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doshmanziari · 3 years

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Musical Offerings for the New Year || What is “Radical Music” in 2021?

Near the end of 2020, a bunch of musicians populating a chatroom, including myself, each submitted ten minutes’ worth of our work to another musician, Chimeratio, who generously compiled it all into a set totaling nearly ten hours.¹ The work didn’t need to be new; just what we thought might best represent our abilities/style(s) and/or perhaps what we were especially pleased with. The set premiered in late January. Since I have some tentative plans for reorienting Brick By Brick this year, while not overriding its emphases, I wanted to share that music with anyone who’s interested.

I compiled the four videos into a playlist, although you can also access them individually: here (1), here (2), here (3), and here (4). If you care to, and are on a computer, you can also view the accompanying chatlog and read people’s responses from when they were listening to the live broadcast.

The compulsion for this project was sparked by excited discussions over and usage of the term “digital fusion”, most helpfully propagated by Aivi Tran, designating a computer-based body of work that for years lacked the rooftop of a commonly agreed upon genre-name. While describing my music has never been a big concern, even if it’s usually felt impossible (what, for example, is this? or this? I dunno!), I’ve appreciated how the spread and application of this term has brought together people who may have felt isolated.²

As “digital fusion” gained designative traction, I witnessed the activity in the aforementioned chatroom explode over the course of a few days. Before, a day’s discussion might’ve been a few dozen messages; now, there were dozens of messages every half-minute. This had positive and negative ramifications, the negative being that conversations often proceeded at a pace of rapidity which precluded concentrated thought. Eventually, I bowed out because the rapidity exceeded my threshold for meaningful interaction; but I was glad that significant invigoration was going on.

I wanted to share this music also because it intersects with thoughts and talks I’ve been having stemming from the question, “What is ‘radical music’ in 2021?” This was stimulated by a 2014 talk given by the writer Mark Fisher, wherein he contends that, were we to play prominent “cutting edge” music from now to people twenty years ago, very nearly none of it would be aesthetically shocking, bizarre, or revelatory (think of playing house music to an audience in the early 1960s!). Fisher also observes a trend of returning to music which once was seen as the future -- as if, deprived of a shared prograde vision, imaginations turn hazily retrograde; ergo, genres such as synthwave or albums like Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories.

It isn’t my goal here to argue about the “end of history.” Fisher’s time-travel hypothetical, however, rings loud and true to me. Visible musical radicalism has, for at least a decade, been strictly extra-musical, in the sense of songs like “This is America” or “WAP”, where one’s response is primarily to the spectacle of the music video, the performer’s identistic markers, and/or the manner in which the lyrics intersect with (mostly US-centric) ideological hotspots. Musically, there is really nothing radical here. Any vociferous condemnations or defenses of a song like “WAP” deal in moralizing reactions to semantics or imagery: how progressive or regressive is the political aspect? how propelled or repelled are we by the word “pussy”?

It would be a mistake, and simply wrong, to assert that the only music one can enjoy escapes the parameters outlined above; and my inability to coherently categorize some of my own music hardly raises that portion to the status of radicality. But the question here pertains to what is being made, and I think that if we’re going to seriously consider the nature of truly radical music today, we do need to question if such a quality can prominently exist when our hyper-fast consumerist cycle seems to forbid not just sustained, lifelong relationships to artwork but also the local, unhurried nourishment of creative gestation. Now, in my opinion, there are good, even great, examples of radical music still being made in deep Internet-burrows, and for evidence of that I would offer some of the material contained in the linked playlists. Moreover, I’d say that this quality can exist in part because these little artistic communities are so buried.

Let me share a quote that another person shared with me recently:

For culture to shift, you need pockets of isolated humanity. Since all pockets of humanity (outside of the perpetually isolated indigenous people in remote wilderness) are connected in instantaneous fashion, independent ideas aren’t allowed to ferment on their own. When you cook a meal, you have to bring ingredients together that have had time to grow, ferment, or decompose separately. A cucumber starts out as a seed, then you mix it with the soil, water and sunlight. You can’t bring the seed, soil, water and sunlight to the kitchen from the get-go. When you throw those things in to the mixture without letting them mature, the flavor cannot stand out on its own. Same thing with art and fashion. A kid in Russia can come up with a new way to dance, gets filmed on a phone, it goes viral quickly but gets lost in the morass of all of the other multitudinous forms of dance. Sure it spread far and wide, but it gets forgotten in a week. In the past, his new art form would have been confined locally, nurtured, honed, then spread geographically, creating a distinct new cultural idiosyncrasy with a strong support base. By the time it was big enough to be presented globally, it was already a cultural phenomenon locally. This isn’t possible anymore. We’re consuming too many unripened fruits.

The main impression I have here is that radical music today will, and must be, folk music. Our common idea of folkiness might be the scrappy singer strumming a guitar, but my interpretive reference rather has to do with the idea of a music being written, first of all, for one’s self, and then shared with a small-scale community, which in turn helps the artist grow at their own pace. This transcends a dependence upon image, the primacy of acoustic instrumentation, or the signaling of sincerity versus insincerity. It is a return to the valuation of outsider art, so rare nowadays. As someone who I was recently in dialogue with wrote, “Where can you find new genuine folk music? Pretty much just with your friends, imo. Even then, the global world is so influential and seeps into any crack it can find. I think vaporwave was radical and folk for a while. Grant Forbes made that music way before the world knew about it.”

Sometimes, a lot of fuss is made over what’s seen as “gatekeeping” within certain communities. It can be, depending on the context, justifiable to question and critique this behavior. At other times, the effort of maintaining a level of exclusivity, of retaining an idiosyncratic shapeliness to the communal organism, can be a legitimate attempt to protect the personal, interpersonal, and cultural aspects from the flattening effect of monoculture. Hypothetically, I welcome the Castlevania TV series and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate having introduced new and younger demographics to Castlevania. In actuality, stuff like “wholesome sad gay himbo Alucard”, image macros, and neurotic “stan” fanfiction being what’s now first associated with the series makes me want to put as much distance as possible between my interests and those latecoming impositions.

The group-terminology David Chapman uses in his essay “Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths in Subculture Evolution” is kinda cringey, but some of the cultural/behavioral patterns he lays out are relevant to the topic. Give it a look. If we cross his belief that “[subcultures] are no longer the primary drivers of cultural development” with our contemporary consume-and-dispose customs, we’re left with the predicament of it’s even worth attempting to bring radical/outsider art beyond its rhizomatic habitat. This is troubling, because it would mean that artistic radicality no longer might not only refuse to but cannot encompass cultural upheaval. It would be like if dance music were invented and -- instead of progressively permeating nightlife, stimulating countercultural trends, and ultimately being adapted as the basis for pop music globally -- only were listened to via headphones by a few thousand people on their own, stimulated a group meeting once a year or two, and never affected music beyond a niche-within-a-niche. That’s a very sad picture to me.

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¹ Chimeratio has also maintained an excellent blog on here dedicated to looking at videogame music written in irregular time signatures, far preceding higher-profile examinations like 8-bit Music Theory’s video on the same topic.

² For myself, creative isolation has had its uses, because it has led me down routes that are highly personalized. The isolation can be dispiriting too. Although a lot of my music is videogame-music-adjacent, almost none of it uses “authentic” technology, such as PSG synthesizers or FM synthesis; and the identification of those sounds is fairly important for recognition.

#music analysis #radicalism #digital fusion

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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The Man Who Helped Turn 4chan Into the Internet’s Racist Engine

In two decades, 4chan has evolved from a message board where people talked about anime to a casually racist but influential creation engine of internet culture, and now into a generator of far-right propaganda, a place where dangerous conspiracy theories originate, and an amplifier of online bigotry. This evolution, according to 4chan moderators who spoke to Motherboard and leaked chat logs, is in large part because of an anonymous administrator who used moderation enforcement, or lack thereof, to allow the influential website to become a crucial arm of the far-right.

4chan attracted hordes of disaffected young men who trolled various other websites, creating popular memes (many of them racist or sexist) and originating a great deal of internet culture. In recent years, however, 4chan has evolved into something actively sinister: a hive of bigotry, threats of violence, and far right ideology. This rapid and severe descent wasn’t driven solely by the mass action of disgruntled young men.

One current and three former 4chan moderators believe the process was aided along by the de facto administrator of the site, a far right supporter with the handle “RapeApe” who helped turn the site into a meme factory for extreme politics. Motherboard agreed to let the janitors speak anonymously because they said they signed non-disclosure agreements with 4chan.

Because of 4chan’s often wildly offensive content, many assume that the site is completely unmoderated. But 4chan has a corps of volunteers, called “janitors,” “mods,” or “jannies,” whose job it is—theoretically—to make sure that content on the site abides by the rules. (4chan draws a distinction between more senior “moderators,” who are responsible for all boards, and “janitors,” who patrol one or two; we refer to them interchangeably because janitors also moderate discussion.) The janitors we spoke to and a major trove of leaked chat logs from the janitors’ private communications channel tell the story of RapeApe’s rise from junior janny to someone who could decide what kind of content was allowed on the site and where, shaping 4chan into the hateful, radicalizing online community it's known for today.

Started in 2003 by Christopher Poole, 4chan was initially a place for people to discuss anime. Since its founding, the site has expanded to include discussion boards on everything from travel to fitness to video games to origami. It now claims around 22 million visitors a month. Some parts of it are also recruiting grounds for Neo-Nazi groups.

4chan’s more recent extremist element can be traced back to an infamous board: “politically incorrect,” which is listed as "/pol/" on the site. Ostensibly devoted to discussing politics, /pol/ threads often involve users calling each other racist terms, arguing for the genocide of whole nations or ethnicities, or debating about whether different concepts are “degenerate”—a Nazi term of art for material (or people) that ought to be purged. Posters there celebrate and lionize some of the most notorious mass murderers of the last decade, from Anders Breivik to Dylann Roof.

The forum has popularized iconography like Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character reappropriated by some as a racist symbol of the far right that President Trump’s son has tweeted images of. According to academic researchers, 4chan's /pol/ has become one of the most prodigious factories for content on the internet. And the boundaries of its influence spread far beyond the borders of 4chan itself, affecting everything from YouTube to Twitter to mainstream Republican politics.

The politically incorrect board wasn’t always this bad. In fact, former 4chan moderators told Motherboard that /pol/ wasn’t added to the site until 2011, eight years after the site started. For the first few years of its existence, according to two former janitors, Poole intended the /pol/ board to siphon off the racism from other areas of the site so that other users could enjoy their own, board-specific pursuits.

“It was started as a containment board,” one former moderator told me about /pol/. According to chat logs and former moderators, in its early days, moderators at 4chan removed racist posts and users from other boards while ignoring them within one board, “random” (/b/, which was supposed to be a kind of “no rules, anything goes” space. /b/ is where many early memes were born, and is where the hacktivist group Anonymous came from). Such posts also sometimes slipped by on the /pol/ board as well, even though they technically violated the rules there. “Enforcement was more active in the past,” a former moderator said. In contrast to its current far right political climate, “4chan skewed extremely progressive when it first started,” according to the mod, although the use of bigoted and misogynistic language was widespread even then.

But 4chan has changed in recent years. Several studies of the site have shown that 4chan has become more racist, bigoted, and toxic in recent years—especially the /pol/ board. Ideologies propagated on /pol/ have become linked with violence and domestic terrorism. 4chan janitors' main job is to clean up and remove child pornography, lest 4chan draw the wrath of federal authorities, but they also shape the discourse there by setting the limits of acceptable discussion. If a thread goes off-topic or starts to get too racist, the janitors have the responsibility for asking mods to delete it and potentially issue bans against specific users.

According to leaked logs and the 4chan janitors who spoke with Motherboard, the manager of 4chan’s janitors is RapeApe. Relatively little is known about him, even by the janitors who spoke with us and worked for him, although he has been supervising 4chan’s day-to-day operations for around a decade.

In 2015, Poole announced that he had decided to sell 4chan to a Japanese businessman named Hiroyuki Nishimura. Nishimura previously owned 2chan, a Japanese website which inspired 4chan. Janitors who spoke with Motherboard described Nishimura as being almost completely hands off, leaving moderation of the site primarily to RapeApe.

“[RapeApe] basically fulfills the role of an administrator considering Hiroyuki [Nishimura], the actual admin, doesn't touch the site,” a current janitor told me. Poole and Nishimura did not respond to repeated requests for comment. RapeApe responded by sending an email that contained only a single link to a video of naked muscular men dancing.

Even prior to the site’s change in ownership, RapeApe functioned as the primary judge of what constituted acceptable content on the site, as well as the person who educated the staff on what did and didn’t cross the line. As Gamergate became a subject on the site in 2014, 4chan users began harassing women in the video game industry due to what they perceived as progressive bias in reporting on games. Eventually, RapeApe tried to stop 4chan’s campaign of intimidation. “[Gamergate] is no longer allowed on the video game boards. So said [RapeApe],” one janitor informed another in the leaked chats. When other jannies protested, RapeApe rapidly shut them down: “This isn’t a democracy,” RapeApe wrote. “Gamergate has overstayed its welcome. It is starting to cause a massive burden for moderation.”

WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 12: Counterprotestors to the Unite the Right 2 rally burn a Kekistan flag, a white nationalist symbol, in the middle of 15th St. NW near the White House on August 12, 2018 in Washington, DC. Image: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

In 2015, an anonymous former moderator leaked an extensive chat history of the janitors from 2012-2015 to a file-sharing service. One of the former janitors included in the chats confirmed their authenticity. According to a brief message posted with the logs, the leaker was unhappy with “the direction of the site.” From those leaked logs and the current and former janitors who spoke with Motherboard, RapeApe claims to be a military veteran who served in Afghanistan as well as a voracious reader, interested in video games, guns, and Warhammer: 40,000. He often complained about his family impeding his work and was afraid they would walk in on him looking at questionable or pornographic posts as he was moderating.

According to the janitor and chat logs (as well as a deleted Twitter account two staff members confirmed was his), RapeApe is also politically conservative and racist. One former janitor described him as “a typical right winger and /pol/ dude.” His Twitter account featured him responding approvingly to Tucker Carlson clips, urging another user to buy an AR-15 rifle for self-defense, wondering whether the state would force people to be homosexual and suggesting that Twitter was “staffed by leftists” who were deleting conservative users’ accounts. In conversations with other janitors in the leaked chats, he found humor in horrifying news about riots, shootings, and the Ebola epidemic—especially when that news involved Black people dying.

But RapeApe isn’t just a typical /pol/ user who happens to run the site. According to three current and former staff members, RapeApe shaped 4chan into a reflection of his own political beliefs. “RapeApe has an agenda: he wants /pol/ to have influence on the rest of the site and [its] politics,” a current janitor said.

Alone, RapeApe couldn’t steer 4chan to the far right. But he supervises a staff of dozens of volunteers who control discourse on the boards. According to the leaked chats and janitors who spoke with Motherboard, he instructed janitors on how to handle the more bigoted content on 4chan—and dismissed them if they deleted content he likes. He took a special interest in the /pol/ board, telling a novice janitor in the chat logs to “treat /pol/ with kid gloves. So long as they obey the rules, they are allowed to support whatever abominable political positions they want.”

4chan has an extensive list of rules posted on the site and each board has its own smaller set of edicts. A little-known and rarely enforced 4chan regulation, Global Rule #3, prohibits racist content on the site. But the leaked chat logs show many incidents of moderators and janitors discussing when racism got severe enough that it ought to be banned. Indeed, RapeApe himself deleted at least one thread for violating Rule #3 early on in his 4chan career, before he became a manager.

Once he became head moderator, RapeApe began to post reminders that moderators ought to be as hands-off as possible. In the leaked logs and according to current and former janitors, RapeApe pushed his staff into a position where almost no content could run afoul of the rule against racism. Instructing the janitors, RapeApe wrote, “And remember that with racism we're targeting the intent of the poster and not the words themselves.” One current janitor told me that in practice, within 4chan’s warped, irony-poisoned culture, this meant there was no way to ban a user for even the most flagrant, bigoted language or images. They could always claim that the intent wasn’t racist, even if the content unquestionably was.

"The plausible deniability excuse for racism—I was just joking, I was just trolling—is bullshit," Whitney Phillips, an Assistant Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Syracuse University and author of This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture, told Motherboard. "Intent can matter when thinking about the things people say, but it matters very little when considering consequences. Whether or not someone says a racist thing with hate in their heart, they're still saying a racist thing and that still contributes to dehumanization and the normalization of harm. Anyway, the very criterion is absurd, as you can't assess what's in someone's heart just by looking at the things they post, especially to a place like 4chan. The only reasonable conclusion is that, whatever might have been written in the site rules, this moderator ensured that there was no policy against racism. Instead it became a pro-racism policy."

The leaked chat logs show that RapeApe didn't want /pol/ to be totally unmoderated, despite allowing racist content. He was concerned with making sure 4chan wasn’t hosting illegal material. “Mostly I just want to keep the site legal,” he wrote to the staff in one message in the leaked chats. He posted frequent reminders to the channel to “take it easy” and ignore, rather than ban, racist content. In the leaked chats, RapeApe quotes judicial decisions on whether photos depicting animal abuse are illegal, concluding that they only rise to that level if the abuse is sexual in nature. In another case, he reluctantly told a janitor to delete some revenge porn, though not without belittling laws against it.

Nishimura’s purchase of the site in 2016 and RapeApe’s ascension to de facto administrator of 4chan coincides with an incredible 40 percent spike in the volume of racist and violent language on /pol/. Other, comparable sites and communication channels also pushed towards extreme conservatism independently of 4chan, so RapeApe and /pol/ certainly aren’t the only reasons why 4chan slid towards the far right. Some experts credited 4chan’s evolution to Donald Trump’s overtly-racist political campaign, others to an influx of new users, and still others to active interference and recruiting of 4channers by Neo-Nazi elements.

While other websites also host increasing amounts of violent and bigoted language, 4chan is an outlier even compared to other internet gathering places filled with similar ideologies. A VICE News analysis found that there was more hate speech on /pol/ than in the comments on one overtly Neo-Nazi site, the Daily Stormer. Mass murderers have posted manifestos on 4chan. White nationalists have used the site to coordinate protests.

When one Neo-Nazi group polled their supporters to discover how they came to the movement, /pol/ was tied for the most common gateway. Gab, another far right hotbed, contains about half the rate of hate speech as /pol/, and 4chan has 20 times more users. The only popular websites more toxic than 4chan are its much smaller offspring sites, like 8chan, now 8kun.

According to one current and three former janitors, RapeApe’s push for a hands-off approach combined with his preference for janitors who shared his political beliefs has shifted the website further into the extremes of bigotry and threats of violence in which it now operates. “He wants 4chan to be more like /pol/,” said one former janitor.

Over time, /pol/ has come to dominate the public perception of 4chan, overshadowing the quieter, less vile topic areas which make up much of the activity on the site. /pol/ is regularly the most active board on the site, but even so, it makes up a small portion of the total posts. Under RapeApe’s management, however, /pol/’s bigotry has metastasized.

“[W]hen RapeApe took over fully after [Poole] left, he put in a ‘laissez-faire’ policy of moderation, knowing exactly what would happen, that right wing ideas would dominate the site thanks to /pol/ spilling over onto other boards,” said a current janitor.

The /pol/ forum often hosts threads in which users talk about flooding other, unrelated boards with racial slurs and bigoted imagery. These “raids” expose users who were on 4chan to discuss other subjects to its unconventional, far-right politics. Posters who logged on to the site to chat about sports or browse pornography could find themselves learning about Neo-Nazi ideology instead. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University and expert on far-right extremism, describes this phenomenon as “gateway content.” Simply by exposing people to hate speech, psychologists have found that it’s possible to desensitize them to further hate speech and dehumanize outgroups. By raiding other boards and giving users a taste of their ideology, /pol/ diehards hoped to bring them into their fold.

In one incident from the chat logs, when a moderator tried to clean up such an “invasion” of the science board, RapeApe wasn’t having it. Rather than delete the thread a janitor described as planning a raid, RapeApe argued that they weren’t doing anything against the rules. “Are they actually vandalising or defacing anything, or harassing people?” RapeApe added: “Because if they're just posting things, that's not really a raid.”

Current and former janitors say that one moderator named Modcat was fired for disagreeing withRapeApe's laissez-faire moderation policy.

“Some jannies got in trouble for overusing [global rule 3, against racism],” said one former janitor.

An analysis of the archives of the anime board (/a/) Modcat used to patrol, derived by scraping its past threads, shows that Modcat’s departure and replacement with another janitor had consequences on the language used there. Motherboard used a 4chan archive and wrote a program to scrape data from the board over the last five years, counting the number of instances of common hate speech terms against Black, Latino, Jewish, and LGBTQ people each day, as well as Neo-Nazi slogans. This program scraped text only and so did not include instances of speech within images, a common medium of communication on 4chan. Immediately after his departure, according to former moderators, /pol/ users raided the board, spamming Neo-Nazi slogans like “sieg heil” and “heil Hitler” in about one in every 50 posts. (Use of these terms had been negligible before Modcat left.) Even after the initial raid on /a/ subsided, there were long-term effects on the forum. During Modcat's brief tenure, the anime board had hate speech in only about one in every 50 posts overall. Since his departure, that has risen to about one in every 30 posts.

Leaked chat logs demonstrate other instances of seemingly politically-motivated firings. Not long after a janitor named yetsturdy argued that the use of terms like the n-word and stereotyped depictions of Jews violated 4chan’s rules, they were fired. (Leaked chat logs show janitors suggesting that his firing was due to arguing with another janitor). A janitor who described himself as a “lefty” in leaked logs was let go ostensibly for losing his anonymity, although another 4chan staff member with far right politics is open about his identity on Twitter and publishes newspaper editorials under his real name.

Others in the leaked janitor chats noticed the firings of their colleagues. One even alluded to RapeApe’s apparent agenda, asking him directly: “with all these janitors quitting/getting fired, is… is /pol/ winning?” (In the chat, RapeApe quickly denied that it had anything to do with /pol/’s political agenda, saying that the fired janitors had violated clear rules.)

Five years later, the politically incorrect board’s conflict with the rest of 4chan has been settled: /pol/ won. After years of declining volume both there and on the site in general, /pol/’s activity (in terms of the number of users and posts) is on the rise once again, according to a site that tracks 4chan. Jumping upwards in May 2020, /pol/ boasted the highest number of posts per day since election day in 2016, when ecstatic users celebrated Trump’s victory by calling for a second Holocaust and harassing journalists.

/pol/’s surging popularity coincides with a boost for the rest of the site as well. According to SimilarWeb, a company that tracks web traffic, 4chan has risen to become one of the top 400 sites in the United States in terms of engagement and visits. The domain now rivals or exceeds major news sites in terms of the number of visitors: it gets more traffic than abcnews.com, for example.

And the /pol/ channel continues to create massive amounts of right-wing content. RapeApe’s “meme factory,” as he described /pol/ in one leaked chat log, is chugging along smoothly. “[RapeApe has] basically fulfilled his intentions,” a current janitor told me. “[4chan] exists as a fully developed political tool used for propagating memes and propaganda.” 4chan’s content sometimes spreads beyond its esoteric corner of the internet into the mainstream discourse, using a well-established pipeline running through Reddit and Twitter into more popular channels.

Journalists have chronicled the outsized influence 4chan has had on our culture and created many theories to explain its slide into racist extremism, connections to the rise of Donald Trump, and a surge in white nationalist movements around the world. Disaffected young men across the globe have participated in creating a hateful melting pot of conspiracy theories, bigotry, and hate speech with a massive, global audience.

We can’t know exactly how much impact the rhetoric on the site had on the world or the full extent of its influence on the broader political landscape. But we can dispel some of the mystery about how 4chan became filled with hate. Like every other platform, 4chan’s evolution stems in part from the choices made by its administrators about what speech is acceptable and what is not. Facebook allowed Holocaust denial content until Mark Zuckerberg decided not to; Reddit allowed its Donald Trump-focused subreddit to popularize 4chan’s content until it shut it down. 4chan became the dangerous cesspool we know today because of the choices of a site administrator who wanted to amplify far right content and an owner who doesn’t care.

The internet is one of the most powerful technologies the world has ever known, but why that power so often results in dehumanizing and hurting people is not as mysterious as we sometimes assume. It is the direct result of the choices people with control over internet platforms make.

The Man Who Helped Turn 4chan Into the Internet’s Racist Engine syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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theracialproblemspdx-blog · 5 years

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The Problem

As far as “American ideals” go, the sentiment “All men are created equal” is one of the ones we hold dearest. Segregation is the very antithesis to this. “Separate but equal” is not achievable, at least in this day and age. If we want everyone to flourish and enrich their lives we need to be able to provide the ability to do that. But what is segregation? Some of our readers may even be asking “Weren’t all of those laws repealed during reconstruction”?

Sadly, no. While ‘de jure’ (by law) segregation no longer exists in America we are still segregated at a distribution level through the actions of individual banks and districts to keep poor people of color away from rich, often suburban, and white enclaves. This is not simply a random definition, In 2009 the U.N. published a report explicitly about minority issues and among many topic discussed, defines has this to say on segregation: “State or local policies or practices that, de jure or de facto, result in separate classes or schools for minority pupils, or schools or classes with grossly disproportionately high numbers of minority pupils, on a discriminatory basis, are prohibited” (emphasis added) (McDougall, 2009). This means that even the U.N. officially recognizes that policies like redlining enable segregation and that it is the distribution or ‘clustering’ of racial groups that is the fundamental problem today.

Racial segregation through different means is a detriment to society for many reasons. Not only does it push people of color to the literal “fringes” of society thus making it easier to sideline their needs and disregard the problems they face in their community, it also robs them of the opportunities found elsewhere. How often do we dismiss things such as drugs and crimes because it happens on “that side of town?

The problem that we are attempting to tackle, whether we know it or not, is active segregation at a citywide level. Segregation through legal, financial, and oftentimes brutal suppression by the police. Portland has been the whitest city for decades and it doesn’t seem to be changing its statistics anytime soon. “Portland has already been outed as the whitest major city in America – at 72.2% white, it’s almost a full ten percentage points above the national rate of 62.6% (A). Portland having this alarming rate of race makes me think. If the white race takes of more than half of Portland what is happening to the rest? One race can overtake a place and make it their own but in the process push out another that was already existing. This is what is currently happening in our very own city. Modern segregation is a very adamant problem, there are neighborhoods where it is predominantly white and when a different race moves in the property rate goes down, therefore society does not allow this to happen. And when gentrification happens, white people moving into poor communities and displacing local people of color, we celebrate the ‘improvement’ of the neighborhood. Our society is still stuck in this mindset, because it wasn’t until ‘1990s, when real estate developers and a resurgent interest in an urban lifestyle ushered in an era of gentrification that transformed traditional black neighborhoods” (Milner, 2018). It take hundreds of years to work out of this and we still continue to oppress.

Portland’s issue with segregation in the modern context is primarily organized through gentrification. We can see both of their effects in the maps that are constructed through surveys showing a stark divide between a majority white Portland in the south west and a concentrated black and multi-racial concentration in the northeast (Race and Ethnicity in Portland, Oregon (City), 2018). When overlaid with a map of at-risk-of gentrification neighborhoods, you can see a close correspondence between race and threatened areas (Interactive map: Portland neighborhoods at risk of gentrification, 2018). Another modern form of segregation is redistricting schools to create racial hegemonies in each district. However, I could find little to no information online about whether this was happening in the Portland area; so we will not be discussing it.

As long as racial segregation continues, racism will flourish inside the privileged enclaves and it will hold back the unprivileged. As a country (and worldwide) we will be unable to achieve the best we can be if parts of our society are pinned under others.

Citations:

A. (2014, December 12). How Diverse is Your City? Retrieved from https://priceonomics.com/how-diverse-is-your-city/

McDougall, G. (2009). Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development. Human Rights Documents Online. doi:10.1163/2210-7975_hrd-9970-2016149

Millner, D. (2018). Blacks in Oregon. Retrieved from https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/blacks_in_oregon/#.XIBb-lNKjOR

Race and Ethnicity in Portland, Oregon (City). (2018). Retrieved March 6, 2019, from https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Oregon/Portland/Race-and-Ethnicity

Interactive map: Portland neighborhoods at risk of gentrification. (2018). Retrieved March 6, 2019, from https://projects.oregonlive.com/maps/gentrification/

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loughlinpatrick · 5 years

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People Evolve – Writing Does, Too. So, What’s Next for Literature?

It’s time to write the next chapter of the story of literature. Photo: Nong Vang // Unsplash

Literature comes in many modes, modes which have been changing and adapting over millennia. We’ve had oral storytelling, the origin of many fairytales ingrained in our culture, written texts, which have contributed to the literary canon, and filmmaking, an extremely recent phenomenon when you consider all of human history but one that has definitely left its mark on our culture at large. As the methodology of literature has evolved, we’ve never entirely left any mode behind.

For example, oral storytelling has minted many ‘YouTube millionaires’ who’ve risen to fame through their use of the notable “story time” video format, which consists of them delivering (usually extremely exaggerated) stories about their lives to camera. So, when thinking about the future of literature, the question you should be asking isn’t “What will replace our current modes of literature?” but rather, “What new technology will complement these existing modes?”

The Answer Starts With Interactive Fiction…

Game on! Is the future of literature already here? Not quite… Photo: Florian Gagnepain // Unsplash

You might think the answer lies with video games, a format that has built upon filmmaking by adding a layer of perceived interactivity that makes players feel like they control the story. Many popular releases have taken this a step further in recent times, with the indie game ‘Until Dawn’ (2015) allowing players to achieve a range of possible endings, and more recent entries in the ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ (2014) series having “good” and “bad” endings. This style of interactive media allows consumers to feel more ownership over a particular narrative, but is the feeling of ownership among fans necessarily a good thing to foster?

This possessiveness over literature is one of the three main ingredients in “toxic fandom” according to media critic Rachael Lefler, who says possessive fans see media as “a territory or property they own.” In western culture, this can manifest as newly-hired female writers for the series ‘Rick & Morty’ (2013) facing harassment from fans who perceive them as “forced-SJW hires” who are ruining “their” show, as well as similar sexist harassment targeted at Marvel writers for a viral selfie.

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Ahead of its time? ‘Perfect Blue’ (1997) explores toxic fandom in Japan.

Toxic fandom isn’t just a Western problem – similar issues occur with fan behaviour toward Japanese J-Pop idols. The anime-psychological thriller ‘Perfect Blue,’ (1997) which features a stalker tormenting and impersonating his favourite J-Pop idol, explores this issue in-depth as it pertains to Japan.

The level of interactivity applied to modern texts can also be harmful to fandoms, in that it can be difficult for fans to know where the interactivity ends. Netflix demonstrated this with their first foray into the interactive film genre, ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’ (2019), which had some fans convinced that there was a sixth “secret ending” within the movie in addition to the five main endings that were known. The ambiguity led to many online fan communities wasting hours of their time looking for clues to the alleged secret ending; this was ultimately a wild goose chase which only served to make it even more apparent that the film did not function as a text with a satisfying and “complete” plot.

Great as a game — not so much as a narrative; ‘Bandersnatch’ fell flat for some ‘Black Mirror’ fans. Photo: Netflix

However, even with texts that are not inherently interactive, such as HBO’s ‘Westworld’ (2017) – itself a meta-commentary on the limits of interactive texts. The show employed a trans-media strategy that allowed fans to access “secret” websites belonging to organisations and characters in the show. These websites then contained clues as to what would happen in future episodes of the show, but this led many fans to obsessively analyse trailers and posts from Westworld’s social media accounts to find more clues and secrets that weren’t there. In both of these cases, the expectations of the writers and viewers didn’t match up, leading viewers to look for deeper layers of interactivity that didn’t exist.

A Healthy Author-Reader Dialogue is Key.

Dedicated fans want to add to the story! Photo: Kaitlyn Baker // Unsplash

The tenacity of consumers of media to run with a story and build upon it has been apparent for decades, with growing online communities allowing fans to discuss media and even write fan-fiction to add on to the plots of their favourite texts. Some of these fan-fiction works have even entered mainstream consciousness, with backing from legacy media helping to turn well-known fan-fiction into physical books and globally released films. Two key examples of this phenomenon are ‘Fifty Shades of Grey,’ (2015) which was initially ‘Twilight’ (2008) fan-fiction, and the romance movie ‘After,’ (2019) which was originally fan-fiction about Harry Styles.

This tenacity of fans for storytelling is what helped the success of the comedy movie ‘Clue,’ (1985) based on the murder-mystery board game of the same name. The film had three different endings, with each cinema that showed it only receiving one conclusion. The film’s writers believed that this gimmick would allow “super-fans” to see the film multiple times, but ‘Clue’ ended up being a box-office flop. It was only through television re-runs that the film was able to build up an online fan community that enjoyed writing alternate endings and become the 80s cult classic that it is today.

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Fans of ‘Clue’ who’d watched it in different places were very confused when talking about it!

So, we’ve learned that it’s crucial to balance the expectations of an audience with the ambitions of a work’s creator, and this is a lesson that I employed in writing my mystery-novel series, ‘Revenge in Ridgeview.’ My series contains three mystery novels, and in writing them, I communicated extensively with my audience (at the time: only my friends who I badgered into reading them). As I was releasing the books online with a chapter a week (on the very same platform where ‘After’ was first published), I was also able to engage with readers of my work from other countries. The dialogue I had with my readers allowed me to ask them questions at the end of the first book, a key one being “Who is your favourite character?” Then, (as all authors feed off your tears) I made sure to give that character a terrible time in subsequent books. Yes, I upset quite a few of my friends; no, I’m not ashamed.

The Future is Personalised.

Is this the future of literature? Photo: Markus Spiske // Unsplash

So, now we can answer the question we’re here to get to the bottom of: what is next for literature? Well, taking the lessons we’ve learned, we can see that the next mode of media will be something that relies on computers, as seen in the way video games built upon filmmaking. However, unlike video games, writers will likely want to take back some of the feeling ownership over their texts. So, in essence, the mode will be interactive, but in a way where readers don’t know that they’re interacting with it. How can we accomplish this? With personalised literature; you wouldn’t “choose your adventure,” the adventure would choose you.

Netflix and other streaming services are already in a unique position to make this happen; they’ve collected mountains of data from every single profile on their service: your watch habits, when you watch, where you watch from, and as seen in the aftermath of their ‘Bandersnatch’ experiment, they even store the choices you make when viewing their interactive originals, forever. So, what would this allow writers to do?

Well, we’ve already seen that demonstrated way back in 1985 with ‘Clue,’ where cinemas had alternate endings; Netflix could do the same thing, but this time, instead of showing a random conclusion to a viewer with no idea of how they would react, Netflix could instead determine the “best ending” for the viewer and show them that one. The company is already experimenting with this to a certain extent: Netflix presents the episodes of ‘Love, Death & Robots’ (2019) in different orders for different users.

Journalists can also take advatage of personalised literature. Photo: Mr Cup / Fabien Barral // Unsplash

Furthermore, while I’ve avoided discussing non-fictional literature in so far, the news media is also in a unique position to take advantage of our move toward personalised texts.

For example, BBC News has been trialling personalised articles – or “perceptive media” as they call it – on their website since mid-2012 in a bid to appeal more to young adult readers. These efforts have allowed them to add a local angle to specific stories with a national focus by using the user’s location, such as showing local crime statistics in an article that discusses national trends.

The BBC also experimented with reports covering developing stories by adding personalised summaries based on previous articles on the topic that a user had read; they quickly scrapped this feature because “participants quite rightly asked how we knew what they’d read.” So, not all personalisation is well-received – sometimes it’s just too creepy – but journalists should still experiment in this area.

The Discussion Continues…

Lights, camera, action! Let’s hit record on the next phase of literature. Photo: Thomas William // Unsplash

As I noted earlier, the delivery of texts will always adapt. We’ve had oral storytelling, writing, filmmaking, video games and interactive fiction, and it’s likely that next, we’ll have personalised literature. This next mode certainly won’t be the last, and it won’t come without flaws. There’s still an ethical debate to be had about whether these big companies should even have your data in the first place, and about how they’ll use it.

For example, could streaming services like Netflix edit out scenes featuring LGBTQI couples if they detect that a viewer is homophobic, and would it be ethical to do so? I used my dialogue with my audience to create a text that would challenge them, but services with a financial incentive (and lots more of your data at their disposal) may not have the same moral imperative. So, let’s start having that conversation, so we can make sure that the future of literature is a good one.

Update: My friends are still upset about what I did to their favourite character. The power of knowing your readers, I guess?

#storytelling #writing #filmmaking #journalism #literature

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martinmamangun-blog · 6 years

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Into the Twittersphere

As society continues to usher into and embrace the cyber and digital age that has come to define the past decade, it is no surprise that social media dominates not only our mobile and handheld devices, but also the real world political landscape. My respective generation of millennials and post-millennials has grown up with and transitioned from MySpace to Facebook to Tumblr to Twitter to Instagram to Snapchat and all of which amongst many other platforms have raised the scale, brought upon new ways of expression and posting, and influenced significant events and current reality. Out of all these forms of social media, Twitter has probably evolved the most in terms of how users first used the site and application versus how they use it today. As an avid iPhone user and social media connoisseur, I have plenty of experience with Twitter and the aforementioned apps to which I gained throughout my adolescence. Given that I joined Twitter in 2012, I have witnessed several shifts in the blue bird’s dynamic as content is constantly changing and being generated. In this following piece, I will examine the Twitter of the past and the Twitter of now and look in between the years of how it has impacted consumption of entertainment, news, and politics, and overall, society and the world.

Before diving into the evolution of Twitter, it is especially important to look at its origins and popularization. Amanda MacArthur details the history of Twitter in her article “The Real History of Twitter, In Brief”, in which she recounts how the social media site first began as a side project for co-founder Jack Dorsey in the year 2006 (MacArthur 1). Dorsey even intended for Twitter, or “twttr” (what it was commonly referred to in its early days), to be an SMS-based communications platform, so basically a different way of texting friends (MacArthur 1). The concept indeed started off as such until the idea then developed and branched out into a social network as several users hopped aboard the Twitter train, or bird for that matter. As Twitter experienced this explosive growth, it was interesting for the programming team to see how much people were producing with a 140 character limit (now 280 characters). What once started as a vision for a new method of messaging progressed into a user base of millions and an innovation of replies, mentions, @ symbols, retweets, and the famous hashtags. Twitter became its own social media network site, or SNS, and fits all the characteristics that Danah M. Boyd described in “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship”. Boyd defines the term SNS as a “web-based service that allows individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public proﬁle within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (Boyd 211). That certainly sounds like Twitter as the site progresses even further in developing along with its user base and audience.

Based on my personal experience of using Twitter ever since 2012, I have kept up with and followed content that has made me laugh, made me smile, made me sad, made me astonished, and made me angry. Through this spectrum of Twitter consisting of so many users of different social and ethical backgrounds, it is arguably poetic that the platform brings people together just as much as it tears people apart. For instance, in “The Power and Political Economy of Social Media”, Christian Fuchs claims a limit on social media in respect to its participation as an ideology. Fuchs argues against social media as participatory as he feels that people are using media to form opinions on entertainment based topics instead of political topics to which he finds more important (Fuchs 98). In many cases Fuch’s statements holds true throughout Twitter’s existence, but I do believe the site has raised more political concerns in the past two years. Yes, Fuchs even specifies the limits of Twitter in regard to how “Obama has a very large number of followers [while] the number is much lower for representatives of alternative politics” (Fuchs 102), but it is imperative to note that despite only being written in 2014, the political landscape has changed so much in heavy part to Donald Trump. Exclude Trump’s presidency and love for tweeting, and there are still many others cases and situations in which Twitter has went beyond talking about the hottest celebrity scandals and stories and instead more about world politics and national crises and issues. Unlike other SNS counterparts such as Facebook, Twitter tends to not get soaked with the whole idea of iCapitalism, or commodification of information, a concept described by Alistair Duff in “Rating the revolution: Silicon Valley in Normative Perspective”. I strongly believe that the Twittersphere primarily revolves around information being produced and shared for that simple matter as it reflects the information society established by Silicon Valley (Duff 1609). However, with all this content and with every popular trend and network of countless users, there exists both goods and bads.

I stand by the perspective to which Twitter has changed the world, but the platform essentially has changed lives for not just the better, but also for the worst. In her article for The Guardian, Elena Cresci reviews ways in which Twitter has extended its influence to its user base beyond the 140/280 characters. Cresci highlights how the social network media site has helped, but also hurt businesses, changed the way we consume news, but what also makes news, made stars out of politicians and important figures but also out of random teenagers and animals, and brought about the rise of hashtag activism that has widely influenced campaigns and movements (Cresci 1). Many of these negative points draw back to Fuch’s claim that social media is only concerned with entertainment, but how can you blame the user base for expressing what they want to see and generate? To help elaborate, in “Active Audiences and the Construction of Meaning”, David Crouteau and William Hoynes discuss roles of the active audience and how they interpret media. This relates to Twitter users in the sense that they are similar to active audiences that engage in media socially (Crouteau and Hoynes 263) and for the simple fact that media is pleasurable and entertaining (Crouteau and Hoynes 287). They also briefly mention how audiences directly share similarities and differences to “users” as traditional media has transitioned into new forms of media (Crouteau and Hoynes 292). Altogether, this shows that those active in the Twitterverse are partaking on the platform on their own regard. The positives generally outweigh the negatives as the modern sphere of Twitter continues to speak on real issues and advocate for change in a world with lingering problems whilst maintaining a sanctuary for memes and popular culture.

Overall, Twitter has unleashed a wave of users that continue to express an ideology that grabs the attention of other users and puts them in this cycle of tweeting towards and against a dynamic and landscape of entertainment and politics. In that regard, it leaves me to wonder what Twitter will evolve and progress into next while society and mass media proceed to intertwine. After all, the Twittersphere was only intended to be another texting service just a little over a decade ago.

Media Art Complement

The following collage I photographed and put together represents how Twitter is capable of creating viral sensations and stars. Pictured below is Joshua Malilay, a close friend of mine, who has a passion and incredible talent for music. In the summer of 2016, he tweeted a song cover video of “I Want To Be Your Lady” by INOJ. Given that the song was so popular at the time amongst Twitter and other social media users and because of how gifted Josh’s voice is, his tweet blew up, he gained hundreds of followers, and he instantly became - as many would say - Twitter famous. This example of my good friend exploding onto the scene demonstrates the constant interest in entertainment of Twitter, how it has evolved since its conception, and significantly how this SNS and media form can positively impact its users as Josh has garnered much attention while he looks to pursue music. (35mm film photography and Twitter screenshot courtesy of Martin Mamangun, 2018)

References

Boyd, D.M. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13, no. 1 (2007): 210-230. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x/epdf

Cresci, Elena. “12 Ways Twitter Changed Our Lives.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 21 Mar. 2016, www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/21/12-ways-twitter-changed-our-lives-10th-birthday.

Crouteau, David, and William Hoynes. “Active Audiences and the Construction of Meaning.” In Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences. 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2014. Pp. 260 - 293.

Duff, Alistair S. “Rating the revolution: Silicon Valley in Normative Perspective.” Information, Communication & Society 19, no. 11 (2016): 1605-1621.

Fuchs, Christian. “The Power and Political Economy of Social Media.” In Social Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Sage Publications, 2014. Pp. 97-122.

MacArthur, Amanda. “The History of Twitter You Didn't Know.” Lifewire, Lifewire, 28 April 2018, www.lifewire.com/history-of-twitter-3288854.

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genidma · 4 years

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State of true innovation [SOTI]

Last night, I stumbled across the following video via Youtube:

Internet50: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Internet on Oct. 29, 2019

It appears to be a day long conference that occurs in different segments. It isn’t actually 9+ hours long as there’s this cool neuro inspired (I am assuming) animation that’s displayed during the break.

On a side note and personally speaking, I am always fascinated when I learn more about the work that some of the folks did during the 60′s (and earlier). In particular, the ideas and inventions that individuals like J.C.R LickLider, Ivan Sutherland, Douglas Engelbart and others had come up with. It’s pretty unreal to realize that some of the technologies that we are working on taking to the next level, today were pioneered during the 60′s.

Since this blogpost is about the state of real/true innovation and it seems rather simplistic for me to categorize ‘true/real’ innovation as something that isn’t incremental innovation. But that’s exactly what I am going to do.

Around the 6:51:2x minute mark, a debate is hosted between the following individuals and (the gist of) the stance that they took:

Robert Metcalfe [Contributions towards the development of ARPAnet, Co-invented the ethernet, Co-founded 3com]

Stance: That we’ve seen more of true innovation. Period.

Peter Thiel [Paypal, FoundersFund, Palantir, Clarium Capital]

Stance: Since the 60′s we’ve seen more innovation in the world of bits and not as much innovation in the world of atoms.

It doesn’t make sense for me to offer commentary or critique on the discussion that had occurred. That being said, taking care of, maintaining and upgrading the mechanism via which civilization thrives is an important subject.

From my vantage point the future looks like a pretty awesome place to be. But, I grew up with technology around me and I try and keep up-to-date (surface level) with the what is happening in the world of computation and how these breakthroughs will impact all the other areas.

Personally speaking and to elaborate on my set of biases:

I am really hopeful of the future. Plus, as a singularitarian and having run a number of scenarios in my head, I can only see really really awesome things happening in the future. Note: I do not have the mathematical ability to be able to plot certain outcomes. And/or to be in a position to be able to verify existing models. But the information that I have reviewed since the year 2014, leads me to attach a high level of probability, that during our lifetimes, a sentience modelled in software (or maybe some other medium) will emerge. I am not going to expand upon this subject matter right now, as that’s another blogpost.

Plus, I’ve spent a fair bit of time following individuals like Peter Diamandis, Ray Kurzweil, some of Steven Pinker’s work. Plus, being intrigued with the data that individuals like the late Hans Rosling had to share.

If the data posits that the world is getting better by some significant margin, then there clearly is some dissonance with so many people stuck in cycles of learned helplessness. Plus, I am sure that there are those who exploit these conditions for promoting their agenda.

Coming back to Thiel and Metcalfe, there were other sub-topics of discussion, in addition to the overall discussion (see above - towards the beginning). The sub-topics revolved around (in random order):

Scientific misconduct/academic dishonesty.

Regulation.

Wages. Stagnant wages according to Thiel.

The kinds of industries that we should have seen more of vs only seeing innovation in the world of bits. (Which is and has historically been a core argument that Thiel likes to drive).

Now, if you go to the Youtube page for this very video , then you’ll notice some of my views on the overall topic and the sub-topics, in the comments section on Youtube.

In this blogpost on Tumblr, I’ve already highlighted some of my biases. But a portion of my psyche does wonder if we:

Do take growth for granted.

If things may have been different if we had seen more innovation across other verticals. But, I balance this sub-thought with the reality that ‘information’ has been the new domain of Physics (in a John Archibald Wheeler sense). So, it makes rational sense that breakthroughs in the domain of Physics (Information) is/are what has driven a big chunk of technological progress.

Sometimes I wonder if civilization is a giant function (comprised of many many other nested functions).

I don’t mean this in the sense of the ‘Architect’ from the Matrix Trilogy (movies). As in, a person or a group of people who edit/tinker/tweak/introduce functions and there is a direct impact on civilization. No. But, I think that may be the route to go in the future and specially as we start making use of more and more detailed and expansive simulations in order to optimize different sub-functions.

Rather, it doesn’t appear very difficult to be able to quantify the individual needs of an agent (human/cyborg ++) and then roll them up into a function. And then be able to quantify the carrying capacity with respect to the total impact on the ecology (balanced or not).

I guess, we can also ask simpler questions. Including but not limited to:

If things are indeed getting better, then why is nationalism rising? What does this posit?

Scientific discovery powers everything, including prosperity. “Science is the engine of prosperity” - Michio Kaku. But, as a species we do not really seem to be focusing on ensuring that cycles of basic and advanced research are continually enabled. Thus, putting at risk our quality of life (in the future) and the quality of life of our children.

What set of investments need to be made, in terms of enriching the culture.

There is also the important question of surveillance and how pretty much all nation states are engaged in such activities. There are questions with respect to rights and freedoms. There is the question of ensuring intellectual property rights, in this very reality when larger institutions (in size and complexity) have the ability to be able to peer anywhere.

The role that effective immigration has played and as it relates to sustaining successive cycles of innovation.

There are all of these simpler questions and more that we can and probably should answer.

Overall, this is a very important discussion. But, I don’t think that we have begun the process of clearly articulating (in a nimble fashion) the right incentive structures for others to:

Join this discussion and help re-define the narrative.

Only when the problem has been defined in a richer context, being as close to the truth as possible. Only then can we begin to see the emergence of ideas (in a distributed fashion) that will help bring back stability (in a real and/or perceived sense).

My uneducated guess is that there are probably anywhere from 50 to 500 people across the entire planet that are thinking about this topic of true innovation. Like actually studying this development as a discipline on a full-time basis. And this number may or may not not include the individuals who are actively supporting innovators, researchers and academics driving true/cutting edge research and turning that research into awesome products and services.

The incentive structure is an important conversation. It’s a conversation that can evolve in a healthy/co-operative and dynamic sense. For example and this is just one idea, imagine 1000 people around the world making a pledge that they are going to make a real/quantifiable impact in an area. Next, what could these 1000 individuals learn from institutions that have championed the processes via which more true innovation occurs. Including but not limited to the Gates Foundation, DARPA, USAF, Proctor and Gamble, Specific institutions across Silicon Valley. (That’ just off the top of my mind). But, I guess there is a foreign policy angle to what I have mentioned.

Right now, very few individual seem to be engaged in this conversation. The conversations that do occur, happen in a format that can best we described as my set of claims against yours. The outcome doesn’t seem healthy. For example and let’s go back to the conversation between Metcalfe and Thiel. At one point Thiel categorizes the entire academic base across the US as corrupt. This isn’t the first time Thiel has done so. But, if change is what one is after, then important it is to first seek to understand.

It’s hard to envision how cycles of basic research are going to be sustained, in a reality whereby there isn’t much of an academic base to begin with. And/or it isn’t properly funded. And/or some governing body will pick and chooses what kind of research ought to be conducted.

Next, we don’t have this real-time ability to be able to check the claims. (median income is falling, income is stagnant overall in this region e.t.c). Although I think, Steve Ballmer helped start USAfacts.org and more projects like these are needed in order to be able to enable a more transparent government and make use of the data the government already has in it’s databases.

Maybe the identification of a certain number of agents of good character, who are ethical in a universal sense is what is required. Next, enabling these very agents.

#real innovation #true innovation #peter thiel #robert metcalfe #internet #history of internet #innovation

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samyusuenblog · 4 years

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Some Thinking of China's media censorship mechanism

This week, Winnie Soon’s lecture was very impressed, I think it is very interesting for her to use the data of Weibo to generate her personal work “unerasable characters" by applying machine learning.

As a Chinese, I have a clear understanding of China's censorship mechanism, as well as China's firewall "great wall". It blocks some foreign websites and prevents users from accessing them. Why the purpose for China to do this? I think it is necessary to look at this phenomenon critically. First of all, I think blocking some certain websites is not entirely a bad thing, such as some pornographic sites. In this era of information explosion, some of the changes in the growth trajectory of today's children, the most obvious change is that they can access electronic products at an early age. Blocking pornographic websites and websites that are illegal or including bloody and violent content, which may help children’s physical and mental health. But I think China's censorship mechanism is an inappropriate existence in most cases. China's speech censorship system exists not only in self-media such as Weibo, but also in books, video works(like film), media public opinion, and the Internet space. The speech that the book doesn’t conform to the censorship mechanism cannot be published, and the film with inappropriate speech or politically sensitive subjects will not be passed and will be released in the theatre. The media control their speech strictly, and if someone posts some improper speech or politically sensitive speech in social platforms or online forums will be deleted immediately and automatically. These are the phenomena that are present in China. Li Yinhe, a famous Chinese sociologist, published an article on Weibo, “Why should we completely abolish the system of censorship in China?” This article was deleted as soon as it was posted. In the article mentioned when she chatting with the director about Wang Xiaobo’s film which based on his novel, the director said that the script review process was cautious, because although the novel was a simple love story, the storytime involved in the Cultural Revolution in China, it may not pass the censorship. “The political movements in Chinese society are just like the unspeakable truth. As long as there is still a fact in a certain period of history which does not dare to let people know, all the speech, research, literary works or film and television works involving the historical activities have become sensitive topics.” (1) Does China's censorship mechanism really play a big role? I think the answer is no. In the information age, all the facts can be known as long as people want to know. Even if Chinese information is blocked, people can read foreign languages. Even if the website is blocked, we can use the VPN to “get over the wall” to get information from the Internet. “If someone wants to keep everybody from knowing the truth or stop everyone from getting the information they want to know, that is almost impossible to do with any authority or power”(1).

Besides, in the study "Reverse-engineering censorship in China: Randomized experimentation and participant observation", the authors found that comments on social policies or leaders are often published (whether supported or opposed) if there are posts with organizational specific activities. It is easier to be deleted. The remarks that were censored seem to have led the leaders to determine which officials are not doing their job of mollifying the people and need to be replaced(2).

China has entered the threshold of a modern country and it is time to thoroughly review the existing censorship system in society. Even if the foreign network or foreign media has some non-factual truths, information, and news, I think people have certain resolving power. On the social platform in China, people are not completely convinced of the news discussions of foreign media. People generally treat some foreign media information objectively and dialectically. As for the review of film and television works, I feel that China can learn from the grading system of Western countries.

(1) Li Yinhe, Why should we completely abolish the system of censorship in China, 2017

(2)Gary King, Jennifer Pan, Margaret E. Roberts, Reverse-engineering censorship in China: Randomized experimentation and participant observation, 2014

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marzcurry-blog · 7 years

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Safe sex

Safe Sex Safety sex is the topic of my research due to its controversy . safe sex should be promoted at a younger age. In order to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexual transmitted diseases in youth. A large percentage of people don’t realize the risk of sexually transmitted disease and not know they have it. People take for granted their freedom of not worrying about responsibilities until they have a child or have a sexual transmitted disease that requires them to take medication. Many of the youth hate responsibility and aren’t mature enough to handle those situations. Many of the youth fail to see how unprotected sex can change lives drastically but not only that but their lifestyles. Having a child now means that you’ll have to be working to feed and clothe another human being besides yourself. Then there’s the other consequence, having a sexually transmitted disease and having to deal with your body’s symptoms while taking medication to cope with the condition. Statistics have shown that teenagers are the age group that have to deal with these situations due to lack of protection. The information received showed that 50 percent of teenagers are a countable for most sexually transmitted diseases. While the percentage of teens with children has shown to be a birth rate of 24.2 per 1000 women of the age group. The use of protection is something many of the youth take for granted and don’t seen to understand. because of rise in teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease which have now created problems towards people who now have to face with these responsibilities instead of doing things like furthering their education or improving their lives and their futures. This can be done by helping promote talking about safe sex in school properly to ensure the youth can be safer and informed.

Bibliography De Irala, Jokin. “Safe Sex Belief and Sexual Risk Behaviors among Adolescents: Project YOUR LIFE.” Issues in Law & Medicine, vol. 31, no. 2, Fall2016, pp. 185-190. EBSCOhost, dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=119547636&site=ehost-live.

Heijman, Titia, et al. “Motives and Barriers to Safer Sex and Regular STI Testing among MSM Soon After HIV Diagnosis.” BMC Infectious Diseases, vol. 17, 07 Mar. 2017, pp. 1-11. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1186/s12879-017-2277-0.

“Government Won’t Practice Safe Sex Education: Dfe "Just Says No..” Education Journal, no. 241, 20 July 2015, pp. 26-28. EBSCOhost, dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=108512006&site=ehost-live.

Francis, Dennis A. and Renée DePalma. “Teacher Perspectives on Abstinence and Safe Sex Education in South Africa.” Sex Education, vol. 14, no. 1, Jan. 2014, pp. 81-94. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/14681811.2013.833091. Moran, Claire and Christina Lee. “On His Terms: Representations of Sexuality in Women’s Magazines and the Implications for Negotiating Safe Sex.” Psychology & Sexuality, vol. 2, no. 2, May 2011, pp. 159-180. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/19419899.2010.534489. u Kunnuji, Michael. “Adequacy of Parental Provisions and Safe Sex Practices among Young People in Lagos Metropolis.” Sexuality & Culture, vol. 17, no. 4, Dec. 2013, pp. 631-642. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s12119-013-9166-5. Available data on youth sexuality suggest that many young people are sexually active and a significant proportion of them are involved in risky sexual activities such as unprotected sex and multiple sexual partnerships. Kelsey, Meredith, et al. “Replicating the Safer Sex Intervention: 9-Month Impact Findings of a Randomized Controlled Trial.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 106, 2016 Supplement1, pp. S53-S59. EBSCOhost, doi:10.2105/AJPH.2016.303372. Objectives. To test the effects of the Safer Sex Intervention (SSI) on female adolescents’ sexual behavior and possible antecedents of behavior such as sexual health attitudes, knowledge, motivation, intentions, and skills. Shipitsyna, E., et al. “Sexual Behaviours, Knowledge and Attitudes Regarding Safe Sex, and Prevalence of Non-Viral Sexually Transmitted Infections among Attendees of Youth Clinics in St. Petersburg, Russia.” Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology & Venereology, vol. 27, no. 1, Jan. 2013, pp. e75-e84. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/j.1468-3083.2012.04512.x. Background Adolescents and young adults are at increased risk of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Knowledge of STI prevalence and risk factors are essential tools to elaborate preventive strategies. Brown, Danice L., et al. “Does Daddy Know Best? Exploring the Relationship between Paternal Sexual Communication and Safe Sex Practices among African-American Women.” Sex Education, vol. 14, no. 3, May 2014, pp. 241-256. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/14681811.2013.868800. USA Abstract: Parental sexual risk communication may influence women’s sexual decision-making and safe sexual behaviours Alexander, Kamila A., et al. “Moving beyond Safe Sex to Women-Controlled Safe Sex: A Concept Analysis.” Journal of Advanced Nursing, vol. 68, no. 8, Aug. 2012, pp. 1858-1869. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2648.2011.05881.x. This paper is a report of a conceptual analysis of women-controlled safe sex. Background. Shrestha, Rachana Manandhar, et al. “Better Learning in Schools to Improve Attitudes toward Abstinence and Intentions for Safer Sex among Adolescents in Urban Nepal.” BMC Public Health, vol. 13, no. 1, Apr. 2013, pp. 1-10. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1186/1471-2458-13-244. School-based sex education is an effective medium to convey health information and skills about preventing sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unwanted pregnancies among adolescents Thompson, Sharon H., et al. “Let’s Talk about Sex: Parents’ and Teens’ Comfort Levels during These Discussions.” American Journal of Health Studies, vol. 30, no. 1, Mar. 2015, pp. 1-12. EBSCOhost, dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=102744890&site=ehost-live. The purpose of this study was to assess parents’ and teens’ views on talking about sex and birth control and their level of comfort in discussing these topics ADJEI, NAOMI, et al. “Medical Students Help Bridge the Gap in Sexual Health Education among Middle School Youth.” Rhode Island Medical Journal, vol. 100, no. 1, Jan. 2017, pp. 51-56. EBSCOhost, dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=120620547&site=ehost-live. Runhare, T., et al. “South African Teachers’ Perceptions on Integration of Sex Education into the School Curriculum.” Gender & Behaviour, vol. 14, no. 3, Dec. 2016, pp. 7638-7656. EBSCOhost, dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=121822022&site=ehost-live. The purpose of this study was to reflect on South African learners and educators’ perceptions on the integration of sexuality education into the secondary school curriculum and how the inclusion of sexuality education into the school curriculum could be an intervention to the negative effects of teenage pregnancy on the girl child’s educational opportunities Zalaznick, Matt. “BEYOND the BIRDS and BEES.” District Administration, vol. 53, no. 3, Mar. 2017, pp. 47-49. EBSCOhost, dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=121482326&site=ehost-live. The article focuses on sex education in school districts in the U.S. Topics discussed include revision of sexual education curriculum Safe Sex Facing Multiple Barriers.“ USA Today Magazine, vol. 144, no. 2849, Feb. 2016, p. 13. EBSCOhost, dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=113222057&site=ehost-live. The article focuses on a study conducted by researcher Monica Faulkner and colleagues, which found that factors that are considered as the main barriers to safe sex practices Oman, Roy F., et al. "Comparing School-Based Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programming: Mixed Outcomes in an At-Risk State.” Journal of School Health, vol. 85, no. 12, Dec. 2015, pp. 886-893. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/josh.12343. The purpose of this study is to compare the effectiveness of a national comprehensive teen pregnancy prevention Stanger-Hall, Kathrin F. and David W. Hall. “Abstinence-Only Education and Teen Pregnancy Rates: Why We Need Comprehensive Sex Education in the U.S.” Plos ONE, vol. 6, no. 10, Oct. 2011, pp. 1-11. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0024658. The United States ranks first among developed nations in rates of both teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. In an effort to reduce these rates, the U.S. government has funded abstinence-only sex education programs for more than a decade. MCDAVITT, LAURA, et al. “Addressing Teen Birth in Southern Urban Communities in the United States.” NAAAS & Affiliates Conference Monographs, Jan. 2014, pp. 284-299. EBSCOhost, dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.dcccd.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=119394767&site=ehost-live. Teen births come with high cost in terms of personal, medical, social, and economic consequences Farb, Amy Feldman and Amy L. Margolis. “The Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (2010-2015): Synthesis of Impact Findings.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 106, 2016 Supplement1, pp. S9-S15. EBSCOhost, doi:10.2105/AJPH.2016.303367. The authors discuss the findings of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Program from 2010 to 2015, and it mentions how the OAH TPP is designed to reduce the risky behavior that is associated with adolescent pregnancy. Evaluation Promoting safe sex in public education may be beneficial to all students as it has been proven by studies to reduce pregnancies and sexuality transmitted diseases. Sex has been considered as a taboo subject for years and it still is till this day. Many people believe talking about sex will lead to pregnancies and diseases. When the real problem is that no one is discussing new approaches and solutions to reduce these problems teens face. Unprotected sex has lead to create epidemics that people don’t seem to worry about. People believe that teens who either get pregnant or obtain an STD will only affect them and not the rest of us. But data along with statistics show that they are very wrong. Like most countries we rank our birth rate and disease rate and rank them amongst the world, sadly we lead in teen pregnancy at number 1. We rank top 10 in sexually transmitted diseases. And how do you ask? There are many reasons and theories. One big one is that public education lacks the proper sexual education agenda. Out current sex Education is a joke by standards because its purely based on abstinence and scaring teens. This method has been used for generation and has almost no effect of positive outcome. Studies have shown abstinence has almost no effect as 80 percent of people who vow sex until marriage break the vow. Its crazy to believe that we can trust teens I to promising to control their needs. They cant even control their emotions let alone their needs. 16 million girls give birth every year between the ages 15 through 19. Many people don’t seem to be alarmed by this too much but soon they will affect our economy but our society as well. Over 9 billion dollars were spend alone in 2010 on things such as healthcare and welfare due to unprotected sex. All that money could’ve been invested in schools, scholarships, anything positive instead its being used to help aid the poor ignorant teens who already messed up their lives. That money is actually enough to fund a high quality sex education program that can properly teach students on sex and ways to practice it safely. But mandates refuse to fund these programs because of their antiquated ways of viewing sex. They believe that talking about sex will just lead to having sex and therefore creating the problem, but in reality things are different. Properly talking about sex and how to protect themselves from diseases or unplanned pregnancies are crucial in today’s standard. I’m sure many parents would rather not think about it but teens do have sex because it’s a sign that they are growing up. Part of accepting this is to talk about the bees and the flowers with their teens and let them know about the risk and dangers of having intimacy. I would like to think that we live in a society where our parents can accept reality and would rather give us lectures on safe sex and being protected than having no knowledge and possibly ruining their lives with a life changing situation like a disease or a child. This has become an epidemic in our country. Thesis Promoting safe sex in public education may be beneficial to all students as it has been proven by studies to reduce pregnancies and sexuality transmitted diseases.

Critical analysis This has become an epidemic in our country. The reason its an epidemic is because statistics show that for every 4 teens 1 of them has an STD. While 1 in every 3 female teens end up pregnant, its safe to say that’s a scary world to live in these days. The pure though of a teenage couple who are most likely not prepared to be parents is a tough pill to swallow because we cant help but wonder how are they going to provide for the child. These days many teen moms become single parents and raise a child with the mom and dad figure in one package as if having a child in you’re teens wasn’t hard enough. In the first year alone 50 percent of teen moms declare to go on welfare because they cant afford to sustain the child alone because we all know kids are expensive. Providing for a child is something most teens don’t even understand let alone even think about because most teens want to have fun, do something or have something going on in their lives. All are terrible qualities when raising a child because a child requires a parents undivided attention. Teenagers just don’t make good parents because of their personalities at this stage in their lives but unfortunately many make the mistake of having unprotected sex and ruining their opportunity of having to enjoy their best years. Teens should use protection more often when having sex to prevent theses scenarios from occurring and ruining their lives because as hard as it seems to be teens love to have sex. One theory many researchers have come up with about why we have such high teen pregnancy rates is based on our culture. Our way of living and seeing everything become hyper sexualized from beautiful women in bikinis in commercials to clothing. Sex seems to be around every corner everywhere around the world. Teen’s cant help but notice this and tend to pick up on it later on down the road. Based on the television shows and even clothing sex has become less of a taboo. Although sex is being promoted everywhere condom companies use this to promote themselves since they know sex is everywhere. Unfortunately is hasn’t been enough to stop the outbreak of pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Ironically talking about protection has become more of a taboo than seeing sex in media and culture. Most parents would say that that is an uncomfortable topic to talk about especially to their teen who they see as their little loved one. But in reality if they really are their loved one shouldn’t they talk to them about how to protect themselves during sex? Pure irony. Even more ironic is the way that the people in charge of education have decided to teach students to practice abstinence and declare it as the best way to prevent this outbreak of sex consequences. Hard to believe that the smartest people believe that abstinence is really an effective solution and even more so that they believe that. Essay Promoting safe sex in public education may be beneficial to all students as it has been proven by studies to reduce pregnancies and sexuality transmitted diseases. Sex has been considered as a taboo subject for years and it still is till this day. Many people believe talking about sex will lead to pregnancies and diseases. When the real problem is that no one is discussing new approaches and solutions to reduce these problems teens face. Unprotected sex has lead to create epidemics that people don’t seem to worry about. People believe that teens who either get pregnant or obtain an STD will only affect them and not the rest of us. But data along with statistics show that they are very wrong. Like most countries we rank our birth rate and disease rate and rank them amongst the world, sadly we lead in teen pregnancy at number 1. We rank top 10 in sexually transmitted diseases. And how do you ask? There are many reasons and theories. One big one is that public education lacks the proper sexual education agenda. Out current sex Education is a joke by standards because its purely based on abstinence and scaring teens. This method has been used for generation and has almost no effect of positive outcome. Studies have shown abstinence has almost no effect as 80 percent of people who vow sex until marriage break the vow. Its crazy to believe that we can trust teens I to promising to control their needs. They cant even control their emotions let alone their needs. 16 million girls give birth every year between the ages 15 through 19. Many people don’t seem to be alarmed by this too much but soon they will affect our economy but our society as well. Over 9 billion dollars were spend alone in 2010 on things such as healthcare and welfare due to unprotected sex. All that money could’ve been invested in schools, scholarships, anything positive instead its being used to help aid the poor ignorant teens who already messed up their lives. That money is actually enough to fund a high quality sex education program that can properly teach students on sex and ways to practice it safely. But mandates refuse to fund these programs because of their antiquated ways of viewing sex. They believe that talking about sex will just lead to having sex and therefore creating the problem, but in reality things are different. Properly talking about sex and how to protect themselves from diseases or unplanned pregnancies are crucial in today’s standard. I’m sure many parents would rather not think about it but teens do have sex because it’s a sign that they are growing up. Part of accepting this is to talk about the bees and the flowers with their teens and let them know about the risk and dangers of having intimacy. I would like to think that we live in a society where our parents can accept reality and would rather give us lectures on safe sex and being protected than having no knowledge and possibly ruining their lives with a life changing situation like a disease or a child. This has become an epidemic in our country. The reason its an epidemic is because statistics show that for every 4 teens 1 of them has an STD. While 1 in every 3 female teens end up pregnant, its safe to say that’s a scary world to live in these days. The pure though of a teenage couple who are most likely not prepared to be parents is a tough pill to swallow because we cant help but wonder how are they going to provide for the child. These days many teen moms become single parents and raise a child with the mom and dad figure in one package as if having a child in you’re teens wasn’t hard enough. In the first year alone 50 percent of teen moms declare to go on welfare because they cant afford to sustain the child alone because we all know kids are expensive. Providing for a child is something most teens don’t even understand let alone even think about because most teens want to have fun, do something or have something going on in their lives. All are terrible qualities when raising a child because a child requires a parents undivided attention. Teenagers just don’t make good parents because of their personalities at this stage in their lives but unfortunately many make the mistake of having unprotected sex and ruining their opportunity of having to enjoy their best years. Teens should use protection more often when having sex to prevent theses scenarios from occurring and ruining their lives because as hard as it seems to be teens love to have sex. One theory many researchers have come up with about why we have such high teen pregnancy rates is based on our culture. Our way of living and seeing everything become hyper sexualized from beautiful women in bikinis in commercials to clothing. Sex seems to be around every corner everywhere around the world. Teen’s cant help but notice this and tend to pick up on it later on down the road. Based on the television shows and even clothing sex has become less of a taboo. Although sex is being promoted everywhere condom companies use this to promote themselves since they know sex is everywhere. Unfortunately is hasn’t been enough to stop the outbreak of pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Ironically talking about protection has become more of a taboo than seeing sex in media and culture. Most parents would say that that is an uncomfortable topic to talk about especially to their teen who they see as their little loved one. But in reality if they really are their loved one shouldn’t they talk to them about how to protect themselves during sex? Pure irony. Even more ironic is the way that the people in charge of education have decided to teach students to practice abstinence and declare it as the best way to prevent this outbreak of sex consequences. Hard to believe that the smartest people believe that abstinence is really an effective solution and even more so that they believe that teens will follow through with a mere promise of not having sex. Its mind blowing to believe that these people are in charge of how our children learn. The criticism by many researchers just keeps on getting better as they point out the amount of money spent on these programs. Close to 3 billion dollars spent on abstinence and we the tax payers spend four times as much on increasing healthcare and welfare. There’s also the idea that instead of spending so much on health care we could put that money to use and jump start the fund for a premium sex education program. The only thing standing in the way is the people in charge. They want to stay away from talking about sex like they had a phobia on the topic and as we all know hiding from you’re fears wont solve anything it will just prolong the inevitable. Another reason safe sex should be on teens to do list is to avoid Sexually transmitted diseases. More than 16 million new cases occur with teens obtaining an STD and the worst part is that they might not know they even have it. Statistically 1 in every 2 teens will have it before the age of 25 and if that doesn’t scream epidemic then I don’t know what will. Each year STDs cost the U.S. healthcare system $17 billion and the price the individual has to pay is even more in regards to immediate and long term health consequences. Although some transmitted diseases are curable some like the human immune virus are not which attacks the immune system causing the victim to grow weak. People don’t see that teen pregnancies Sexually transmitted diseases have a chain reactions that will affect us all. Not just parents and economy it includes society as well. With all these teens

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years

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30 Minute Experiment: Concerts #30ME

Dear Diary... ha ha... I’ve been wanting to make that joke for weeks. Sure, I kept a journal when I was younger but I never ever thought of starting an entry with “Dear Diary.” I mean, why does anyone do that? It’s not like the pages of your journal are gonna start talking and respond to you. Regardless, let’s do this...

(I’m listening to a live Blue Oyster Cult record while writing this for a reference.)

So yesterday or maybe it was the day before... you may have noticed all of the days blending into one long endless day by now... Mayor DiBlasio aka Blas stated that there would be no concerts in May or June, which probably was referring as much or more to the big outdoor festivals that start happening around this time of year, but no, I took that as ALL concerts from the tiniest clubs to the ones at Madison Square Garden. There have been a lot of exciting reunion tours this year, a few I was looking forward to that had already been postponed, including Supergrass and the House of Love.

I’m sure they’ll happen eventually, but when I opined on my Facebook that there would be no concerts in May or June, I got a whole bunch of negative nelly/debbie downer friends chiming in that I should be ready for there being no concerts until 2021 or even 2022. Everyone thinks that it will take a vaccine before people are ready to be out in public together at something like a rock concert.

I just want to point out that many of the people who responded, I don’t remember the last time any of them actually attended a concert or what concert that might be, but there are a lot of people who clearly have no clue how concerts and live music at all. I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to concerts and just making out with everyone around me. In fact, when I go to concerts at places like the Bowery Ballroom and Brooklyn Steel, moderately big venues but nowhere the size of MSG or something to that effect, I go there, maybe I buy a drink and then I just stand there waiting for the band to come on. I don’t really go to these things to socialize with random strangers or make new friends, and if I get into a conversation with someone around me, it’s a bit of anomaly. I’m there to see a band I like playing live, to feel the music coming off the stage and maybe get a different experience then hearing the songs on headphones from my iPod or computer (which I enjoy just as much).

I’m really enjoying a lot of my favorite artists (shout out to Kevin So and Mike Peters from the Alarm and Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie!) doing these at-home concerts to keep us entertained, and I love hearing them perform in any setting but it’s JUST NOT THE SAME. After a song is over, I want to whoop and applaud and show my appreciation just like everyone else in the audience, and after a song is over, there’s just silence. I don’t know how weird it is for the artist but it surely is weird for me.

There’s also the matter of these musicians/artist needing to make a living and whether you like it or not, few of them are earning a living from album sales, not when so many people (including me) are fine listening to their music on Spotify or my new favorite, Tidal. (30 Day Free Trial right now!)

But let’s get back to my friends who I love dearly but I can probably can count on two hands or maybe two hands and one foot the number of my friends that have gone with me to concerts in the 30+ years I’ve lived in New York City. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even ask them anymore since I know they’re all busy with other things, but that’s fine. Everyone has priorities in their lives and things they need to do. I fully understand. I can think of maybe three to five times in that same period where someone said, “Hey, Ed, do you want to go see so-and-so in concert?” And I’ll tell you, I’m not sure I’ve ever declined a single one of these invitations, because I love and support live music that much. I don’t care who it is. I don’t care what kind of music they’re playing but as long as it’s a different experience than I can get listening to studio albums on my lonesome, I’m in.

I truly believe that the people I mentioned above who responded to my post about there being no concerts in May or June fully believe me what it’s like to be someone like me who has to get out of the house and see some live music every so often to keep from going nuts.

You might remember the number of times I mentioned my “lost year” in 2013 where I was stuck in Ohio getting leukemia treatment etc, but that whole time, I didn’t get to see a single concert. Believe me, I thought about it. I got a ticket to see The National when they played in Columbus that year and then thought better and resold it on StubHub. I got a ticket to see The Fixx (one of my favorite ‘80s bands) and Wang Chung (!!!) at a casino downtown but that ended up being a particularly bad weekend with a ZERO white blood cell count. Going to a concert would have been a very bad idea.

But when I returned to New York in 2014, what was one of the first things I did? I went to see The Pixies with my brother at NJPAC in Newark, a huge theater that was packed with thousands of people. Mind you, my immune system was barely anywhere near peak capacity still building itself after my transplant but I desperately needed to see a concert after 11 months without seeing one. I wore a mask while I was out in the lobby with people and until we got to our seats and when I felt comfortable that the person next to me wasn’t hacking and coughing, I took the mask off and I had a fucking GREAT time!!! And I didn’t get sick. In fact, it helped lighten my spirits after a year full of loneliness, boredom, depression... and all the other fun stuff that you get when you get cancer treatment.

Now this might be an odd example of a situation that could happen but anyone thinks that Brooklyn Steel couldn’t reopen and maybe limit the capacity/attendance to maybe half or 2/3rds to make the environment safer... that people wouldn’t attend maybe wearing masks and gloves... that people wouldn’t be conscious of not getting too close to others. (Okay, well I can’t speak or those annoying people who feel the need to dance obtrusively aka moshers)... it just shows that you don’t know anything about how live music and concerts work. Very few of the bands that i like are the ones that seem to lead to moshing and I almost never take part if and when they do.

It also makes it seem like everyone out there is just gonna come to a concert when they’re not feeling well and start hacking and coughing over everyone or that every single person is asymptomatic COVID carriers... I mean, seriously, get real.

There are musicians/artists who need to make a living and pay their rent/mortgages and eat just as much as the rest of us and as long as there are people who want to see them perform live, then they should be allowed to do live shows again. Maybe in smaller capacity venues, maybe even in a half-sold MSG, but it would be a START.

And for everyone who is saying that we can’t have concerts for another few years because THEY are afraid of being in these environments than you know what? Don’t go. You won’t be missed.

Sorry this topic has gotten me so angry but for every genius scientist out there, I’ll show you people who follow bands around from city to city surrounded at every show by all kinds of germs who seem to be able to manage fine.

If COVID is with us now, then we need to learn to live with it. Just like people had to learn to live with HIV and AIDS and take precautions from spreading it. It’s not that difficult a task. But basing everything you do and say on worry and FEAR (there’s that word again) is no way to live your life... and it’s certainly no way I’m gonna live mine.

Again, I appreciate that all my friends worry and care about my well-being but trust me, going without concerts for another ten months to a year, will make my alter ego Ed Doom even harder to live with. I’m already ready to bust.

No, I’m not gonna go out there like the fools in Michigan to protest that we’re being kept inside for another month (at least), but I also don’t want to hear complaints from people about others wanting to go see concerts or live theater (like Shakespeare in the Park) or other culture because you’re so concerned about the spread of a virus that’s already showing signs of dissipating. We cannot stay in our apartments and houses for the rest of the year, and there’s no reason we should.

I live in a neighborhood that’s normally pretty active especially at night but there just isn’t anyone on the streets anymore and there’s now been probably six or seven heavy rains that have washed away any and all signs of humanity, and that includes germs. And probably COVID.

So yeah, I agree that we need to get the proper testing and make sure that people can congregate safely, but to just throw away all aspects of why people like me enjoy living in New York and that includes concerts, then yeah, we have nothing more to talk about. You just do not understand. Go back to binge-watching some bullshit television show.

Looking at my timer, which I remembered to set today, I have about two minutes to settle down and end this #30ME in a more civil tone, but yeah, this subject really gets me riled up. I could probably write even more about what live music and concerts mean to me and how awful it’s been the last couple years having to cut back my concert budget drastically due to lack of work/money but I think if you’ve read this far, you get the message. Hopefully, I didn’t offend anyone but it took all of my control not to just start blowing up on my Facebook page with some of the responses I got... I mean, SHEESH!

And with that.. my time’s up. Hopefully I’ll have a more interesting or civil topic to disucss on Monday. Have a good Sunday!

#30ME #30MInuteExperiment #Concerts

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neptunecreek · 4 years

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Speaking Freely: Ahmet Alphan Sabancı

Ahmet Alphan Sabancı is a Turkish digital activist who works on free expression, security and privacy.

Ahmet began his life as an activist after Turkey first blocked YouTube. When the Internet Governance Forum came to Istanbul in 2014, he co-organized an ungovernance forum alongside it, something he considers one of his major achievements thus far. Today, most of his focus is on digital security—in 2018, he became one of the founders of NewsLabTurkey, a project that trains journalists in Turkey on technology and on building new outlets so that they can grow as journalists. He also writes about security, technology, privacy, and the future of media.

I met Ahmet on Twitter many years ago, but I’ve since had the pleasure of hanging out with him when he visits Berlin. He’s a cat lover and a gamer, and he’s quite proud of having translated EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense guide into Turkish.

We talked about the importance of social media in a context where the government has significant control over traditional media; the use of “terrorism” as a means to silence opponents; but also about the ways in which creativity can sometimes thrive during times of repression. I found our discussion—which weaved from Ahmet’s personal experience to the political situation in Turkey seamlessly—fascinating, and I think our readers will too.

York: What does free expression mean to you?

It’s a heavy question, but especially in a country like Turkey, free expression means a lot because you see how it affects people’s lives, how it affects how people read, write, or work every day. You see journalists talking about stuff they want to write but can’t because of problems they might face. On the other hand, you see many people who don’t want to talk about certain topics on the phone or on WhatsApp because they’re afraid. They sometimes even get paranoid because you can see how serious things can get. For example, when the economic crisis, the currency crisis started in early 2019, people got sued because they talked about economics on Twitter. The government basically took them to court saying “you are doing economic terrorism because you’re doing speculation, you’re saying bad stuff about our economy.” When people see stuff like that, they stop talking about almost everything that at any point can get them into trouble. As someone who basically makes a living out of writing and doing research, I have to be careful about how I’m doing my job. Although I think that everything is not that serious all the time, I always have that noise in the back of my head saying “Are you sure you want to write this?” So, it basically affects every aspect of my life and everybody’s lives, especially in a country where doing anything can get you labeled as a terrorist, because this is one of the most favorite words of our politicians.

York: Let’s talk a bit more about that. One of the things EFF worries about is how “terrorism” is used to silence certain voices. Can you tell me more about what that looks like in Turkey?

Well, the most recent example is Erdogan, the president of Turkey, criticizing the Nobel literature prize. The author was supporting the atrocities done in Bosnia and other Balkan countries. Erdogan basically said that they’re always giving the Nobel prize to terrorists, they even give it to terrorists in Turkey—according to his advisors, he was not talking about Orhan Pamuk, but everyone basically understood that he was talking about Pamuk, because around the time Pamuk received the literature prize, he was talking about the Armenian genocide. He was sued for defaming the Turkish nation, and he was attacked a lot and called a traitor, and stuff like that. Because of that, [Erdogan] decided to declare all the Nobel prize winners as terrorists.

Whenever the government doesn’t like something, it creates a connection to terrorism. It becomes something quite normal at some point. You can basically declare anyone a terrorist if you just don’t like them.

Because of that, it can be quite funny - there was a moment after the 2016 coup attempt, where people who didn’t like their father-in-law or co-worker were reporting them to the police as terrorist organization members. There was nothing, no proof, but just saying that sometimes is enough. There were many examples of that happening. It’s basically become [normalized]. Because the government and politicians do that, everyone thinks they can label someone as a terrorist and get away with it. [It allows you to] promote yourself as a nationalist and someone who loves their country.

It makes doing anything, like writing or talking about anything quite hard. It’s easy to get subpoenaed to the court at any moment because there’s a chance someone will report you to the police. You know the term “Twitter snitching” when you talk about someone without mentioning their name? We have that with the Turkish police. We have an official Turkish police department account on Twitter, and there’s a group of random people who will mention that account under individual’s tweets, and because of that, many people have been called into the police department to give testimony. Calling someone a “terrorist” is actually at that level in Turkey at the moment.

York: That’s awful, I didn’t realize that was happening. Is there anything you would want people outside of Turkey to know about that they might not know already?

I think one thing that many people don’t know much about is how the current mainstream media environment is in Turkey. You might see that there are many different newspapers, channels, news outlets, still [existing] but because of the ownership changes, businessmen close to Erdogan own almost 90% of the mainstream media in Turkey. So when people outside try to read news on Turkey, they’re hearing from the government. There isn’t much independent news going on in Turkey.

At the same time, other startups are either going full-on political propaganda, or trying to do journalism but because of political pressure, they’re taking every step very carefully, so there are many things that go unreported or underreported, so I think many people outside of Turkey don’t know the fact that basically, all the things you can call media in Turkey right now are all owned by a couple of businessmen and they all want to make sure that Erdogan still loves them. So when [outsiders] Google, they’ll find the English versions of [these sites].

And then when they try to read their own country’s media, like the New York Times or the Washington Post, they find quite limited topics. Because of all of that, one of the things Turkey is facing right now is that what’s happening in the country is not being represented. Most people don’t know what’s happening in this country.

By the way, I’m not saying this in a bleak or dark way—there’s also a lot of cool stuff happening in Turkey too, but that also gets unreported because it’s not what the Turkish or international media is interested in. When it comes to Turkey, China, or Russia, the hot topics are the dark things.

York: You know, I was just talking with friends about how under the worst political systems, often the best music, fashion, art emerge. Tell me, what are some of the interesting forms of expression coming out of Turkey right now?

One thing I can say is that in the past couple of years, we have a booming indie music scene. There are bands doing quite good music, and though the lyrics aren’t directly political, they say a lot about this generation, how they’re feeling and thinking about the world around themselves. There are many major bands and a growing music scene trying to rekindle the culture around that.

At the same time, although there isn’t a huge literature scene, people are still writing, meeting. And one political side of all that bleakness is that people who want to say something about what’s happening around themselves are getting more and more creative. Because of all that pressure and people not having the mainstream tools to reach other people, we’re seeing the first podcast boom in Turkey right now. There are journalists, artists, literature people all doing podcasts right now. They’re actually talking more bravely in the podcast shows they’re doing. Basically, because they don’t have newspapers or websites—because they know the government can censor that—they’ve moved toward doing podcasts, and right now, we have a bunch of different podcast shows from different political perspectives talking about politics.

And because of media ownership issues, people have gotten more adventurous. People are starting to get their news from newsletters, podcasts, YouTube channels. So actually, all that pressure, all that censorship going on in the mainstream media cultivated an entrepreneurial media in Turkey, most of it coming from young people. There’s a millennial media generation growing in Turkey right now.

York: Wow, I wouldn’t have known that. What about social media? How are social media companies, in collusion with the government or not, impacting freedom of expression?

Well, most of the time they’re doing what makes money for them. They’re using censorship methods in Turkey similar to geofencing. For example, when the Turkish government asks for an account to be removed on Twitter, Twitter just makes it invisible to people in Turkey. Because of that, most of the Turkish political diaspora is invisible on social media because of that policy. The Turkish media has found a smart way to make sure Twitter and Facebook and Google keep complying with them. They basically say “Keep complying with our requests or we’ll ban you.” This is a major issue for especially Facebook, because Turkish people are one of the most active groups on Facebook. They’re also a major contributor to the conversation on Twitter, and YouTube has already dealt with a lot of Turkish censorship so they just want to make sure they don’t have to deal with that stuff.

We see it in the transparency reports of the companies. Whenever the Turkish government asks for an account or a piece of content to be removed, the companies comply with it. Because of that, most people are trying to be really careful to make sure their accounts don’t get censored, since they’re living in Turkey, and if their tweets are invisible there, no one is going to see what they have to say.

York: I can see what you mean about self-censorship! Let’s change course for a moment. Could you tell me about a personal experience, or what got you into this work in the first place?

Well, I think when it comes to digital free expression, internet censorship, it started around when the Turkish government first censored YouTube. I was quite young at the time, and most of what I was doing on YouTube was watching silly videos. Then, out of nowhere, the whole platform was gone online. So I started to think about it. For most people in Turkey, it was probably their first experience with online censorship.

Because of my political upbringing—I grew up in a semi-political and left-leaning house—I already had some knowledge about how censorship and repression of free speech was a regular thing in Turkey. Basically, in the history of Turkey, there’s always been censorship, there’s always been pressure and silenced groups. When I started reading about the history, especially the recent history, I knew this was something normalized already. So when we first started to experience censorship online, because of my nerdiness and all that, I got involved as an activist. I was semi-political when I was young, but I wasn’t that much of an activist. But when things got digital, I thought “this is where I should start doing something.”

York: I like that...and I can understand that too. Here’s a question I ask everyone: Do you have a free speech hero?

Oh, that’s a heavy question.

York: That’s funny, everyone keeps saying that. I thought it was a light question!

There are many whistleblowers, for sure. Özgür Uçkan is one of my heroes for sure, he was one of the frontrunners in Turkey when it comes to digital rights, freedom of speech. He made sure that I knew what I was doing as an activist, he taught me a lot. If I’d never met with him or started working in the same NGO with him, I would probably not be the person that I was. I can name him as my personal hero because he taught me a lot and made sure that I did my best for digital rights. Yeah, I think Özgür Uçkan is probably my personal hero, and the hero of the Turkish internet, as he was the first person to fight for digital rights, for free speech, for privacy.

York: One last question: For you, what do you see as the link between your digital security work and free expression?

Well, since I’m working mostly with journalists, there’s an obvious link that should never be broken, because when it comes to the work journalists are doing, without having even basic security, they can face a lot of trouble at any moment.

Most of the time when I do workshops or trainings with journalists and we talk about what they learned and what they’re going to use, we talk about how feeling safe makes them more confident about continuing with journalism and writing what they want to write. Especially since journalism is done with computers and the internet, feeling that sense of safety also helps them to express themselves more freely. We also see a lot of examples where journalists make mistakes about security, the government or someone who wants to silence them uses that advantage. Journalists see that, and they want to make sure they’re safe and that they can keep doing what they are doing.

York: Thank you Ahmet, this has been incredibly interesting.

from Deeplinks https://ift.tt/39lkoUH

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zhumeimv · 4 years

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10 Messages in Logos You Will Never forget

Date: 2019-11-25 19:00:07

[aoa id=’0′][dn_wp_yt_youtube_source type=”101″ id=”eP-ksDqw-iA”][/aoa]

What if Entrepreneurship was the answer to America’s significant wealth and opportunity gaps? If entrepreneurship was the next great equalizer, would the 2020 election forecasts be any different? Watch the Fox in The Henhouse Documentary to find out!

Talk about hidden in plain sight! For this list,…

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joneswilliam72 · 5 years

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Meet Dominique Purdy, writer and star of the fiercely comedic dark satire, Driving While Black.

With February being Black History Month – honoring the triumphs and struggles of African Americans throughout U.S. history – we caught up with Driving While Black star and writer Dominique Purdy for a chat on acting, the film, the experience of people of color in dealing with the police, what births the "fuck the police" attitude in youth, what we can do about it as individuals and much more.

Driving While Black is a fierce, truly Kafkaesque satire that everyone should see. It is based on real experiences Purdy has had with the police from his teenage years to today and is ever so relevant in an era where deadly experiences with police and people of color seem to be happening with increasing regularity since Michael Brown and Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. The whole thing is Kafkaesque when often the people being singled out and harassed by the police as bureaucratic enforcers, are targeted for no other reason than their race.

We should all be upset when that kind of treatment occurs, no matter the color. Yet, police harassment can and does happen to more and more people precisely because of over-policing as a result of the Drug War and the cops being weaponized when they are in the role of collecting revenue for the state for non-crimes like not wearing your seat-belt or in the abuses of civil asset forfeiture; to even the police shooting the wrong people when executing a no-knock search warrant on the wrong house entirely. Even pets are often not immune with some officers executing dogs with impunity – there's even a national database tracking these "puppycide" numbers.

All those things are directly attributable to over-policing. When you make nonsense things – like not wearing a seat-belt or possessing a little pot – crimes you still create real criminals. The way those "criminals" are handled is always harassing, and far too often that harassment is based purely on the race of the "suspect". This is a problem we should all be worried about and doing what we can to stop.

In Driving While Black, Dmitri (Purdy) is a pizza guy who would rather smoke weed and suffer for his art, but his mom and his girl won't stop nagging him to get a real job. When he's offered a gig mouthing off to tourists behind the wheel of a Hollywood "star tour" bus, it looks like everyone might get what they want. Trouble is, our man can't seem to step out the door to get to the interview without endless complications: busted radiators, simple weed scores gone sideways and LAPD cruisers seemingly everywhere. Dmitri's skill at going unnoticed by cops is honed by painful experiences growing up black in L.A., but even his keen survival instincts won't save him from the week from hell.

Dominique Purdy in the behind the scenes shot from DRIVING WHILE BLACK.

With a jovial swagger to its walking pace, Driving While Black is half comedy of errors and half hard-bitten realism, tucked into a sly treatise on 21st-century over-policing. Enjoy the interview below and catch Driving While Black on digital now.

Hello Dominique and welcome to The 405! To start things off, what initially inspired the film? DWB is so timely not just from (sadly) what is happening in society but also in film with movies like Green Book and BlacKkKlansman. Seeing especially the racism and discrimination in Green Book paired with the racism in Driving While Black made me wonder, have we really come that far from 1962?

The inspiration for Driving While Black came from just that "Driving While Black " It's my experiences growing up dealing with the cops in LA since being a kid up to the present time. Police prejudice against black people and other people of color is always gonna be a timeless topic in the culture!

A sad thing indeed.

This movie was shot in 2014 and first premiered at the El Rey Theater on Wilshire Blvd. [Los Angeles] on June 30th 2015 to a packed house. We had to turn people away to not violate the fire code on capacity.

Great you had that kind of turnout.

I believe we sparked a wave with DWB in this era of Hollywood wanting to invest in more black stories on film and TV. Look at some of the most popular movies and show since 2016: Insecure, Atlanta, Random Acts of Flyness, Get Out etc.

From DRIVING WHILE BLACK.

We definitely have made a lot of progress since 1962 . Niggas couldn't even eat at the same restaurants as white people without gettin' sprayed with a hose or the Ku Klux Klan burning a crucifix in front of their house later that night. Racists never went away – just got quieter because it became less cool to be so blatant. Is there whole lot of progress to be made? You damn right!!!

I'd add in a movie that DWB kind of reminded me of: Boots Riley's incredible satire Sorry to Bother You. Of course, DWB didn't go full-on surrealist like Riley's movie but I see them as both very satirical.

The rest is true too. I suppose it can be just hard at times to be hopeful in the current cultural climate. What did your collective process look like on writing the film with Paul [Sapiano]?

I've known Paul for a cool minute so when we would kick it I would always be telling him some shit that happened to me with the cops. Even though it was wild shit, I'm so used to it I can see the humor in it of how ridiculous it is that black people have to have these feelings and take certain precautions when dealing with the police. So we would start writing some of these stories down to start forming what would become the film.

DWB was a fiercely satirical and darkly comedic piece (in a sort of neo-Kafkaesque absurd way) that is sadly far too true to life. Dominique, what would you like our readers to know who don't have to go through these kinds of harassing experiences on a daily basis? Not just while driving but I'm sure while doing other everyday things too. As I am not a person of color, I can't really speak to it, but I can do my best to listen and learn.

For people who haven't really experienced any police drama in their lifetime and want to just get an understanding of it from the perspective of a young black male watch the film it shows you with humor better than I can explain. I've had elderly white people come up to me after seeing the film during a film festival saying when they saw this police issue we deal with through a new set of eyes. It changed how they thought about situations they had previously saw only from the cops side.

From DRIVING WHILE BLACK.

That's fantastic that people have been touched like that and I can certainly see why, having watched the film. What can people who don't have to go through these kinds of experiences do to help those who do and help make the social climate better?

Watch DWB and spread the word.

What do you think can be done on a community level to fight the kind of discrimination the film shows?

I don't know the answer but everyone becoming more aware of what's going on. Meaning ALL people not just people of color. We ALL have to understand the history to be able to create change.

So true. I think steps like having mandatory body cams and citizens' review boards to oversee them may be good first steps too. But certainly everybody has to pitch in on this. Any funny or memorable moments that stick out from the process of filming?

When we were in the editing process for the film, I was coming in to the office to do some voice overs one day. The whole area was surrounded by cops. I guess they were searching for someone.

Oh shit.

I called the office and said "Yoooo the whole area is crawlin' with police how can I get through to the office?"

Someone said I could cut through the alley and it would let out right by the office. I drive in this alley and as soon as I come out the other side more cops are right there…

Damn.

…they pull out guns and ask to search the car. They thought I might be hiding the person they were looking for in the backside. Cops were like "What are you doing over here?"

I said "Yo, I'm actually going to this right here. I'm working on a movie about y'all".

Then I hopped on the phone and called Paul to come outside and vouch for me. One cop was a straight asshole claiming I fit the description on the suspect they were looking for. The other cop was chill apologizing for the hostility.

Wow. Good cop/bad cop quite literally.

When Paul came out they realized I was telling the truth and let me go. When I went inside the office, there was another actor in the film – a black guy – who was like " How come the cops didn't harass me like you? They just let me right in…"

He was offended that they didn't harass him at all. I was like "You a clean cut nigga! I got too much of that hip hop vibe they had to fuck with me&".

Damn. Glad it didn't get much beyond that. Still sucks you were hassled though. What do you hope audiences will ultimately take with them from the film?

I'd like for black people and other people of color to be happy seeing a story being told focused on something we deal with in society from a fresh perspective that they relate to. There has never been a film like this.

From DRIVING WHILE BLACK.

Absolutely agreed. It was refreshing, brave, and very funny. And I'm a white guy.

I'd like for white people and others who have never had experience any kind of police prejudice to leave understanding the psychology of how the FUCK THE POLICE attitude is born in a black child and how it grows. Through humor we can make people laugh and then think deeply at the same time. The uneasy feeling I get when I see the police never is going to go away but that's just life for a lot of black people... ain't that a bitch?

It sucks. Not to say others (particularly white people) who go through shitty experiences with the cops have similar experiences to people of color here, but I often wonder why more people aren’t instinctively worried when they get pulled over – especially when you see increased enforcement of more BS “non-crimes” like seat-belt laws. But I've also had my share of bad experiences there too like the cop who grew increasingly agitated because of my hands after he pulled me over. I have a hand tremor similar to Parkinson's and I tried explaining that but he didn't care, made me do the field sobriety test because of it in fact. So absolutely those shitty experiences are universal. But, I digress there…

A question I ask everybody: what makes a great film?

A great idea and unique execution of that idea makes a great film. Don't try to be like anyone. Take risks. Trust your instincts and keep them parallel with your vision.

Very well said. And all marks that DWB absolutely hit.

And another question I ask everybody: what films and performances have really stuck with you over the years and influenced you as an artist? A big question as well I know.

Shit, that's a tough one because my influences are all over the place. So let's do off top of my head…

Definitely.

…the Japanese Samurai Saga film Lone Wolf with Child and Ice Cube's Friday.

Cool. Final question, what is next for you?

I've got a lot of fly music shit coming this year! Catch me on the gram under my moniker: @KTOWNODD.

youtube

from The 405 http://bit.ly/2BkymY6

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wrrosette · 6 years

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7 Contemporary Philippine Literature Writers to Look Out For

Edited and abridged by Karmella Tapia

In the spirit of celebrating the power of language and our beloved nation’s cultural identity, our grade 12 students recently submitted BioNotes describing the Contemporary Philippine Literature writer of their choice (as part of their requirements for 21st Century Literature class). Here are but seven of the many talented authors highly recommended by some of Rosette’s contributors for your perusal. From experienced writers long in the business, to breakout ones fresh on the scene, our list explores a wide-range of Filipino men and women who brought their ideas and experiences to life.

1. Katrina Therese F. Olan

Submitted by Jean Denise Duran

Background of the Author

Born on May 28, 1996, Katrina Therese F. Olan is an award-winning Filipino filmmaker and contemporary writer. She was very creative, open-minded, and strong-willed as a child. At the age of seven, she started writing chapter books. By the time she reached the age of twelve, she won a Cinemalaya award. One of her astounding traits is her ability to use her great imagination to create art. She has the gift of giving colour and light to the most monotonous things and being able to get others interested in it. Her love for storytelling prompted her desire to publish. Thus, she began her pursuit of creating a great story which took over a decade to create. She is now a full-time copywriter. Though she is full of wisdom and experience, she has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Olan has yet so much to learn about the world and herself. With all this passion, knowledge, and grit, she hopes to become a great writer that will touch the hearts of her countrymen.

Overview of Literary Works

Katrina Therese F. Olan has only published one book entitled Skies Above. The sci-fi fantasy novel touches on the themes of courage, truth, and humanity. She has yet to write more books. Olan said that she has done a lot of worldbuilding in fantasy. However, she has yet still to touch on local Filipino literature and themes. She has not completed a piece on the Philippines but is working on a Filipino sci-fi novel called Tablay that will hopefully be in materialization soon.

2. Rica Bolipata-Santos

Submitted by Karmella Tapia

Background of the Writer

Raised in a large, arts-inclined, and sometimes financially-struggling family, Rica Bolipata-Santos discovered a love for books, words, and teaching as early as 4 years old. True to her passions, she ended up graduating from Ateneo de Manila, first with a Bachelor’s degree in Humanities, and later a Master’s degree in English Literature. After a brief stint teaching at St. Paul’s Pasig, she joined Ateneo’s English Department in 1994 and has been teaching Creative Writing and English Literature at her alma mater ever since. Though she is credited as Ateneo’s University Communication and Public Relations Director, Assistant Professor, Alumni Magazine Editor-in-Chief, and Library of Women’s Writings Director at present, Rica is most known for her detailed, reflective, and expressive essays drawn straight from her experiences as a wife, daughter, mother of three, and Filipina. With regards to her writing career, Rica became publicly recognized for her first collection of essays, Love, Desire, Children, Etc. released in 2005, which received the Madrigal-Gonzales First Book Award. She has since published more books of a similar nature, become a columnist in The Philippine Star and Female Network, and conducted creative writing workshops to hopefully inspire the next generation of Filipino writers.

Overview of Works

The writings of Rica all are short and auto-biographical in nature. To be specific, her published books include Love, Desire, Children, Etc. (2005), Lost and Found and Other Essays (2011), and Navel (2017). Looking at online works, some of her brief column pieces featured in The Philippine Star and Female Network are Beautiful habits (2012), Falling (2013), A valedictory address (2014), and more recent works like Beginnings and endings (2018) or Graduation thoughts (2018). All her essays use conversational, memoir-like prose to bring forward abstract and familiar themes like womanhood, the passage of time, love, childhood, family, and everyday human suffering through her own reflection on the topics. It should also be noted that it is characteristic of her works to pinpoint exact moments of time, viewed through the lenses of her different roles. As she wrote in one article for The Philippine Star, “I am aware of my vanity, clued in by the fact that I remember so much physical detail from a moment that occurred 35 years ago.”

3. Samantha Sotto-Yambao

Submitted by Alexia Dagondon

Background of the Author

Little is known about her early life but it was at age 16 that Samantha Sotto-Yambao first set foot in Europe due to her father’s expatriation by his company. That magic moment would later serve as the backdrop of her novels. When her family returned to the Philippines, Sam enrolled in Ateneo de Manila University as a Communications major and became the editor of The Guidon, the university’s student-run publication. After graduation, she followed in her father’s footsteps and worked in the marketing department of a multinational company. This job required her to travel often and after awhile, she quit in order to be a full-time mom. It was with this extra time that she used to begin writing. Before Ever After, her first novel was a product of watching Doctor Who and the backpacking trip she took to Europe in her early 20’s. She finished writing the book in one school year, an impressive feat for someone with no formal training in writing.

Overview of Literary Works

Sotto joins the modest line-up of internationally-published Filipino authors with her two novels, both published by a division of Random House New York. Before Ever After tells the story of a widow, Shelley Gallus, who after three years still mourns for the loss of her husband, Max. Love and Gravity is Sotto’s second and most recent published novel, detailing the tale of a young Isaac Newton defies the laws of physics in order to connect with his love, a music prodigy living in modern-day San Francisco. It is Sotto’s affinity with time as well as her rich knowledge of Europe that makes both of her published novels remarkable. One sees Sotto’s use of words is masterful, in the way she paints vivid scenes of Europe, the tastes, smells and colors melding together to create one symphony. Her characters are not just fiction but emotions so intricately layered that you take delight in seeing them slowly expose their inner self. Her style is distinctly Filipino, a different flavor from other romance novels, as noted by her foreign critics and reviewers.

4. Paul Arvisu Dumol

Submitted by Annika Ramento

Background of the Author

Paul Arvisu Dumol is a man of many titles. He is considered a playwright, a historian, an educator and a writer. Today, he is a member of the Philippine Center for Civic Education and Democracy, as well as, a member of the board of trustees in the University of Asia and the Pacific. Before he became the renowned academician he is today, it should also be recognized that he graduated as Valedictorian and summa cum laude in the Ateneo de Manila. He continued his studies to attain his master’s degree at the University of Navarra, and, from the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies, he attained his licentiate in Medieval Studies with specialization in Philosophy. Finally, he gained his doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Toronto. Due to his multiple writings, he has received many awards including the Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas in the field of drama from the Unyon ng Manunulat ng Pilipinas, Centennial Honors for the Arts in the field of drama from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (1999) and an award for best translation of The Handbook for Confessors of the Synod of Manila of 1582.

Overview of Literary Works

Dumol created the classic Ang Paglilitis ni Mang Serapio, considered by many to be the first Philippine modernist play and the most frequently performed one-act play in Filipino. This play centers on an underprivileged man named Mang Serapio who was unjustly accused of an irrational crime, with no means to defend himself. After writing this, he wrote many other plays entitled Kabesang Tales in 1974, Felipe de las Casas in 1983, Libretto of Ang Pagpapatay kay Luna in 2002 to name a few. He insists to use Filipino as the medium of language in all his plays. While he is more known for writing in this literary form, he also has written multiple books, such as A History of the Filipino People for High Schools, Beyond the "Trapo" Society: Saint Josemaría Escrivá's Concept of Citizenship and The Metaphysics of Reading Underlying Dante's Commedia: The Ingegno. It is clear that when Dumol writes, it is because he wants to shed light to a certain issue or topic in the Philippines. He also uses multiple historical figures when writing, such as Kabesang Tales from the Philippine classic, Noli me Tangere and Antonio Luna, an army general during the Philippine-American War.

5. Barbara Jane Reyes

Submitted by Maria Katrina Rocha

Background of the Author

Barbara Jane Reyes is a Filipino author born in 1971 in Manila, Philippines but was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She studied Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and received her MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. As well as being a poet and author, Reyes was a professor at Mill’s College for a graduate poetry workshop, San Francisco State University for Filipino American Literature, and University of San Francisco’s Philippine Studies Program. She currently serves on the board of Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA) and is co-editor of Doveglion Press, an “independent publisher of political literature and orature”. Some of her works include Diwata (BOA Editions, 2010), Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003), Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish Press, 2005), Easter Sunday (Ypolita Press, 2008), and Cherry (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2008). Reyes was the winner of the Global Filipino Literary Award for Poetry and James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets and was a finalist for the California Book Award.

Overview of Literary Works

Barbara Jane Reyes’ writings try to reach towards young Filipina women because she feels that she needs to honor how Filipina-Americans do and do not fit in with the Asian-American communities and the Latino communities due to the complicated history with the Americans in the Philippines as well as being Asian with Spanish names and traditions. She has five full-length poetry collections, three chapbooks, and a few poems online. In an interview with Rebecca Sutton, Sutton talks about Reyes being able to incorporate “multiple languages, multiple cultures, and multiple meanings” into her work. Reyes responded that it was due to being surrounded by people who spoke different languages such as Tagalog, Ilocano, and English and who spoke what language. She states, “I've always thought about where these words come from, what do they sound like, who uses them and for what purpose, to speak to whom or to speak about whom”. This can be seen in one of her works entitled Diwata, which is a “hybrid of Filipina and Western storytelling” that includes the bilinguality of embroiling Tagalog and English.

6. Dean Francis Alfar

Submitted by Therese Ravalo

Background of the Author

Born on January 2, 1969, Dean Francis Alfar grew up surrounded by books. As a child, his mother introduced him to fairy tales, reading them to him as bedtime stories. In a 2017 interview, he said, These stories inspired my imagination. When I ran out of books, I promised myself that one day, I’d tell my own stories. Indeed, Alfar went on to tell his own stories. In his early days, he established himself as a playwright, writing plays that garnered various accolades. A ten-time Palanca Awardee for Literature, he authored many short stories, some of which were compiled and published in one book. In addition, Alfar won in the 2006 Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, specifically the Grand Prize for Novel with his entry, Salamanca. Additionally, Alfar has edited anthologies of speculative fiction, which is also known as spec fic for short. Since 2005, he has been collating works of fellow speculative fiction writers in the Philippine Speculative Fiction (PSF) series. Recently, though, he chose to step down as editor, since he felt that it is vital to get other editorial perspectives.

Overview of Literary Works

Through the years, Alfar developed his illustrious writing career, primarily delving into speculative fiction. While he is known for his short stories such as How Rosang Taba Won a Race and Saturdays with Fray Villalobos, as well as the PSF anthologies he spearheaded, two of his more notable works are Salamanca and The Kite of Stars and Other Stories. His first novel, Salamanca, is a story of two lovers intertwined with elements of fantasy and it includes a myriad of characters as well. On the other hand, The Kite of Stars is originally a play that bagged the second prize in the One-act Play category. A tale about unrequited love and reaching for the stars, it has since been transformed into prose form and is part of a collection of short stories.

7. Lualhati Bautista

Submitted by Natalie Roque

Background of the Author

Lualhati Bautista was born on December 2, 1945, in Tondo, Manila. From early on she has already displayed a flair for writing, as her parents Esteban Bautista and Gloria Torres were into composing and poetry-writing. She studied Journalism in the Lyceum of the Philippines but at some point stopped to pursue writing. At the age of 16, she began writing and her first works were published in the magazine Liwayway. As her writing career began to flourish, she garnered positions in writing organization such as vice-president of the Screenwriters Guild of the Philippines and the chair of the Kapisanan ng mga Manunulat ng Nobelang Popular. In the course of her life, several of her works won awards. Her novels Dekada ‘70, ‘GAPÔ, and Bata, Bata, Pa’no Ka Ginawa? all won Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. It is certain that Bautista has truly carved a mark in the field of writing, as she has also gained recognition from the Philippine's Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and the Surian ng Wikang Pambansa in 1987.

Overview of Literary Works

Lualhati Bautista is well-known for her novels, but she has also penned several poems and short stories. Additionally, she is also a movie and television scriptwriter. In her works, one of Bautista’s trademark is her use of the Tagalog language, despite how critics of her time saw the use of native language as unacceptable to the elite. She is also known for her brutal honesty in tackling controversial issues. In fact, Bautista’s several compositions were banned and censored at the time of the Marcos Regime. Moreover, she is recognized for incorporating political themes in her works. According to Veritas (as cited by Peletz & Ong), “Where other writers simply hinted by using vague metaphors and parallel cases in other countries, Lualhati Bautista...named names, cited actual atrocities, and pointed an unerring where the blame lies.” (1998, p. 217). An example of this is her first screenplay named Sakada (1976), for the military confiscated copies of the script since it talks about the troubles faced by Philippine peasants. Another distinct feature of her writing is her exploration of female themes through the portrayal of female protagonists who undergo trials both at home and in the workplace.

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