Not sure if "Face Hole Standee" is the official name of these things but here's the "Our View" article.
Lately there's been a general poo pooing on the idea of the state investing in PNM as opposed to letting Blackstone gobble it up. Most skeptics are pointing out that the State Investment Council constitutionally can't invest more than 10 percent in any one company. 505OMATIC talked Public Power New Mexico organizer, Alysha Shaw and State Sen. Harold Pope Jr. to clear the air and see what's actually being proposed.
Wanna get involved? YUCCA has everything you need to get started.
The State Investment Council meets monthly, usually the fourth Tuesday at 9 a.m. at the Roundhouse, and every meeting is open to the public. Public comment is on the agenda. Dates, agendas and the livestream are at sic.state.nm.us.
After tech policy expert Ifeoma Ozoma sounded the alarm about Amira, the state-required AI reading assessment, parents across New Mexico stormed local school board meetings. After first doubling down on the requirement, The NM Public Education Department gave ground and is now letting districts opt out. But Ozoma says none of this would have happened if student data privacy and parental consent protections were already in place. Now she is pushing Santa Fe Public Schools to adopt them, so this doesn't happen again. A letter signed by 35 state lawmakers calling for parental consent has gone to Education Secretary Padilla.
Last Sunday, ICE conducted warrantless arrests in Santa Fe and Española. They detained an entire family, including a one-year-old U.S. citizen. Immigration attorney Allegra Love breaks down why these arrests aren't constitutional and how we now have a new way to fight back: SaFeRR, a grassroots organization with trained volunteers ready to respond. See something suspicious? Call the SaFeRR hotline: 505-644-0101
The City of Santa Fe is considering what, if any, changes should be made the the city charter, the founding legal document for city government. Six opportunities remain over the next few months for the public to give input about the kinds of changes they would like to see regarding the balance of powers between the mayor, city council, and staff positions. These findings from the public will be presented to city council in early 2027 where they will deliberate and discuss items that could wind up on the Fall 2027 local election ballot.
The broken remains of The Soldiers' Monument Obelisk are now on display at the New Mexico History Museum. Back in March, the Santa Fe City Council voted to put the pieces on display so the public could see the current state of the stones, and begin to understand the difficulty of restoring the monument with the original pieces. There's no admission fee to see the display.
Amira, the state-mandated AI reading screener, recorded K–3 students’ voices for two years, and parents say they were never told. At the Thursday, July 30, 2026 board meeting, Superintendent Christine Griffin announced the district will refrain from using Amira until the state Public Education Department issues guidance. If none arrives by August 14, the district says it will switch to i-Ready, which does not record student voices and was used formally in the district. Click here more information.
If your kid is in kindergarten through second grade in New Mexico public schools, an AI program called Amira is talking to them and recording their voice. And your school probably never asked you. Of the parents tech policy expert Ifeoma Ozoma has spoken to, not one was notified or given a way to opt out.
Ozoma says the real value for this private company is the data: terabytes of voice recordings from five-to-eight-year-olds, with no state privacy protections. Amira’s CEO claims the company “never ever” shares data, but a Willamette Week investigation found its Portland schools contract collects place of birth, disability information, even migrant status, and allows disclosure whenever “required by law.”
Wanna do something about this? Download the opt-out form and turn it in soonish, because assessments start in the first 30 days of school. You can also show up to the SFPS board meeting July 30th and demand Amira be made opt-in. And share this with another parent.
As you drive down Airport Road, you’ll find a community called Tierra Real, which is one of the only mobile home parks where the residents not only own their homes, but the land itself. The city started annexing neighborhoods off Airport Rd between 2012 and 2015, including Tierra Real, promising all the amenities that come with being a part of a city: maintenance of roads, streetlights, sewers and parks. But that didn’t happen in Tierra Real. It turns out that mobile home parks are considered private property. While usually they are owned by a corporation who can pay for maintenance, at Tierra Real, it is actually the responsibility of the residents to pay these costs. But unlike people who live in gated communities and pay into HOAs to take care of maintenance, these residents do not have the money to do so. To complicate things even further, the city says that they can only take over the maintenance once the residents get it up to code, something that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Two years ago, residents took matters into their own hands and started cleaning up their neighborhood. We talked to Miguel Acosta from Earth Care, who has been working with neighborhoods across the Airport Rd Corridor to coach them in community organizing and capacity building, and to members of the Tierra Real Association.
The Association is holding a garage sale to raise funds for their community on July 25th:
You can drop off your donations at:
6385 Kryshana St.
From 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
If you're unable to bring your donation, please call or text Martin at (505) 310-7422. We will be happy to arrange a convenient time to pick up your donation from your home. You may also bring your donations directly on the day of the garage sale before 8:00 a.m.
For the last year, the Community Kite Project for Gaza has folded kites representing each child killed in Israel’s genocide, and raising money for Palestinian families in the Gaza Strip. 505OMATIC spoke with Sarah Ruth, the Albuquerque artist behind the project, and Antoinette Noor Khader, a Palestinian-American poet, singer and founder of the Among the Rubble Collective.
Originally on display at the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, the project officially moves to El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe this Saturday with a family-friendly kite-folding event including music, poetry, and homemade Palestinian baklava and hummus. Presented in partnership with the Southwest Coalition for Palestine, Palestine Solidarity Santa Fe and Santa Feans for Justice in Palestine, the exhibition continues at El Museo for the next couple of weeks.
Among the Rubble Collective runs an ongoing mutual aid project providing water, hot food, blankets, and shoes to Palestinians in Gaza. In fall 2025, as Israel forcibly displaced Palestinians from the northern part of the Gaza Strip, ARC partnered with author Sim Kern to help more than 30 families move out of Gaza City.
Now, the Community Kite Project for Gaza is trying to raise money to evacuate a Palestinian family out of Gaza through neighboring Egypt. When the border is open, it can cost $5,000 in cash to evacuate just one person, and brokers take up to a 40% cut when withdrawing cash from bank funds, Khader said. Organizers have already raised about $15,000 toward the effort but the family has ongoing living expenses like baby formula, school tuition, tent repairs, and electricity.
The poem If I Must Die, by the late Palestinian scholar and poet Refaat Alareer, inspired the project. At their previous event, they played a recording of Oyoun, one of Alareer’s students and a cancer patient who has gone through two pregnancies, reading the poem; we have reproduced parts of that recording in our video with permission.
You can donate directly to the evacuation fund here.
You can also donate directly to Oyoun here.
What do you think? Does this make you wanna support this event this year?
more on Zozobra addiction to slop: https://www.505omatic.com/gloomscrolling-the-outrage-at-zozobras-a-i-onslaught/
Blatant, lazy momfluencer payola. Paid canvassing campaigns that will forge your name onto a letter of support. And dangling basic services in front of residents that their city, county, and state are already legally obligated to provide.
This is how Project Jupiter is trying to manufacture support. Because they think we're stupid, desperate suckers.
New Mexico has a long history of being duped into hosting some of the world's most historically evil technological bullshit, then getting left with the expensive devastating environmental and health repercussions.
Not this time.
On Monday June 29th, members of the Santa Fe community, business owners, residents (housed and unhoused), and service providers met for an all day summit at the Convention Center to address the city's homelessness crisis. This summit comes after months of public input through surveys and community conversations, with a goal of developing plans collaboratively.
The Blackstone/PNM deal is nearing decision time! And the PRC is giving you a chance to to speak up at the roundhouse on Thursday July 2nd 10 AM. BUT the rules just changed and they’re prioritizing speakers that email them saying they want to be a speaker. Big yikes cause if you don’t act fast certain interests might stack the deck. Email public.comment@prc.nm.gov and express your intent to comment.
Is it possible to actually stop gentrification? Maybe not. But as Midtown development ramps up, a group of organizations has developed a stabilization plan to protect the Hopewell Mann neighborhood from the potential negative effects of development. MASS Design in partnership with Chainbreaker Collective, the Santa Fe Indigenous Center and Ideas and Action have spent the past year compiling data and input from residents about about issues related to housing, economic development, transportation and public spaces. This plan will soon be going to city council in the hopes that the city will adopt and implement its recommendations.
"Data Centers are Great, Actually" A marketing firm called Xomad is recruiting influencers to astroturf your social feed with positive paid content about data centers. If you see a creator you suspect of being pulled into this campaign, DM us or write us at editor@505omatic.com.
As we celebrate 50 Years of Pride in the Land of Enchantment, we join Dr. PJ Sedillo in his home for a tour of the Pride Archives, 280 panels of local queer history, before their display this weekend as part of Albuquerque Pridefest.
If you haven’t been following the AI drama over at Zozobra‘s official Instagram account, here’s a one stop shop for the entire saga
Blackstone's proposed takeover of PNM just got pushed back by at least a year and might not survive at all.
New Mexico's utility regulator, the PRC, says PNM and Blackstone broke the law last year by doing a $400 million stock transaction tied to this buyout without getting the sign-off from the regulators beforehand.
The commission's examiners want all of these companies fined $100,000 and say the stock deal should never have happened and has no legal standing.
The PRC is calling for all the companies to undo the transaction and ensure customers don't pay a dime. They also have to scrap the entire acquisition application and start from scratch.
With costs rising, ABQ is trying to put more money in workers' pockets with a slight minimum wage increase. City Councilor Tammy Fiebelkorm (District 7) has spent the whole year trying to get it across the finish line and argues (as the only economist on council) that the minimum wage should actually be A LOT higher. After a contentious meeting on Monday, the city council passed the ordinance on a 5-4 vote; now it heads to Mayor Tim Keller's desk for a signature.