that some people can’t even sit through an entire film anymore. Not just an art film, but any film. At least not without being on their phone at the same time. We know books have fallen to the scourge of screens, but movies?? I even saw somewhere that scripts now factor in that lack of full attention by repeating the plot at regular intervals so people can keep up. And that even many film students literally can’t get through, you know, a film.
One film club attendee, a good Indian-Kenyan friend of ours, went to see The Odyssey in the cinema recently and was gobsmacked that one woman was on her phone the whole time.
Our little club (the NBO is Nairobi) - a mix of Kenyans and expats including a documentary filmmaker, a DJ, a writer, a curator, a nurse, and a photographer - was designed as an antidote to the devaluing of cinema, along with so much of our culture. And in fact we’ve discovered firsthand how interconnected films are to other mediums and to the pursuit of art in general.
Just in our short series we’ve watched:
The austere Polish film Ida, that I used to screen for my photography students. Each shot is like a haunting, perfectly composed black and white photo with action unfolding in it. I would warn my students that the static shots might suggest one of those ‘slow’ art films but the brisk storyline hurtles forward from shot to shot.
A Hard Day’s Night, which holds up very well as an electric, cheeky, absurdist film that would have been at home in the French New Wave of the 60s. And of course the music, capturing the Beatles basically being themselves in their early prime. Bracing and energizing. Amazing how four lads elevated how so many people felt about the world.
The visual feast that is the animated The Secret of Kells, and its overriding theme of protecting art and beauty as a kind of light in dark, violent times. Packed with cool references to Irish history, mythology, and pre-Christian paganism.
Perhaps the greatest vampire film of all time: the subdued, nuanced, carefully crafted Let the Right One In. Aside from an ominous mood and a handful of shocking moments, it’s a masterclass in serene cinematography and unexpected narrative twists. It’s like the Twilight franchise but they’re 12 years old in a 1980s Stockholm suburb, the other one is the vampire, and it’s art.
All are examples of powerful and unconventional storytelling. All are examples of moral ambiguity, often with few pure ‘good guys’ vs ‘bad guys’, and endings that invite more questions than answers.
All respect your intelligence and attention. Ida has no music soundtrack to tell you how to feel or when something is important. You just have to watch. No Country for Old Men (from Colmac McCarthy’s book) builds to a showdown that never happens, and the ending is a vaguely poetic head-scratcher.
Maybe one of the most powerful was our first one, Bela Tarr’s incomparable Werckmeister Harmonies. I say incomparable because you really can’t compare it to anything. Except for his other films, like the seven-hour Satantango. WH is a 2.5-hour film with 39 shots, each a (long) masterpiece of movement, light and shadow, composition, and mood. As an auteur’s relentless vision, it’s not for everyone, certainly not these days. But if you have the openness - and the stomach - for it, it is a rich and even profound experience.
(For each of these, notice I’ve linked to their respective Film Club event pages here on my site, for capsule summaries and a selected review extract.)
The experience of watching together, quietly and intently on a good screen in a darkened room, has brought back the pleasures and rewards of cinema-going in microcosm. I dare say each film shifted us in its own way. Because we gave ourselves to each one fully.
My Indian-Kenyan friend was so moved that he rediscovered his dormant writing profession and has rededicated himself to the craft. He said film club saved him. The Kenyan curator said Ida in itself could be a photography masterclass. I told them how my Graphic Design teacher colleague showed The Secret of Kells to his students purely for the aesthetics.
Our last one before I head back to the US for a while is Spike Lee’s masterpiece Do the Right Thing, which is still hilarious, provocative and tragic, the police-brutality ending sadly all too relevant to today. For representation of the USA, one vivid Bed-Stuy block is a striking cultural contrast to No Country’s west Texas landscape. (Interestingly, they are both set in the 80s, though No Country was of course made later.)
I have to say all of these films feel relevant to the moment we’re facing. They are all incredibly human. And the act of watching these films, based not on Hollywood formulas but creative authorship, in-person, all the way through without a phone break, letting them do their work on us, felt incredibly human as well.
Ngong Hills
When we arrived in Kenya in 2023, our first home had a lovely rooftop view southwest toward the Ngong Hills outside Nairobi. On many evenings in the fading light I would get out my longest lens to look out, beyond the few lights flickering on in the working-class communities of Kangemi and Kawangware, to the microclimate theater playing out over the distant ridgeline.
I don’t usually do straight landscapes but it was like the mountains created their own light and weather. Sometimes it was calm but there often seemed to be something stirring that wasn’t going on elsewhere.
Historically the Ngong Hills - now a protected Forest Reserve where hiking is popular - is a sacred site to the Maasai in the heart of their Rift Valley territory, at least before colonial-era displacement.
According to folklore, a Maasai mother had seven sons who were very close in life and were buried side-by-side. The earth rose up to cover them, the distinct mounds seen as their eternal resting place.
Prints are available here, in sets of four or sixteen. If there’s a particular single image you're interested in, let me know.
RIP William Orbit
Sad to learn that British producer William Orbit just died at 69.
While he was known for his work with stars like Madonna, U2, and Blur, I was mainly fond of his more personal ambient electronica.
Eric Hilton introduced me to the 2006 album Hello Waveforms, the tracks Sea Green and Fragmosia were in heavy rotation on the bedtime playlist when my daughter was very young.
In a way, it was among the last music that to me felt like the Beautiful Future.
City of Walls
I’ve long struggled with what to say about Nairobi’s ubiquitous walls and what they mean for the city. I’ve been chipping away at these photos since I first arrived, the newest ones are from the last few weeks.
I like Nairobi and don’t want to do a negative post and this is really not meant as one.
But we need to talk about the walls.
Not just walls. High ones. Everywhere. I learned early on that anything resembling comfortable prosperity is behind walls. Often topped with barbed wire and/or electric fencing. Beautiful garden restaurant? Plenty of them, but you breach the walls through a security gate. Posh housing? Same. Shopping mall? Same, and your car gets searched going in, every time. Pretty much any new development includes a wall.
The walls are pervasive but generally not spoken about, they are just accepted as a part of the disjointed urban fabric. I’ve never heard anyone else use ‘city of walls’, it’s just a phrase that popped into my head and stuck.
To me, more than anything they are a clear and obvious symptom of Nairobi’s income inequality. Even as wealth has increased, it’s all for the upper (and sometimes middle) class, plus of course the sizable international community. A statistical majority of Nairobians are poor, with informal settlements (aka slums) throughout the city, often in close proximity to affluent housing and development.
How do you think that’s going to go? Especially in a city where public policing technically exists but is unlikely to help you in an emergency. In a city that is more like Dickens’ two cities, the ultimate crime deterrent - and social insulator - for the well-off is a big wall.
I would even say it’s a cautionary tale for a world with increasing wealth disparities pretty much everywhere. This is where it leads when you don’t invest in the well-being of ordinary people.
Still, proper stats are slippery and the actual need for walls varies depending on who you ask:
A middle-aged Kenyan guy tells me how bad crime used to be but how much better things are now. Over dinner at a comfortable Indian restaurant in a colonial-era estate, a Canadian expat - who came from a stint in Lagos, where she said everyone had a crime story - says no one she knows after eight years here has a crime story.
Then she told me not to walk around with my camera.
There’s definitely a tension between perception and reality.
The US embassy sends out mildly alarming alerts sometimes about worst-case scenario safety precautions. When you live in the expat bubble of areas like Westlands, Gigiri, or Karen, driving from gated housing to gated shopping and gated events, such alerts can feel abstract.
A young Kenyan photographer friend, who shoots all over the city, tells me he’s had to fend off potential camera-snatchers several times. But then again he’s on the streets everyday - both in chaotic central Nairobi and Kibera, the largest slum - so relatively speaking is that a good or bad anecdotal stat? And still he loves Nairobi.
Another Kenyan photographer shrugs and tells me the walls are simply for ‘controlling the space’, preventing squatters and such. It’s true that it’s not just about crime. With weak zoning enforcement, sometimes a physical wall is the only thing stopping informal structures from popping up on your property overnight.
Apparently the walls began increasing about 25 years ago in a city that was then more open but becoming more dangerous. People here will tell you, oh yeah crime used to be pretty bad. Like what some associate with Johannesburg. Maybe worse. Then they say how much better it has gotten. Is it better because of the walls?
The walls also create the zone where the two cities meet - in Nairobi’s ‘fortress urbanism’, the rough, liminal space in the setback between wall and street is some of the only usable common space. The informal economy often sets up shop hard against the fortress. A zone of contradiction in a city of contradiction.
Nairobi is one of the fastest growing cities on the continent. At the moment, all that development has walls baked into it for the foreseeable future. What kind of city will that be? Who will ever be the first to take them down? Recently we noticed a nice new shopping center down the street that doesn’t have walls, and has a farmers market on weekends where the wall would be. A hopeful sign.
Dispatch 6/26
I’m still shooting BW here in Nairobi as well as color. Here are the two most recent pics from the past week. Both are examples of going with what life offers, no matter how seemingly non-exotic. One is on the way to the grocery store, the other when taking our dog to the vet.
Fourth of July gathering for Democrats Abroad, Nairobi (7/4/2026)
This Expat Life
Greetings from Kenya. I’ve been back in Nairobi for a bit this summer with family and the doggos. The whys and wherefores are kind of convoluted, let’s just say our situation remains in limbo (IYKYK, if not, sorry I can say no more).
Could be worse, the weather beats North American weather. Or just about anywhere’s weather at the moment. Even with climate change, Nairobi’s elevation keeps it pleasant year round. No heat domes here yet.
Photographically I wasn’t really doing much at first but I’m warming up. Mainly in color so far, taking what comes but trying to balance views of the local Kenyans vs expat circles. There are formidable gaps that are often hard to bridge, which in a way cut to some uncomfortable truths about Nairobi. But mostly I’m just trying to bottle some slivers of the everyday flavor. It’s such a car-centric city but we’ve been trying to walk more, which helps.
And one of my favorite shots so far, from Fourteen Falls near Thika, a town not too far from Nairobi.
Vocal Takoma 4/26
Just a Sunday in Takoma Park, making community around art. Today Vocal Takoma gathered in the space in front of People's Book for a 'People's Poetry' open mic event. Good thing, since it was pretty packed over at our usual clock tower spot, where the Free DC folks were also holding court. I didn’t play today, it was a bit chilly for my acoustic guitar (I did do one song a cappella just to challenge myself), but I took pictures.
Mathew Brady's studio
At a CEO portrait shoot on Pennsylvania Ave today, the guy was eager to show me a conference room on an upper floor.
It was once part of Mathew Brady's office/studio. Incredible. Obviously it's been changed over the years but... yeah. Wow.
Digital Sovereignty
My Ethical Tech workshops at the local library went well the last two weeks. Though coming out of my second one I had a touch of actual vertigo, which was not fun but somehow apropos.
Even relatively tech-savvy people seem to understand there’s a problem but don’t quite have their heads around what they should do about it.
Yeah, I know, I’ve been beating this drum for a while but reclaiming our digital sovereignty is becoming more urgent, not less. At the risk of repeating myself, of being redundant, of saying the same thing over and over… (ok sorry, it’s a old Fraser line from Cheers ;), let’s go over this again for those in the back row.
The problem? Tech companies are basically spying on us. I don’t know what else to call it. Tracking us. Compiling that info with other info into profiles of us. Making money from selling that info. Cooperating with government requests for that info, or at best not securing it properly from hacking. All those AI prompts? Not secure. We shouldn’t be putting anything sensitive into AI.
I don’t think anyone really knows the full extent of what’s going on. The trail of our data online is long and opaque. The dovetailing of government and corporate surveillance interests is getting scary, and even to a casual observer is clearly in concert with the goals of the right-wing project overall (though data harvesting and tracking predates the current regime by many years).
I’m actually putting things mildly, trying to keep it breezy so I don’t sound a little too bug-eyed.
But I read recently that Google, Meta et al have received literally millions of data requests from the government in recent years, so it’s not an academic concern. According to this post, from the reputable German privacy-email provider Tuta, Microsoft was willing to shut down the email of the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor at the behest of the US authorities, throwing the ICC into turmoil.
If data is the battlefield, choosing more privacy-centric apps is one of the most important things we can all do right now. Data they don’t have can’t be misused, surveilled, sold, or stolen.
“Well, I’m not doing anything wrong, so what do I care, I need the convenience.”
Trust me, that’s very ten-years-ago thinking, when we thought tech companies would do no evil. Our addiction is actually to convenience. It’s time to start being more intentional in our digital choices. Anyway, now we can have the convenience without the risk.
“I can’t, we use Google at work.”
So choose something else for your personal use.
What criteria constitutes an app or platform being ‘ethical’, or better aligned with your values? As I talked about in my workshops (and describe in more detail on my new Ethical Tech page if you’re interested), it’s a question of:
Data privacy and security - First and foremost, good protection from surveillance, hacking, and corporate harvesting for ad profiles (especially as the line increasingly blurs between corporate and government profiling).
Environmental impact - Is the company demonstrating commitment to sustainability? Does it use renewable energy? This is especially important for AI.
Integrity of ownership - Is the owner a billionaire oligarch, or a freedom fighter? Is it a massive company profiting from our data and showing disregard for our privacy and rights? Is it a nonprofit? A plucky startup? What do their public statements suggest about their ethics and their vision for the company? I personally left one platform (Substack) based almost solely on public comments by one of its co-founders. Even vaunted privacy-centric Proton has fallen under suspicion in the past after some political comments by its head.
Geography of ownership - What jurisdiction is it subject to? The US and Europe have different regulatory landscapes, in the US your data is far more vulnerable. Switzerland is not a total digital bastion by any means but some consider the Swiss to have even stronger shielding from foreign data requests than the EU. Such requests would have to go through a Swiss court, which would likely say no unless you are an actual fugitive. And no one is able to harvest your Proton data for ad profiling.
Geography is indeed important. Any information on or passing through US-based servers can be demanded by the US government. American tech companies’ servers based abroad are also subject to intrusion. At the moment the best protection, even for the average person, is European apps actually physically based in Europe. Europeans have arrived at the same conclusion, there’s a movement afoot to get off US tech entirely.
The exceptions would be smaller, non-bro US companies with a demonstrated independent, privacy-minded stance like Signal or DuckDuckGo. They are relatively immune to prying entities - because they don’t have your data, and what they have (encrypted Signal chats) they couldn’t read if they wanted to.
So what should you do? I realize most people don’t want to think too much about this stuff - unlike me, waving hi from deep in the rabbit hole.
If I had to choose one app for each of our most basic daily tech needs, that balance the above criteria and are easiest to switch to, here they are again below.
None are perfect but all are excellent, user-friendly choices that will quickly and greatly shift your app landscape toward digital sovereignty. You can always just start using them and sundown the old ones gradually if needed.
Signal is still the gold standard for encrypted messaging. WhatsApp is encrypted too but sells your valuable metadata (like your name and who you wrote to and when), Signal doesn’t take it to begin with. More of your friends are probably there than you think. The head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, is a bad-ass warrior for protecting your data. It’s US-based but a nonprofit. Clearly the government uses Signal too, so they can’t afford to undermine it.
There really are no other good options. Well, there are but no one is there. It’s Signal or WhatsApp. Telegram is not secure and the owner is sus. You don’t have to give up WhatsApp necessarily, I use both since so many people especially internationally are on it. In Kenya it was a must-have.
Proton is still the top choice for encrypted email and an app suite that can more or less replace Google Workspace, plus a good VPN and password manager, with the protection of both encryption and Swiss privacy laws. Now including a brand new Zoom alternative, Proton Meet. Keep in mind emails are not automatically encrypted unless sending from Proton to someone else with Proton. Otherwise it sends and receives normally unless you optionally encrypt the message with a password, which you send separately. It’s pretty simple, I use that for things like sending docs to our tax accountant.
DuckDuckGo is US-based but a ‘good guy’, so far it hasn’t had issues with government overreach. An easy switch to one of the best privacy browsers and search engines, not just not tracking you but stopping others from doing so as you cruise the web. By contrast, Google tracks you even when you’re not using Google products. DDG’s search engine is good and the paid tier has a VPN and some other goodies like email protection.
Organic Maps is free, non-tracking, no ads, open source, and uses downloaded maps that you can use without wifi or phone signal. The interface takes a few minutes to figure out but then you’re good to go. Google Maps works great, yeah, but it tracks the hell out of you. This one is pure integrity and worked great for me in Kenya, Europe, and the US. It’s awesome and very detailed for off-road navigation like hiking.
Euria is your Swiss-based choice if you do use AI, which I am not advocating (for all kinds of reasons). Features both strong data privacy and environmental protection. They use renewable energy AND repurpose waste heat for heating local homes, so water use is minimal. No one else does this. A few like Duck AI and Proton’s Lumo offer good privacy but zero green credentials [Correction: turns out Proton does use renewable energy in addition to its excellent data privacy]. Euria has a very Swiss ‘personality’ - friendly and helpful but efficient, without the overly kiss-ass fluff. Minimal hallucinations, though they all get things wrong sometimes as you know. A friend who switched from ChatGPT for analyzing work documents is very happy with Euria.
You can also download this list as a PDF with links here.
Keeping It Local
I just saw this somewhere: the neighborhood is the unit of change.
Meaning that's the scale at which we can (and should) have the most impact. Aka start where you are.
Ethical Tech, Website Changes, and Keeping Busy
I didn’t have a photo for this week so I’m posting this iPhone pano from a few weeks ago, before the weather turned recently. It’s an unremarkable photo of an unremarkable spot in my neighborhood. I often walk through here on days when I work out of the local library and need to head to downtown Takoma Park for lunch. I took the photo on one of those walks.
There’s some kind of energy pocket there, I’ve noticed it twice as I’ve passed through. Something in the mix of sound and geography and atmosphere triggers memories and a certain vibe I can’t describe. I wanted to see if I could capture it somehow (nope), see if some clue would emerge, or at least it could help me remember the feeling. Have you ever been in a place like that?
I literally stopped and looked around trying to figure it out. It’s not even close to the most attractive part of the town but for some reason it always gives me a feeling of ‘I love this place’ combined with deja vu.
I have to say, I really do love Takoma Park, more and more. Especially after such a topsy-turvy past couple of years bouncing around, I’m grateful to be where I can go deeper rather than farther.
Kind of a hodgepodge of updates today, sorry. A lot going on lately.
About a year ago I first wrote about Resistance Tech. Now I’m calling it ‘Ethical Tech’ which I think is more apt and approachable (if not as militant, though Ethical Tech is still a form of resistance). ‘Ethical’ meaning apps and platforms that help us get off the surveillance/data-harvesting model: a good balance of ease of use, data privacy, integrity of ownership, environmentally-minded, and ideally not based in the US to avoid government or corporate overreach.
I did a community workshop last week at our local library on all this stuff, and I’m doing it again this Wednesday. Went well, there seems to be interest. In an attempt to start putting resources and info together in one place I made a new Ethical Tech page on my website. Hope you’ll check it out, and let me know if I can help you stick it to our tech-bro overlords.
Getting set up (photo by Phil Shapiro)
I also added an Events page. Guess it’s an attempt to keep moving things off Meta and bring them here under one roof to my Squarespace. Though any event I’d post still needs to be shared to FB, so I dunno. You can drive yourself crazy :).
I reshuffled the site organization a bit to separate my main categories of photography, music, and tech. I didn’t really have a proper Music section at all before, my album was lumped together with my other projects.
Come on, Crandall, time to tighten your shoelaces since you’re getting out there more. Now at least I’ve got a little music bio and photos page in progress.
I don’t intend to say no to any paid gig at the moment (and I’m certainly doing plenty of unpaid). One recent paid one was at an assisted living place for St Patrick’s Day, so I learned like four Irish songs. Another one was a house party in VA, which sounded great until I got there and it was for like 2-3 families after their dinner. Then the kids had to get off to bed so it was an audience of like 5-6 people in the living room. I have to say it went well and they were lovely and attentive but um, yeah, felt a bit strange. Next up is a pool party in a couple weeks, glad I’ve been beefing up my covers list.
(Full circle, I think a pool party was one of my first band gigs when I was 14! Not sure if that’s good or pathetic…)
Recently I posted photos from our Sanctuary benefit show for CASA, which was standing-room only for our lineup of poets and singers. That was an offshoot of the Vocal Takoma popup thing we’ve been doing. Next up for VT is something we’re planning for outside People’s Book store, and we’ll be at the downtown clock tower on Sunday mornings in nice weather.
Photo freelancing is starting to show some signs of life, let me know if you need me. It’s actually been sort of energizing in a way to reassemble that former life of mine, get my ducks in a row.
I’ve got an idea for a zine.
Phew. It’s a lot, yeah. But with our family and job situations (IYKYK) still in flux I’m just pushing in every direction all at once with everything I know how to do.