This seems like a good way to communicate compassionately with people in your life who carry harmful delusions. (Discounting the rest of the thread about media.) Saving here for reference.
In positive BC news, an agreement between Indigenous groups and municipalities to protect water: www.haidagwaiiobserver.com/news/hist… #climate
Saving this book here for later, thanks to The Big Story podcast.
thebigstorypodcast.ca/2024/11/1…
Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World, by Dr. Elizabeth Swain
#books #climate
🎹 I released a short piano EP last month. It’s called Radiant, and it features J.S. Bach and my dog Zappa. I wrote about why I made this and what it means to record 300-year-old music here, now.
#piano #music
TIL that The Onion’s parent company is called Global Tetrahedron 😂
🎹 Tonight’s listen: The utterly serene “Joy Paradox” by Cephas Azariah. Clouds of piano + synth. music.apple.com/ca/album/…
NOTAFLOF is my newest favourite initialism. Fun to say, good news, makes me smile every time. (No one turned away for lack of funds) #NOTAFLOF #words
Gabriel Prokofiev String Quartet No.2
Tonight’s music discovery 🎻: Gabriel Prokofiev String Quartet No.2, a four-movement piece followed by eight remixes. Listening to track 7, “2nd Movement (Vex’d Remix)”, and I’ll be back for more later. Gabriel is based in London, grandson to Sergei.
gabrielprokofiev.bandcamp.com/album/gab…
#stringquartet #classical #remix
Currently reading: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Currently reading: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates 📚 – Just started the audiobook. So far it’s equal parts autobiography, travelogue, and Black history, as well as a letter to his writing students. I had to stop and write this one down:
“It is never enough for the reader of your words to be convinced. The goal is to haunt. To have them think about your words before bed, see them manifest in their dreams. Tell their partner about them the next morning. To have them grab people on the street, shake them and say ‘Have you read this yet?’”
As though in solidarity or some kind of primal defiance, both our animals have puked this morning. Vibes are way off - take care ❤️
Made this modular origami piece using the rose module designed by Tomoko Fuse. 90 pieces, stellated truncated icosahedron. Used old sheet music that was going to be thrown out. Bach preludes and fugues, mostly. The paper was a bit brittle but it’s a good result.
Some good things I've read and watched lately – Oct 2024
-
Belle (2021) - Anime scifi-musical directed by Mamoru Hosoda. Incredible visuals and a touching story about a grieving high school girl who becomes an overnight global pop sensation – but only on the internet. Accurate depictions of online culture and a unique take on the Beauty and the Beast story. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell…
-
This talk by journalist/author Ed Yong from the 2024 XOXO Festival – Ed Yong wrote long-form stories about the pandemic for the Atlantic and won a Pulitzer for it. He also gave a voice to people suffering from long COVID, as well as health workers who were being gaslit for doing their jobs, and emphasized that public health is a collective responsibility. www.youtube.com/watch
-
Magical/Realism: Essays on music, memory, fantasy, and borders – Book of essays by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, a latina writer who talks about her experience as an immigrant to Texas and the role of fantasy franchises like Game of Thrones, Baldur’s Gate, and The Witcher in her self-discovery. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/704…
Just listened to a really good episode about disability on the Ologies podcast:
Disability Sociology (DISABILITY PRIDE) with Guinevere Chambers
An Ojibwe-language dubbed Star Wars film has been made, premiering in Winnipeg. Seems like a huge win for Indigenous language preservation/reconciliation. More, please!
Every so often an audiobook comes along that is well-written AND funny AND has perfect character narration. This is that book, and it’s a great time.
I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, by Jason Pargin
Making a Brain Fog Index
This was cathartic to write for myself this week. There are descriptions too. Does anyone want to read more? I might turn it into something.
“brain fog index Cataloguing my experience of brain fog in the context of chronic illness
Lvl 1: Flow Lvl 2: Triage Lvl 3: Midnight swamp Lvl 4: Void Lvl 5: ?(dead)”
Making happy spaces for my brain
Here’s a guide from neurodivergent psychologist Megan A Neff on finding just the right amount of stimulation. A topic I’ve been thinking about as I create a new studio space.
How to Find Your Sensory Goldilocks: Achieving the “Just Right” Fit
I got a little folding done at the bookshop tonight.
Chameleon designed by Jo Nakashima, folded by me on 15x15cm kami
“Deep listening, for me, is learning to expand perception of sounds to include the whole space-time continuum of sound, encountering the vastness and complexities as much as possible. […] My practice is to listen to everything all the time, and remind myself when I am not listening.” – Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016)
Origami humpback whale
design by Bodo Haag, folded by me on 18x18 cm kami
Definitely the most difficult model I’ve folded so far
♿️ This is the most interesting accessibility tool I’ve ever seen on Al Gore’s Internet. Click the icon at bottom right, and it lets you change how the page is displayed with things like text size, colour contrast, and focus modes. Taking note for my local accessibility work. visitbend.com
The dystopian "Her" and OpenAI's entitlement problem
From Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine:
“so much of the promise of generative AI as it is currently constituted, is driven by rote entitlement.** I want something and I want it produced, for me, personally, with the least amount of friction possible;** I want to see words arranged on the screen without my having to take the time to write them, I want to see images assembled before me without learning how to draw them. I want to solve the world’s biggest problems, without bothering with politics — I have the data, I have trained the model, I should be able to! We have advanced technology to new heights, we are entitled to its fruits, regardless of the blowback or the laws or the people whose jobs we might threaten.
Making a home on the web
I’ve tried to build a home on the web many times since ~1999-2000 as a teen, when I tinkered with HTML coding and published a collection of short mp3s I found hilarious – mostly from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Star Wars.
Here’s a good piece with lots of helpful links about making a web home today.
Finished reading: Blood in the Machine
Finished reading: Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant 📚
Wow, this book surprised me. It’s a story very well told, and I learned a lot about the Luddite rebellion of the 1810s in England. Workers resisting their replacement by automation technology and their mistreatment in factories. “General Ludd” became a Robin Hood-like legend in Nottingham and surroundings.
Also:
- Dickens' Oliver Twist is said to be based on or influenced by stories of child labour from this period.
- I didn’t know Lord Byron – poet, parliamentarian, philanderer – was such a celebrity. His speech to Parliament about the Luddite cause is one of the best records we have, since so much organizing was done in secret.
- Also he got together with a few friends in Geneva ~1816 at a retreat where both Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) and Dracula were written. Frankenstein, especially, being influenced by Luddism.