The fight for diverse and conscious voices

Below, links to a three-part video series from Bloomberg on the music revolution that started with the first MP3 and whose latest chapter is the past year of Coronavirus destroying live performance as we knew it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHVRItc38-c&ab_channel=BloombergQuicktake

It begins with Napster, which is a popular place to start if not entirely right. As someone who traded tapes before there was digital music I recognize the antecedents. Still, Napster was revolutionary to me. I trace my discovery of the remix to my experience with Napster. Perhaps I was odd in how I used it. I didn't want just a rip of a CD - I wanted sounds I couldn't get any other place or way. Live recordings, too.

Along the way I discovered dozens of new artists and realized that the world of music was much much bigger than what the airwaves or CD store would bring me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01DOCnCA1j0&ab_channel=BloombergQuicktake

I remember the war on sharing quite well. I wasn't a particularly heavy user of the second wave of sharing systems but I started blogging about the Copyright Wars, a hobby that would last about 15 years. Through that I met some interesting folks and became somewhat versed in some odd corners of the law.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=392B71DgBCY&ab_channel=BloombergQuicktake

It has always been true that artists need to get paid. If they don't, you don't get (as much) art. The issue wasn't paying the artists, it was giving money to vast corporate empires that sucked everything dry and maybe returned a pittance to a few creators. Meanwhile, thousands starved, waiting for their turn in the spotlight, a chance to be "discovered". The democratization of music, and the multitude of ways that have emerged to reward creators, are the best things to come out of this mess. But I will die mad at the RIAA nonetheless.

Sometimes I think that the universe speaks to me. Not in the "Noah? This is God, Noah" sense. But rather in the sense that something engages my brain in an unexpected and meaningful way. Often it's internal - I realize a thing that was true and always was true and I just didn't... know it until the universe spoke it to me.

Sometimes, though, it's words or ideas from elsewhere. Today I got a double-shot of thoughts about love and that's the universe speaking to me so I'm going to write them down.

One is a quote, that I think i want on a tee shirt or something:

"Love does not save the world; love makes the world worth saving."

And the other is from a discussion about one's self-image, and it goes:

"I needed to see myself in the world in a way I could love."

Like a lot of profundities these things may be only profound to me, and maybe only to Now Me. That's OK, I'm just here to write things down from time to time.

I have a lot of them and might post more. Here's one for today:

What are you hoping not to take for granted ever again?

For me it's the pleasure of seeing other people. I am, as the icon indicates, a troll by nature. Introverted. I recharge via downtime. My tolerance for random social interactions is about 90 minutes, usually.

But I've been enjoying my couple of online groups - one is an old geeks club and one is my D&D group - way more than I expected. I love my teas with friends (you are still invited, by the way).

Being part of a larger group (I do professional groups and town halls and discussions and such) isn't doing it for me, even when I can see other people. The familiar nature of the faces? The potential for personal interaction? I dunno. It's something-something and I can't put a finger on it but I can feel it.

What do you think? What's on your list?

I recently saw Her and I want to talk about it and Altered Carbon at the same time because there are interesting similarities. I'm going to avoid spoilers here but feel free to comment as you like.

In "Her", writer/director Spike Jonze gives us an interesting premise: what if you had an AI (they call it an operating system) that was theoretically designed to meet your every (personal) need. Wouldn't it be better if it was intelligent to understand your needs better? And if it was intelligent, what might happen?

I shied away from this film for a while because I was afraid that it was going to go in the "robot slave" camp, of which Hollywood has produced too many. It does not, even a little. "Her" is a film I rank with Lost in Translation as a unique exploration of humanity and human relationships. I expect it will bear re-watching. 4.5/5 stars, down from 5 because I was reminded of the ending I disliked.

The casting is also brilliant. Joaquin Phoenix is our protagonist, a lonely man who struggles to keep relationships and unexpectedly develops one with this AI. Phoenix is awkward without being embarrassing or buffoonish. He's good at what he does, and people aren't his strong suit. The AI is voiced by Scarlett Johansson. This is a great choice because she is someone visually well-known so it's easy to imagine her speaking these lines and she's conventionally very attractive so I immediately see how Theodore (Phoenix's character) can visualize her as an attractive woman even though her on-screen presence is limited to an audio device. The choice never to visualize Samantha - the name given to Johansson's AI - is particularly good. If you are at all a fan of radio plays/podcasts you know how well sound can be used to convey even subtle things. I can't think of another Hollywood film where that has been done so well.

This set-up works especially well when Samantha begins to develop a real personality and to drive things. She has desires; she's petulant. She's not just there to please Theodore in a trivial sense. She pleases him by being a 'real' person really interested in him, his life, his activities. She misses him when he's away, just as he misses being away from her. The movie posits this as a relationship with an AI but it's a lot like I imagine a relationship might be between people who are separated by necessary distance. Imagine Samantha and Theodore as people on opposite sides of an uncrossable war zone and you'd get a very similar story, at least at first. This brings us to the question of what it means to be human. We know Samantha is computer code, but she relates as a human.

Now let me jump to Altered Carbon. I promised to write this up but never did, so a bit of background first. I really liked the novel and its premise. Season 1 of the show took a lot from that source material and did wonderful things with it, if you don't mind on-screen graphic violence. Also, nudity. The core premise is that on traveling to other worlds humans discover an apparently long-gone alien species that had developed technology to encode a mind into an implanted device, as well as allow the encoded minds to be cast between these devices, at supra-light speeds. These devices - stacks - become the real representation of a person and the physical body becomes just a sleeve. Organic damage can still be repaired; destruction of the stack becomes "real death". Imprisonment means putting your stack "on ice" for a period of time; your sleeve gets rented out to pay your debts.

Rich people can pay to have their stacks backed up and their bodies cloned, effectively becoming immortal. The class of meths (from Methuselah) are this reality's 1% with all the vices and deviances you'd expect. The series protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, is the last Envoy, one of a class of highly trained rebels whose rebellion was crushed long ago. A meth brings Kovacs back and in exchange for Kovacs' services, this meth arranges to have Kovacs' record expunged and his crimes pardoned. In Season One Joel Kinnaman, who you might remember from Suicide Squad (Rick Flag), plays Kovacs' sleeve.

He's very good and he's surrounded by a great cast, including Dichen Lachman as Reileen Kawahara, the stunning Martha Higareda as Detective Kristin Ortega, and Renée Elise Goldsberry as Quellcrist Falconer, the woman who founded the resistance movement that comes to be called Quellists, and who trained the Envoys. In Season 2 the sleeve is played by Anthony Mackie, who is just awesome, Goldsberry reprises her role, and Higareda is replaced by Simone Missick as Trepp, a bounty hunter with a heart. I loved Missick's work on Luke Cage and she's every bit as good here.

The writing is quite good, with Season 2 picking up themes and ideas from Season One but not being a strict repetition. Again, Kovacs is hired by a meth and again things go wrong but in ways that fill in much backstory and allow characters to develop. Also, the ending of S2 is just *chef's kiss* perfect in that I totally didn't see it coming but as soon as it revealed I was like "oh, of COURSE they could do that" because it lined up very neatly with the things that had come before.

Altered Carbon also features intelligent AIs, like "Her" does. Most of these AIs are created to serve people for specific things. There's a class of AIs that manages human-centric facilities like hotels and nightclubs, another class that serves archaeologists on dig sites, and presumably more. There's a subtle class system in place in that even the lower-class humans don't seem to treat the AIs as equals and the AIs associate mostly with each other. They're long-lived and tend not to get attached to humans, who do still have comparatively short lifespans. Chris Conner plays Poe, a hotel AI with a quirky Edgar Allen Poe fetish, who gets attached to Kovacs and ends up playing pivotal parts in both S1 and S2. Poe and some of the other AIs form friendships with humans, and it's left open (so far at least) how far the emotional relationships might go. Clearly Poe has emotional attachments to a couple people as the seasons unfurl, and it's also clear that the AIs have emotional relationships to each other.

Where "Her" zooms in close on the relationship of one (human) person to one AI (person) and asks us to see them both as people growing to love each other, Altered Carbon also asks us to imagine what it's like to relate to one person who has multiple bodies over time. There's a brilliantly painful scene in S1 during which a relative whose sleeve died is "spun up" to join the family for holidays but since the family is not well-off they have to use whatever sleeve is available. Still, that's "Grandma" even though she looks like a thug now and the family behave as if this was normal. It's a little creepy and yet so very effective.

There you go - two pieces of fiction that dive way into the notion of what it means to be human/to be a person, each excellent though very different.

I have been putting more of my thoughts and questions onto Twitter. For all that it's a nazi-hosting shit show, it's also a place where I feel a community of thought and belief. People chuckle when I say "favorite Twitter rabbi" but that's actually a thing I have, now. She's awesome, and through her I've found other really interesting spiritual leaders.

Question 1: where is your community?

I have been having a hard time for the past couple months with the "how are you"/"how are things" question-conversation opener. It's really about how average is a bad measure you see, because there are a bunch of things that are good and I like and am happy about, and another bunch of things that are bad and stressful and I'm upset about. If I average those out, I get "OK" and sometimes I say that but it's probably the least accurate, least descriptive word I could use for this state.

Question 2: does this happen to you? What do you say when it does?

I had this... thing happen to me again recently where the proverbial light bulb went on inside my head and I thought, "Oh! So _that's_ a thing, and probably true." When you're on this side of that moment the thing in retrospect is blindingly obvious and like why couldn't you see that 1+1=2 before? It's not like I acquired new knowledge or a higher level of understanding. It's more like "these two jigsaw pieces always fit together in this way but I just never put them next to each other before."

This happens to me from time to time and while I'm glad for the universe delivering clarity to me it's also frustrating because I often don't know what to do with it and I really don't believe, much, in blinding flashes of insight. I'm more the "slow methodical building up to an answer" kind of person. Or, I think I am. Maybe I'm not.

Question 3: Does this happen to you, too? If it does, how does it fit with your world/self-view?

Last night we went to a vigil in Arlington in response to a couple of the recent hate crimes. News here: https://www.masslive.com/news/2019/05/joint-terrorism-task-force-investigating-suspicious-fires-set-at-jewish-institutions-in-arlington-needham.html

I hate that I have to write "a couple of the..." because there isn't just one. There were two local, and at the time this was happening, a similar attempted firebombing happened in the Chicago area. The targets there were friends-of-friends; the people targeted in Arlington were people we know. People who taught the kids for their b'nei mitzvot. I have ALL the feels and no idea what to do about any of it.

No persons were harmed and property damage was much less than it might have been. Still, a hate crime not just directed at my marginal group but at people I specifically know is a qualitative step change in the atmosphere.

Last night's vigil/rally of support was well-attended. We essentially filled Arlington Town Hall (moved indoors by last-minute rain). Lots of officials turned out in support (*) and the acting Chief of Police spoke. Everyone thanked the police, who have apparently been diligent in pursuit of the attackers so far. As noted, this is also a qualitative difference. Nobody in Arlington is claiming that the bombers are "fine people", and you can't underrate having public support from government and law enforcement.

"Love Lives Here" as a slogan to complement "Hate Has No Home Here" is an invention and artistry from a friend of ours. I don't think she has a DW or site I can link to; she's helped with art and production work on several Arisias. The slogan is available on postcards and signs, in English and Hebrew. She got at least general acknowledgement from the podium, along with several of the hand-crafted signs students had made. One of those signs said "Please don't bomb my rabbi" which hit me RIGHT in the feels.

After the vigil we got to go out with her and much of her family, which was a nice social for the adults even if the teens were largely anti-social.

I've been trying to find good coherent words about this since last week when I heard about the attack. I don't have any. At the vigil the Rabbi said that his response to "what can I do" was "do a mitzvah". (**) I appreciate that sentiment and I can't help thinking that the greatest mitzvah would be to defeat the Hater in Chief so we don't have four more years of this kind of filth feeling it's OK to show themselves in the daylight.

Hair Furor didn't create these monsters, and yet he is still their great champion. I don't imagine that this is a "cut the head off the snake and the body will die" moment, but I can't think of anything more nationally effective right now.


(*) There was also an unscheduled appearance by a consular official from Israel, whose verbal hypocrisy caused me to grind my teeth rather a lot. Talking about how Israel stands against hate is not very convincing when you represent a government that is actively harming refugees and Jews of color, while perpetuating a discriminatory national system, and an occupation with no end in sight. I consider myself a Zionist, and see hate crimes like these and worse worldwide as a reason for Israel to exist and to be supported. But I hate that a movement I grew up associating with egalitarian socialism has been taken over by fascistic religious fundamentalists and perverted to their ends.

(**) Literally, following a commandment. More generally, doing a good deed. It's a very Jewish form of "pay it forward" because we believe that putting out goodness into the world is its own reward. Jews don't follow the commandments - do mitzvot - because we're afraid we'll go to (Christian style) Hell if we don't. We do it because fixing the world begins with fixing oneself, and fixing oneself is both a personal reward - you're a better person - and a global good because you get to live in a world with more healthy better people.

https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/31-days-greater-self-reliance/

I had this recommended to me by someone when I did my last set of writing prompts. I figure I'll post the top URL here so you can read them all at your leisure and I'll work through them as I can. I have a bunch of other things that I've been holding back on posting and maybe getting some random writing done will help with that. Here we go...

What is something you have or are pursuing, that other people say is worthwhile, but you haven’t found valuable? Do you continue to pursue it based on the promises of others?

It's sort of ironically funny to find myself writing-blocked by a writing prompt. Like, I've puzzled over this for a while and I'm having a very hard time coming up with examples.

If I break it down I can consider it through different categories. For example, physical objects. I have lots of junk - that is, stuff I own that I don't find valuable. But for most of those things other people generally would agree that the junk is ... well, if not actually worthless it's things I could dispense with. I doubt I'd ever go into some kind of minimalist lifestyle entirely but I could stand to decruft a considerable amount. Part of what makes it harder to decruft is that I hate just creating trash, and finding someone who'd value the things I want to be rid of is rare.

There are lots of things (material) that other people own and find valuable. Some of them I want, and I get them. Some I don't, and don't.

Maybe the question is more abstract - consider qualities, or habits. I know there are lots of good reasons to, say, exercise more or eat vegetarian. It's not that I don't recognize the value in those things. I do them because I (intellectually) recognize they have some value. I do them a lot less than I should in part because I haven't personally connected with the value. These days there are lots of articles appearing on how to make habit change "stick". Recognizing that people tend to regress to baseline, even when they know that baseline isn't great, means you need to take a different approach than just issuing dicta "Eat better!" "Exercise more!"

In the last set of prompts I talked off and on about interpersonal qualities. Ways of talking, thinking, or relating to other people. Here, too, I do some of these things but less than I should. Honestly, I don't know why. I don't think it's because I don't recognize the value. It's some combination of "old dog, new tricks" and the difference between abstractly recognizing the value in a thing and having internalized it to the point of it being one of my values.

There, I wrote a thing. Maybe I'll write more things. If you encourage me that's more likely. Or discourage me if you think that's appropriate - I won't be offended.

https://soundcloud.com/defunk-165975487/sets/valentine-mix

For those who just want the tunes, here's an hour and a half "Valentine Mix" from Defunk. Like a lot of long mixes it has good bits and bad bits and I don't think all of it will appeal to any listener more particularly. It has funky bits and country bits and electronica bits and some lovely moments. I link to it because it's a Valentine's Day mix without a lot of sappy 'romantic' pop stuff. If you know me at all, you know that's not my speed. I don't even much like V-D.

What I do like is music. If you know me at all, you know that music and sharing music is an important part of my love language. Not in that "oh, here's our song and let's stare soulfully into each other's eyes while it plays" (non)sense. But rather, music is love. Sharing music is showing you care. Music, and sharing of music, has been an important part of every meaningful relationship I can remember in my life.

If we haven't shared music, then we haven't shared something important to me and it's a way in which we aren't close, yet. We can share music by passing tunes back and forth, by going to shows together that we both enjoy, by proclaiming our favored music's superiority, by arguing about which of our musics is good, bad, or just plain trash. You can love terrible music - music I can't even listen to. You can think my music is terrible and unlistenable. When you choose to share that, you are saying "love" to me. This is something I've known about myself for a long time but haven't really been able to articulate until recently.

These music blogs are acts of me sharing my love with you, my readers. I hope you recognize yourself reflected in these sharings, as I mark and blog music sometimes with people in mind. I hope you hear this language and will speak it with me. And I hope you have a good Valentine's Day, whatever your love language is.

(If you missed the antecedent to all this, it's at https://drwex.dreamwidth.org/1009674.html - Reading it isn't strictly necessary to understanding this entry, but it'll help with context.)

The original questioner clarified that one of their concerns was:

"it didn't seem fair for somebody to be held accountable by Arisia for ideas communicated on a non-Arisia forum."

I want to write about this, because I think this is a very hard problem, to which we don't have a good answer. So we (and I mean all of us, not just Arisia) are going on a case-by-case basis, and I think that's the right thing to do, even though I like systems that are predictable and not warty.
( This is going to get long; you've been warned )
I wish there was a neat answer, an ending or moral I could put here to wrap all this up nicely. There isn't one. This is a big hard problem and Arisia's instance of it is only a microcosm of the serious challenges our society is wrestling with. But it's my microcosm and a thing I continue to care about, deeply. For myself, I have a lot more reading and thinking to do. In about three weeks we're going to have a convention and after that convention there will be a stack of IRs that get handed to the Eboard and we're going to have to figure out how to apply our principles ... on a case by case basis.

Wish me luck.

This is very long. I will cut the whole thing so as to not blow up your reading page. It was hard to write. Despite its length I have more to say on this topic. I've had this checked by an insider who confirmed that I am not revealing any confidential information, a thing I worry about a lot these days.

Background, for those who are not actually submerged in All Things Arisia: past leaders of the organization mishandled some serious incident reports. People got really hurt. I still believe that no one acted with malice, but impact matters a lot more than intent and when you've hurt someone you need to apologize.

We did issue an apology. You can read it here: https://corp.arisia.org/Apology-2018-11-23
This entry recounts part of what happened between November 11th, when the new Executive Board was elected, and November 23, when the apology appeared. During that time there were a lot of insistent voices saying "why don't you just apologize already?" as if that was a simple matter. As if it was like you'd stepped on someone's foot. They say "ow" and you say "sorry." It's not like that at all, and some of the loudest voices were from people who I think should know better. This post is public in part so they might read it and so that you can refer people to it. I hope it helps; I intend to continue blogging my adventures as Arisia VP whenever I can.

( wall of history crits you )