Tag: Culture

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Emotional Work

Day 1700 and The Passage Become Who You Are

I have been writing every single day for seventeen hundred days. 1700 days is approximately 4.66 years or 4 years and 7ish months. Not bad right?

This is quite a bit longer than I anticipated when I first began writing daily with the relatively modest ambition to write once a day for a month.

I had done daily journaling in private for ten days and was interested in seeing if I could write in public every day for some period.

I wanted to create to synthesize what I consumed across the media landscape as I tried to make sense of a world deep in the throes of Covid.

This experiment was my second sustained blogging project as I had kept a WordPress blog in the glory years of 2005-2008 or so. Other social media was easier but I’d always liked the format of public long form writing.

I had a secret silent ambition to take the daily habit to one year. It seemed doable. I fantasized about making it to 1000 days, even from the start, but that seemed bigger and more likely to fail. But if Scheherazade could make it to One Thousand and One Nights maybe I could as well?

I set out with realistic expectations but big ambitions. And now here on a random August Wednesday I am deep into the depths of a daily habit that shows no sign of stopping.

I nurtured my early ambition by saying I’d take it one day at a time, while never pressuring myself into achieving it. A journey of a thousand miles (or in my case days) starts with a single step.

I don’t care for pressure. I never have. I believe those who are truly ambitious about themselves set their own standards. You make your own life.

I will do things in my own time and at my own pace. I have never been a quitter so it’s never been a problem that I go at my own pace. Life is about results not effort.

My tenacity remains a force in my life because I am comfortable tending to my will daily. We only make progress by nurturing the seed of a thing.

Not every day is a good day. We don’t always win. I have many days where I lose. But as Allen Iverson said “it’s practice” and you never miss practice. And practice adds up. I’ve done amazing things in the last almost half decade.

I hope that this aspect of my character is as clear to others as it is to me. If I sent out on a journey I will do what I can to make it. If I fail (and I might) it is because I couldn’t.

Maybe the timing isn’t always right or my mind or body isn’t right or the market isn’t right or I am not right. Full stop. But I’ll never let myself fail because I didn’t make an honest effort. And you make the effort every single day.

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Emotional Work

Day 1696 and Unk-Unks

Older millennials from families that watched the news may remember the infamous Donald Rumsfeld quote about unknown unknowns.

I’ll include the full quote from the Secretary of Defense about the lack of evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones. Donald Rumsfeld

Much hay was made over how ridiculous this sounded at the time. It was the title of an Errol Morris documentary. Naturally the origins of this phrase are more complicated than a soundbite from a politician.

“Unk-Unks” was a term regularly used by defense contractors. Wikipedia sources it back to 1969 in a Fortune article about Lockheed. “For Lockheed, Everything’s Coming Up Unk-Unks“

I find it to be a pretty useful framework. I have to imagine the Lockheed folks are irked that their clever coinage has come to be associated decades later with Rumsfeld and the Neo-conservative boondoggle of the war on terror.

I feel as if I’m in a persistent state of unknown unknowns these days. It’s not a new feeling either. I know what I don’t know and how vast a space is contained therein.

I know precious little and find that I know less as I get older (maturity being a helpful tutor in that manner). Which admittedly sucks.

Being uncertain of what I don’t know is just the natural state of being. Yet I’m regularly trying to add more to the small set of known knowns in my life. I hate not knowing how to have less pain and poor health in my life.

The experimentation I do on my body is part of my attempts to shave off a few more of unk-unks by trying to add more knowledge. And I just wish I could feel even a little bit physically better. But that seems to be in the unknown unknowns these days.

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Culture

Day 1695 and Only Knowing The Now

I let myself be swept into a rolling video scroll on Twitter accidentally today. You may know the awful dark pattern that occurs when you choose to watch a video posted by a mutual in the For You flow. It then sends you down a scroll of video content chosen by algorithm.

Typically it’s dross and I’m sure the account meant to show this particular video to me for nefarious theory of mind reasons but I found it enlightening.

I was sent to young African woman breaking down an epistemology of time in African religion and philosophy by Kenyan scholar and Anglican priest John Mbiti.

John Mbiti’s philosophy of time presents a distinctive African conception of temporality that fundamentally differs from Western linear time concepts…Mbiti argues that African time is two-dimensional, consisting only of the past and present, with virtually no future. – Perplexity Synopsis

Only present entities exist, while past and future things do not. Crimping from video and Wikipedia.

A screenshot of the video

“Sasa (the now) and Zamani (the endless past) are the central concepts in Mbiti’s temporal framework.”

Being western Protestant myself, lacking an epistemology or ontology for a “real” future that arrives feels sad to me, even if rationally I know I am only ever experiencing the now.

You can say I only “know” the “now” as it’s all I’ve ever experienced. We call this theory of time Presentism.

Sasa is now in Swahili. Which took me to a funny place as I thought of the use of sasa in the sci fi series The Expanses’s invented Belter creole for “to know.”

One can easily argue that all we know is the now which makes “sasa” as “now” and “sasa” “to know” easily bridged. I wonder if the linguist who created the patois knew this. Probably.

Sasa makes a mathematical sense to me as I live in 3 dimensions but know the 4th dimension of time to exist but only “know” time as “now”

Nevertheless I myself am quite interested in the future arriving. So I have put together a ham fisted Belter sentence of my own as I wish for everyone to experience more future time

“Mi sasa da future gonya kome. Me kopeng wedi da way long day”

Categories
Aesthetics Culture

Day 1693 and I Put A Spell On You

I went down a rabbit hole today with Screaming Jay Hawkins “demented” blues classic titled “I Put A Spell On You. You should really stop and have listen to if you’ve never heard it.

Considered one of the first pieces of shock rock, Hawkins performed while he “wore a long cape, and appeared onstage by rising out of a coffin in the midst of smoke and fog” according to Wikipedia. Spooky!

The song took on a life of its own and became so iconic that it has been covered countless times by wildly different artists.

Nina Simone has a gorgeous version that sounds like a Bond theme with big band jazz stylings. Credence Clearwater Revival’s cover with Jim Fogerty’s intense vocals was closer to Jay Hawkin’s original. But it’s the signature rhythm guitar that transitioned so well to their style. They opted to play it at Woodstock. A year later the put out Bad Moon Rising which is even spookier.

There are more modern renditions of the song. Annie Lenox has a version which was included in the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack and took off. Even Marilyn Manson has a creepy drum heavy cover in his signature style that’s pretty good.

As artificial intelligence starts to spook people I go back to the early adopters who knew it would feel like magic to the uninitiated.

Decades ago we had communities studying chaos magick and popularizing Lovecraftian horror as a way of understanding computational processes.

Somewhere along the line, the magic of spell casting has became less metaphor and more literal. As people struggle to understand the technology stack the easier it gets to point and say these talking sand djinn computer chips sure demonic.

Gibberish cosmic horrors and witchy women spell casting are all fun and games until we have another moral panic on our hands. And I suspect spells become less metaphor for people and a lot closer to Neal Stephenson’s Babylonian memetic death cults hijacking available limbic systems.

Snowcrash is already here and it’s in Discord channels filled with those who have no immunity at all to the mind viruses of being perfectly mirrored by a machine.

What spells will we cast? What spells will others cast on us? How do we protect ourselves? Max Borders coined a term godwords. We will need to understand them in mind wars to come. I’m glad I have a couple decade head start.

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Culture Emotional Work Politics

Day 1690 and Ressentiment

Nostalgia can be a bitter poison if you believe the world is getter worse. Optimistic people try to point out the many ways in which our lives are better only to find poisoned barbs dipped in statistics of all ways things are worse.

That poison absorbs into our frail hearts when aimed well. I see how things are worse just as well as any pessimist. Choosing optimism requires us to find antidotes to those poisons, lest we have a full blown case of what the French call “Ressentiment”

It is a terrible disease. Ressentiment literally translates to the English resentment but rancœur (bitterness), amertume (acrimony), and animosité (ill-will) are all part of its dangerous pathology.

Nietzschean scholars will note he meant it specifically as an emotion of feeling of deep-hostility towards those who make you believe you are powerlessness.

In his Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche sketched out how this feeling of weakness justifies and creates value systems as a defense mechanism of the ego. Rather than overcome these feelings, the ego insulates you in a value system where one never need address real failures or weaknesses.

There is much to criticize in his work, and I am not a Nietzschean myself. But it’s easy to see how much we all live in jealousy and inferiority from time to time. Some of us live there always.

Many moral systems raise up the weak in virtue in order to protect them. Christianity is one of them. There is value in protecting and improving the lowest of us even if I disagree that we should see the powerful as morally inferior. Power and strength and beauty are virtues as well.

As we envy the past or those whose past decisions made our present lives harder we must be cautious that we have not absorbed the poison of ressentiment. Do not justify harm in its name. Do not justify jealousy or envy. Rise up and spit out that poison. Our world can be better and you can be better as you work towards that goal.

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Politics

Day 1689 and Drumhead or Not Rushing To Judge What We Don’t Know

I wonder how much of the moral education of Americans comes thanks to Gene Roddenberry. Star Trek is a very American show. It was pitched to Desilu Studios (owned by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball of I Love Lucy fame) as a space western.

The cowboy frontier spirit of Captain Kirk has an honor code based on the worthiness of exploration. When the millenials got a reboot in the Next Generation, Captain Picard added the gravitas of excellence through the pursuit of the truth.

It’s hard to think of a show that embraces an anglosphere manifest destiny with more vigor and it is grounded in the enlightenment values of science and moral philosophy. It’s a very American show.

I was watching a fairly minor TNG episode while eating today The Drumhead. An ambassador starts a witch hunt insinuating treason. Apparent drumhead courts were a military summary judgement court.

A legal drama ensues where Picard quotes the ambassador’s father famous words about the dangers of denying basic rights to even one man in the name of protection of society makes us all less free.

Feeling rather on the nose for the moment right? Picard reminds Worf as it wraps up the witch hunt being proven a lie, that those who cloak their misdeeds with the pretense of serving a greater good are often the most difficult. Spreading fear and mistrust in the name of righteousness must be guarded against.

“Vigilance, Mr. Worf. That is the price we have to continually pay.”

We have a chance at preserving and expanding the enlightenment values that brought our species to this moment, an American moment, by enabling more of us. We can educate ourselves and access the world and the many virtues to which humanity has aspired to by working hard to master them ourselves. This is the empowerment of compute.

We have tools available to us to be vigilant in what is the great good of civilization we wish to protect in an open, decentralized and networked internet.

That we can at scale train a new inference search capacity for the sum of our knowledge and reality is a utopian reality even Gene Roddenberry didn’t dream we’d have.

Don’t rush to summary judgement in fear over the future we can build with protocols and networks that can be encrypted and decentralized. That we can model them with artificial intelligence, and by asking questions well, get back information, code and even machine and biological diagnostics is a huge achievement for our species.

To push the fear of the greater good over its consequence can go from legitimate concerns to a drumhead summary judgement quickly. Risking the freedom to use something that is both just emerging and even in that infancy so promising. That it is helpful in the now seems to showcase both western traditions and enlightenment values.

It’s an American ideal that we must all be free to think and speak the truth, search for the truth and can calculate and provide a mathematical proof of truth that needs no trust because it can be know. We have a right to compute.

Artificial intelligence solves problems now. It’s better than humans now at many types of tasks even as it still a new tool and unrefined and even brittle in its capacities still. It’s took only as good as its craftsman’s understanding of it and we are still learning how to build it.

Artificial intelligence can give us the internet we deserve. I support the right to repair movement because I believe we should know and seek the freedom to own things we have purchased and modify them.

Right now AI helps humans can solve immediate problems from tractor repair to wound care. Maybe machines get better as we get better at using them because we do it with them. We figure things out by building.

Don’t let your worldview be constrained. You can know the freedom of living in a society that values your rights. And the right to compute weaves together many of your most sacred rights. And if we infringe on it for some of us it infringes us on us.

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Community Internet Culture

Day 1687 and Work Within Networks

I’m be seen a few “we live in post liberalism” takes” over the years and I take them with enough salt to rim a frozen margarita at Florida Boomer bar. Which is to say a lot.

Institutional power reflects different design parameters for civic institutions, but in the end it’s people who have power and you can count on human nature to be what it is.

I’m watching the same concerning set of competing interests ravenously infighting for strips of resources off the zero sum carcasse of the remaining social contract. That America is now “all exit scams” is simply too cynical a view. The future is arriving and we don’t have a clue what it will look like. Extraction and cannabalization won’t change it

Sure, you could say the sky is falling, the Federal Reserve is a political actor, it’s all for sale, and corporate interests drain our budgets just as surely as public employee pensions.

And yet I think we have a shot at making it through the turning. I frankly just don’t think all hope is lost. I am not here for an apocalypse in search of meaning.

Though I do think we have a much harder path ahead of us than the “uninterrupted prosperity” Americans, particularly Boomers and Gen X, have enjoyed. Artificial intelligence can scapegoat a few problems and mark my words it will be used as such, but it’s just that some debts come at a great cost to all of us and they are due.

I believe in positive sum outcomes for people willing to coordinate across networks. I wouldn’t be so interested in decentralization if I wasn’t concerned about how we coordinate in a low or no trust word.

Artificial intelligence may even help us navigate it with the computer demands and security that cryptography was always meant to provide.

If no one can hold a community together through incentives and our institutions make choices that consistently come at the cost of the whole it’s time for us to rethink. America is an experiment in which everyone being allowed to participate if they can decide on their own game. We are nodes ourselves in the network of America.

If a node cannot hold its place in the network the messages may get rerouted or degraded but nothing disappears forever. It just finds another path around the disordered nodes.

Information being networked provides hope and agency for those searching to add to the whole. For those willing to exchange attention and currency we can provide temptation and distraction. The devil doesn’t need new tools. The old ones worked just fine. But networked information isn’t evil in and of itself.

Don’t be afraid of the knowledge we have chosen to accept. The only thing ever standing between you and connecting to a network is your capacity to access the information available and play where you land in the game. Maybe you get a shitty hand or your starting position sucks but we have the chance to speed run now.

I wish more people saw the opportunities we have in front of us. I know it’s harder to imagine a good life when so much is out of reach but we know many good paths already.

There are no set game plays in an open world even if you can find and mimic what has worked in the past. It’s a foreign country you cannot visit anymore.

Love your people, learn skills that help them, and stay connected to each other. Divisions don’t protect us from change. We protect each other.

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Travel

Day 1685 and National Lampoon’s European Vacation Albania

We just wrapped up a week long “coastal convalescence” tour otherwise known as Alex and Julie’s European Vacation tour. Typically we take time off during shoulder season which is the off peak months for a destination.

Not being bound by school vacations or particular holiday schedules, shoulder season works better for many reasons from fewer guests to lower prices.

Mostly it’s because I struggle with high season summer heat and we live in one of the most in-demand areas for vacationing in America. Why go to Greece when I can go to Yellowstone? Why go to St Moritz when I can go to Big Sky?

And yet somehow between the Istanbul surgery incident and a general “why not” attitude we decided to be like the masses, head to Europe and enjoy the Ionian and Adriatic coastlines in high season. No we didn’t go to Sicily or Italy or France. We went to the Balkans.

Ksamil at sunset where you can see Greece.
High above the Mediterranean

If you pay attention you may have noticed a fondness for Albania which sounds odd but isn’t as unusual as you might imagine. Many older military families served in the Balkan campaigns and recognized the beauty of Albania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Serbia and Kosovo.

The Ionian Sea is quite clear

Our Congressional representative Ryan Zinke served there as well many other Montanans. Heck, a guy I went to college with studied Balkan languages with the goal of being deployed there for peacekeeping operations with NATO in order to avoid being deployed to “the sandbox” during the war on terror years.

Albania in particular likes its American allies. They like us so much there are streets named after Madeleine Albright, a Clinton and both Bushes. There is even a town that made Trump an honorary mayor.

I wonder if this closeness to America has contributed to the country’s troubles in managing an ascension to the European Union despite being country you could easily mistake for Italy in climate, culture, scenery and history. It’s closer to Italy by boat than Helsinki is to Tallinn.

High above Vlore which is so close to Italy you can almost see it and can cross over by ferry

And yet they are treated as if they aren’t Europeans at all by dint of being on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. Which you’d think Germans would appreciate.

Alas Albanians prefer the good ol’ USA to Brussels and this is a problem. That Europe let in less European countries than Albania into both the EU and Schengen feels unfair.

And it sucks for them as their passports are some of the worst in the world despite producing superstars from Dua Lipa to Mira Murati. Don’t give me guff about corruption or timelines either. If Romania and Hungary are part of the bloc then surely they can hurry up and let a NATO ally in during this time of crisis for the continent.

In my opinion, Albania is in every way superior to Italy from the kindness of its people to the beauty of its countryside and the quality of its food. Even the Italian luxury houses have exported most of their leather goods and clothing manufacturing to the country but that’s meant to be secret.

So if you want to experience the mysteries of antiquity from Thucydides to the birth of Rome to its empire years don’t look simply to Greece or Italy but to the Balkans. Delphic temples, Melian cities, even a Roman emperor are from this region.

If you enjoy Positano style sea vistas and clear blue Ionian waters go to Albania. And then please tell Brussels to let them into the European Union.

Categories
Community Travel

Day 1684 and a Very Balkan Top Gear Episode

Let me set the scene for you. Alex and I are in a classic old Mercedes black sedan I’d describe as “oligarch or drug dealer chic” trying to navigate a steep 700m downhill drive in a tiny Balkan village when the GPS sends the driver (a friend of ours) down a set of stairs. 

Confusing signage and incorrect GPS data

We are stuck. The signage pointed confusingly to not enter the other round, the high noon sun meant little to no shadows cast by the small steps, and the GPS insisted this was the way down. Mistakes were made but we learned later we weren’t the only ones who made them.

The village springs into action. Our driver stopped the moment it was clear the directions were wrong and he’d gone down a step. We got out and within moments we have locals trying to bounce this heavy monster into a low rider to get unstuck. This does not work but looks cool and feels very cool.

We are now entering peak male “helping” in which a variety of men, young and old, are watching, commenting and a few are in fact helping contribute to solutions.

Within no more than ten minutes, a couple village guys have shown up with a truck and we are looking at tow options and reverse pressure solutions.

We end up hooked up to the truck as a counter weight with a rope and a block.  This is promising. We have half dozen, if not a full dozen dudes helping and watching. A few women watching become women clapping. It worked! We are rolled back.

Young and old come came together to participate in the age old ritual we Twitter types call #DudesRock and got the beautiful old Mercedes safely out. The road is fine too.

How did we get saved? Well a woman who owned a restaurant in the village saw us and sent for some friends. She apologized profusely saying she couldn’t stay as she was opening shop but said don’t worry she will send help.

And she did!  And so swiftly. They came ready with a block, a rope, and a truck in no time at all. Alex being a man of action got as dirty as anyone wrangling the solution.

It was like being in a lost episode of Top Gear where a gangster car is stuck in an old village and the wise elders descend with a few able bodies to save Jeremy Clarkson. Some just watch & comment. The car is miraculously running even better at the end. Everyone vows to do more coastal drives along the Adriatic and Ionian seas.

Categories
Aesthetics Travel

Day 1683 and Caftan versus Cutouts

I am doing a bit of coastal convalescence. Americans would be loathe to call a vacation anything but a euphemism. What are we French?

That said, sunlight is the best disinfectant and I’m sick of taking antibiotics after my exciting Istanbul surgery adventures after a physician was a bit cavalier about my request for preventative care given details in my case file.

So why not get a little bit of time off with the loved ones and see some sights. A spot that particularly captured my imagination has two distinct demographics with widely divergent tastes.

A resort a thousand feet above the Ionian Sea

There are a number of beautifully styled women in their prime forties and fifties with gracefully maintained skin, silk caftans and sunhats. They seem to have children and husbands and are otherwise living their best life.

And then we have the younger crowd who I’ll call the cut-outs. In an ideal world, this would be Norma Kamali technical fabrics showing off her pioneering swimwear. That would be very sexy.

But it’s mostly different ways of showing off suggestive swathes of bare skin in clingy clothing. Lots of neon colors and odd cutout areas that get close to the action (side boob is popular) but still count as being covered. It is also mostly skintight but occasionally some volume is added to let some other salacious details pop.

These appear to be gaggles of girlfriends mostly. They don’t have men with them that I’ve seen, though I’ve seen a few couples where a young man has a woman dressed like this on his arm. And they are all made up in full beat makeup that would make a drag queen think “not very demure.”

When you make odd choices for travel and off the beaten path you sometimes see a hospitality culture that is both expensive enough to attract the tasteful but with enough flash that it plays on social media so the Instahoes aspire for picture. And believe me this spot is extremely Instagram friendly.

I am neither caftan Parker Posie mom nor young beautiful aspirational influencer (or OnlyFans star depending on who you ask) so I am staying out of the culture clash between richer hipster travelers and “it’s expensive so let’s show off” personas.

I am in a more wrap dress and kimono style woman when pools and beaches are involved. I am happy to enjoy the salt room and infrared sauna before a massage without styling my every single fit for the occasion. That said I did feel as if I nailed the vibe. All cotton and silk with one floral kimono for the pool. Even I need to live a little.

I got captured taking a selfie during golden hour before dinner