By Josh Gondelman — 24 Aug 2026

#198. Flock Cameras and You

What the Flock?

Hi everyone,

Over the weekend, I hung up a bunch of artwork in our apartment. We've lived here for six weeks without anything on the walls, which does not even approach my previous record of three years spent with a bunch of band and movie posters rolled up like proclamations from a king sitting on my bedroom floor. Needless to say, that was long before I was married.

I don't have an especially strong eye for how to construct a "gallery wall," but Maris and I have assembled a pretty sizable collection of framed prints and concert posters, and home feels homier with them up. Even though the hammering and haphazard measuring/leveling fell to me, figuring out where each piece goes is really a two person job. Some questions just require two keys to turn at once, like a nuclear football in a Harrison Ford movie from the 90s.

Where should this weird thing we bought on vacation and doesn't look like anything else in our home go? How many photos of our late pug Bizzy is too many to have on display? At what number of framed standup show posters does the apartment start to look like a Museum of Brooklyn Alternative Comedy? Where did this print of a poodle in a yarmulke lighting a menorah come from and will God get mad if we give it away?

Four pieces of art: A print of a painting of VHS cassettes, a hallie bateman print that says directions: little by little become yourself, a pug mermaid by mattie lubchansky, and white sneakers in a heap by doug gately — Attempt at a gallery something. Please do not judge our thermostat.

We're still very much at the work-in-progress stage of decorating, but that is far preferable to the work-not-in-progress place we were three days ago. And starting this task has had the additional benefit of decluttering our office space, which we'd been using as a staging area for dislocated art and other memorabilia/ephemera. It was lightly humiliating to have so much clutter in frame for every Zoom meeting and podcast recording, but I have a pretty high tolerance for disarray.

A confession: For almost a year in my twenties, I was no-bed-frame-guy, the kind of fella women use as a cautionary tale about the perils of visiting male apartments. I lived with seven (Eight? We honestly didn't know.) other dudes in a big house in Allston, MA (one of Boston's outer boroughs) where we played chicken with winter, refusing to turn off the heat until one roommate snapped and begged the others for warmth. I'd had a really nice bed (by Ikea standards) but it was too much of a hassle for all the moving I was doing, so I'd given it to a friend and hadn't replaced it. I slept shivering on a mattress on a box spring on the floor for a heavy slice of that year. If you had seen my bedroom, you would be amazed that it was not used by an entire heavy metal band for doing heroin and passing out.

Here's the worst part: I owned a bed frame almost the whole time! I'd ordered it, and it arrived, and I left it propped up against the wall in the corner of my room because I didn't realize how easy it would have been to snap together. When I finally assembled it, I felt some light shame at how simple it would have been to have been living better for the previous eight months, a lesson I have to re-learn every few years about some tiny thing I put off doing. I am especially sorry to the girlfriend who had to sleep there on New Year's Eve one year.

But I also lost something when I put together the bed frame. My tolerance for chaos started to diminish in that moment. I like that I don't live that way anymore, but I'm a little nervous that I've lost my ability to if necessary. While it's good to have standards, sometimes a situation simply cannot meet them, and in my line of work it is helpful to stay in touch with the mattress-on-the-floor part of yourself, in case you ever need to revive it for a quick stay in a motel in Janesville, WI where the night manager hands you a dusty key that you are sure he has a copy of in the event that the urge to murder you strikes him. You know, for one hypothetical example. I like comfort but I'm worried I've lost my stomach for dealing with ramshackle happenstance when it arises. All that is to say, I'm glad that period of my life is mostly over, but I can still see the shadows of it lurking wherever there's clutter.

SPEAKING OF THE PAST! I've found a bunch of old videos of my standup that I'd hidden away and have started posting some of my favorite retired bits on social media. Here's one about wedding rings for bros. Here's one about snobby big dog people. And here's one about visiting Greece without knowing Greek. If you want to share any of these clips or even just follow me on Instagram or TikTok or Bluesky, that would be awfully nice!

And in the more recent past, I had a really wonderful time performing as part of the Fixing the American Healthcare System in Two Days festival as well as interviewing Dr. Kelly Weinersmith as part of Caveat's Comedians Interview Experts series! I love doing specific and off-beat comedy shows!!!

I'm wearing a sweater and crossing my arms in this NYCF promo poster advertising my 11/11 7:30pm show at the Bell House. It's on a Wednesday! — Buy a ticket, why don't ya?

A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: I'm doing a headlining show at The Bell House in Brooklyn as part of the New York Comedy Festival on November 11th! I've wanted to do a headlining NYCF show for a long time, so this is really exciting for me! This is the new hour I'm taking on the road all fall and winter (and have been working on over the past year and a half or so). I'm going to book some great special guests, to be announced later, and I'd love for you to come out!

THIS THURSDAY: I'm working out a bunch of new jokes at Union Hall for one of my periodic What's New? shows! My friends Myq Kaplan, Maddie Connors, Janesh Rahlan, and more will be there telling jokes too! It'll be a really fun time, and will NOT spoil the hour I'm doing in November if you want to come to both. (That's both because I'm not doing most of my ready already jokes this week, and you'll probably forget any overlap from the new stuff that sticks!)

NEXT MONTH: I'm doing THREE shows at The Comedy Studio in Cambridge, MA on 9/19, and the middle one is sold out already! Tickets for the early and late ones are almost halfway gone too, so you should grab them if you are considering! It's my first time headlining around Boston in more than two years, and I'm really excited to bring this hour home! I have not posted the flyer for this or What's New? because they use the same headshot as the NYCF show! I've got to work on that.

IN OCTOBER: I'll be making my debut at the Comedy Fort in Ft. Collins, Colorado! I've heard only incredible things about this club, and I can't wait to perform there myself! Ticket link will be available SOON!

Okay! Enough about me!

PEP TALK FOR FLOCK CAMERAS

Photo of a Flock ALPR camera setup on a lamp post with trees in the background. (Photo from The Oaklandside) — Slightly ironic that the panopticon is so ugly to look at!

Just to get everyone on the same page, Flock is one brand of automatic license plate reader–or ALPR–being implemented across the U.S. ALPRs are sold to communities tools for fighting crime and finding missing people, but they also allow law enforcement to surveil those suspected of other "nefarious" activities like attending a protest or immigrating to this country or having an abortion. 404 Media, one of my favorite news sites, has done a LOT of reporting on these cameras. They are a massive invasion of privacy and civil liberties, and there are reportedly over 100,000 of them active already.

But there's good news too! Flock cameras have spurred a wave of good old fashioned American innovation, the kind of ingenuity we've recently applied primarily to developing new flavors of Oreos. (Nothing but respect to the company formerly known as Nabisco for their constant work in the field of exciting and unexpectedly vegan treats.) From sea to shining sea, people have developed creative ways to disable and occasionally destroy ALPRs. According to NPR, "people have stolen the cameras, sawed them down, crashed into them with cars, covered them in paint and stickers, and shot at them." One guy in Minnesota put a sign on a rake and used that to cover a camera's lens. For a little while Google's AI function reported (based on a joke/meme) that the cameras contained a stealable/resellable amount of metals like copper and gold. I can't wait to see what America's Next Top Vandals will come up with next. (Editor's note: Be safe out there!)

Take that, clean energy revolution in China. America is experiencing a renaissance of civil disobedience, and it's all thanks to Flock (and the other companies making similar devices). Not to mention, it's a bipartisan cause! Somehow the hatred of mass surveillance (and, separately, data centers) is bringing people across the political spectrum together in a way that inviting Liz Cheney to Democratic campaign events and asking 7,000-year-old James Carville what he thinks about primary election results has not. Even Darth Vader showed up to make his voice heard in this discussion, as you may have seen.

We've also witnessed a disturbing trend of law enforcement officers using ALPR networks to stalk private citizens for their own purposes. Dozens of officers have gotten caught misusing this technology to spy on romantic partners and exes. Many of these abuses have resulted in firings or resignation. Now, who knows these cops will be quickly reinstated or reassigned like malfeasant priests or, well, cops usually. But it seems like ALPR technology has inadvertently created a honeypot where unethical officers are enticed into committing on-the-record, extremely-well-documented civil rights violations. And it seems to be a type of police misconduct that actually results in some kind of swift punishment (once it's made public). Hopefully soon we'll have a dummy version of Flock the way fake online shopping sites have popped up to give people the dopamine rush of retail therapy without the pain of spending money. Then these creeps will be busted without putting anyone else at risk. But until then, at least the actual Flock system has caused the dumbest dirtbags in uniform to blow up their careers Wile E. Coyote style with weapons they thought would benefit them. ACME-ass technology.

So for all that I say: Thank you for your service, ALPRs. Now Flock off.

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I've added a nickname here but didn't edit the request much!

I have a CPA test (3 of 4) on Tuesday and it’s the hardest one, and intellectually I know I’m well-studied and prepared… but my heart and nerves don’t believe it and I’m a mess. A pep talk would really help!
- CPA Toned

Two tests down and two to go. In the words of Jon Bon Jovi: "Whoa...you are fifty percent of the way to your goal." Probably more than that even, because you're all prepared for part three, the hardest part (to paraphrase both you and the late great Tom Petty).

It's not unusual (phrase I just coined, actually) to feel on edge about something new, even when you're as ready for it as you can be. Think about it this way: A common term for feeling blasé about something is considering it "old hat." Which implies that the idea of a "new hat" is enough to get your adrenaline going. Apologies to haberdashers the world over, but that's a pretty low bar to clear. New, career-defining test is a much bigger deal than the crisp felt (?) of a freshly minted (??) fedora. Probably, if you weren't a little nervous about this exam, it would mean you didn't care that much about it.

The anxiety you're feeling around the test is, if I had to guess, about more than just the test. It's about taking the next big step in your career. I bet there's also a little residual stress from a lifetime of being told that tests in general are Big and Scary and Going On Your Permanent Record seasoning the cast iron pan of your subconscious. That probably doesn't make the whole situation feel good but it isn't a sign that your brain has gone haywire.

You are experiencing Regular Brain Stuff, and that is okay. However, it's probably not the best feeling to head into a testing environment feeling all vomit on [your] sweater already, mom's spaghetti about things. A big part of test prep is preparing for the test. But a not-insignificant hunk of the work is getting ready to take a test. Maybe that does mean getting your body bank robbery level hyped. More likely it means chilling out a little and trusting your process. Again unless you are a habitual crammer, which doesn't seem like the case, frenzied, last-minute studying is going to end up half-shoving a bunch of stuff into your brain the way you smush anything within arm's reach into a suitcase after realizing you woke up late for a flight you haven't packed for.

Whether you're putting a lid on these jangly neurons or riding the lightning of their electricity, there's only so much you can do: Get a good night's sleep! Pack yourself a little snack (if that's allowed...I'm not sure what rules the CPA tests have about granola bars)! And do your best, which your analytic, accountant-to-be conscious mind will tell you is ready for this challenge!

Once you finish this test, it's all...well, not downhill from here because that's bad. And not uphill from here, because that's hard too. Why do we use a hill for this kind of metaphor when there's no vector of hill travel that can mean good??? It's all easier after this, and that's great. You'll be hill-free soon.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Johanna Samuels - "White Limousine"

Longtime That's Marvelous favorite Craig Finn of The Hold Steady had Johanna Samuels on his podcast last week, and I liked this song from her new album Sorry, Kid so much I immediately bought tickets to her Brooklyn show on Tuesday.

"White Limousine" is about weathering a bad time (specifically, in the narrative sense, a panic attack in a limo), something that it's good to remember is possible. The song (and the album overall) contains a gentle tautness that reminds me of Jenny Lewis's solo material. The album also features a song about a debate over which early Weezer album is the best, so you know I'm on board.

Is it magical thinking or self care to say that if you keep the windows up everything is gonna be alright? Either way, it didn't not work, and that's something.

While we're here, I've got a few more things to recommend. Nato Green and Rory Scovel both put out great new comedy specials that lean in a pretty political direction. Nato is a professional union organizer by day, and his special (on YouTube via record-label-of-the-newsletter Blonde Medicine) is aggressively leftist in a way I like very much! Rory's (on Netflix) is really silly but also very firm in his desire for the world to be better than it is, and he doesn't shy away from talking shit about the people making things bad.

My buddy Kelsey Cook also has a new special on Netflix called Happy Hour and it feels like such classic standup comedy to me. It's sincere and personal and super funny. You really get the feeling that you're spending time with an artist in control of her vision and generously sharing her point of view on her real life. She also got married last weekend! Big week for Kelsey!

I thought I'd shout out some good recent comedy as long as so much (not all, but SO much) of what's popular lately is total weasel piss (a term I believe my childhood friends coined to refer to the dregs and backwash at the bottom of a beer can).