Elisabeth and Merianna talk about the importance of developing a personal brand as well as a professional brand. They talk about public profiles and David Bowie as well as upcoming projects. Of course they talk about the upcoming Episode 100!
The post Thinking Out Loud 98: Putting Yourself Out There appeared first on Thinking.FM.
From January 2008:
“Other candidates that have been using Twitter have been posting info about events for local followers or either links to YouTube video of rally’s, etc. It would be a shame if the candidates follow McCain lead and bring the negativity so associated with TV political messages into the Twitter medium.”
Source: First Political Attack Tweet? – Sam Harrelson
Dear 8 Year Younger Sam: Ha. It gets worse. It gets much worse. Enjoy it while you can.
“The Oxfam report An Economy for the 1%, shows that the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population has fallen by a trillion dollars since 2010, a drop of 38 percent. This has occurred despite the global population increasing by around 400 million people during that period. Meanwhile, the wealth of the richest 62 has increased by more than half a trillion dollars to $1.76tr. The report also shows how women are disproportionately affected by inequality – of the current ‘62’, 53 are men and just nine are women. Globally, it is estimated that a total of $7.6tr of individuals’ wealth sits offshore. If tax were paid on the income that this wealth generates, an extra $190 billion would be available to governments every year.”
Source: 62 people own the same as half the world, reveals Oxfam Davos report | Oxfam International
“If any of those three is the nominee then — so long as the Democrats keep Hillary in the race — the Republican will win the presidency. Clinton’s flaws are simply too heavy a lift for a majority of the American people to carry.”
Source: Judd Gregg: The finish line | TheHill
A few months ago, I would have laughed at that thought. “Haha, Sam… of course a Democrat will win in 2016. Trump? Pssh. Cruz? No thanks, Jesus. Rubio who? Jeb! is a flop.”
As much fun as Democrats (and I) have had with the “crazy” Republican debates and shouting matches and outrages-of-the-week, I’m beginning to realize the Republicans have something that the Democrats don’t have in this process… choices and diversity.
Hillary will win the nomination. No doubt. But that’s great, right? She’s female and it’s about time we had a female nominee and a female president! Sure. Let’s send up Elizabeth Warren or any of the millions of talented female leaders we have in the United States who could be ready to lead our country into the third decade of the 21st Century tomorrow.
And that’s my problem with this year’s Democratic Party candidates (RIP O’Malley Campaign). We are supposed to choose between a non-Democrat socialist long time senator from Vermont (God bless you folks, Stowe and Burlington are cool) and … Clinton.
“But she has the experience to lead, Sam!” Sure. I agree with that in some aspects (definitely not all of her record, but this is politics). But 50.1% of the voting American public won’t, and Clinton will not win in a contest with Rubio or Bush (or Kasich, but … yeah). And nor should she.
It’s time for a change in the Democratic Party. Our bench is weak and the down ballot votes in favor of increasingly conservative Republican local and state candidates will harm our country for decades and do real danger to everything from our public education system (see North Carolina) to our water supply (see Michigan) to our infrastructure (see South Carolina) to our very real issue of food insecurity and poverty we continue to ignore.
Bill, the email scandal, Benghazi, her handling of Libya’s collapse, her flippant regard for the press, her demeaning candor towards new technologies that are transforming our cultures and will continue to do so into the 2020’s (Virtual / Augmented Reality is going to arrive quickly and shake things up), her paid speeches and perceptions that she’s wrapped around Wall St’s finger… $21 million in paid speeches to corporations representing interests she’s now suddenly campaigning against… all of these things and more from her past and present will cost Democrats the White House and the very real Supreme Court nominations that will impact / haunt our Republic for decades (along with the down ballot votes).
I’m not a #BernieBro (anymore than I was an Obama Boy in 2008). I very much welcome female leadership and opportunities to provide decision making whether it’s in our home, in our church, in our family budgets, or my posts on social media. So let’s stop with this repeated rhetoric from 2008 regarding why “my” demographic is uneasy with Clinton:
“That does not mean that all privileged white male Democrats are sexist, anymore than it would be true to suggest that all working-class white Democrats (the segment of the party that is breaking for Clinton) are racist. But a lightly disguised uneasiness with female power, as well as the “we love women, just not that woman” rhetoric will be familiar to anyone who has paid attention to the reception of the feminist movement. It’s the movement of which Clinton has become emblematic -– not because it was her bailiwick, but because she has been exactly the kind of woman that feminism made room for: ambitious, ball-busting, high-earning, untrained in the finer arts of hair care, and unwilling to play dumber (or nicer) than she is.”
I am fortunate enough to be a partner to a female leader. She would make a great President if she weren’t led by a different calling that I am lucky to glimpse. The same is true for millions of females who are fantastic leaders in commerce, business, politics, law etc.
To pretend that Clinton should be upheld as a paragon of female leadership because she “worked her way to the top” sells short the very hard work that my wife and other women have done and continue to do (on a minute-by-minute basis) to help us recover from our national sin of protestant white male heterosexual homogeneous leadership across our churches, government, businesses, and homes. Am I to tell my daughters that if they really want to be strong females like Rey, they need to marry wisely and lie / cheat / steal their way to the top? No, I’ll point them to Merianna. Or Lisa. Or Cassandra. Or Nikki. Or Anna. Or, again, any of the millions of American women who “could make this country great again” if the system wasn’t rigged to favor the elite oligarchy that tries to sell us carefully packaged notions of femininity, female leadership, and feminism so that they can make more money.
The great JJ Abrams style plot twist is that a vote for Clinton isn’t just a vote for “the establishment.” It’s a vote for the privileged white male establishment.
We deserve a Republican President if we think Clinton represents the best and brightest that female leadership can offer our country. If we don’t think that’s the case… why are we in this situation?
Clinton will win the nomination easily. Rubio (or Bush) will win the Republican nomination. This time next year, we’ll have President Rubio in the White House.
…unless the Democratic Party elites decide that Clinton is too much of a liability over her law breaking activity and jettisons her just before Super Tuesday in favor of VP Biden who will promise to serve one term and then hand off to his VP Elizabeth Warren or Deval Patrick or Nina Turner.
“Facebook urgently needs to address the impact that its algorithm changes are having on nonprofits, NGOs, civil society, and political activists—especially those in developing countries, who are never going to be able to “pay to play” and for whom Facebook is one of the few really effective ways to get a message out to a wide audience without government control or censorship.”
Source: Facebook Is Throttling Nonprofits and Activists
I’d urge nonprofits (like our own Hunger Initiative) and activists to seek out means of distributing and organizing online communications that aren’t reliant on social networking silos.
Of course, it’s easy to point to Facebook with its 2 billion users or Twitter with its ~400 million users and say that’s where people are in 2016. However, nothing is to stop groups from developing their own sites / forums / online presences (even on limited funds in places of civil unrest or poor network connections) and piping content into the silos that are at the behest of corporate interests (as in the case of Twitter’s apparent decision to pursue algorithmic feeds).
Indie is the way to go, especially if you want to authentically share your own gospels:
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
//giphy.com/embed/12XMGIWtrHBl5e
“Say hello to a brand new Twitter. The company is planning to introduce an algorithmic timeline as soon as next week, BuzzFeed News has learned. The timeline will reorder tweets based on what Twitter’s algorithm thinks people most want to see, a departure from the current feed’s reverse chronological order.”
Source: Twitter To Introduce Algorithmic Timeline As Soon As Next Week – BuzzFeed News
Welp, there goes Twitter.
Sigh.
Ugh.
Damn.
Evidently, there’s talk of an opt-out, but we’ll see.
“The map above shows the locations of the 8 Wizarding schools that have been revealed so far, that exist in the Harry Potter universe.”
Source: Wizarding School Locations from Harry Potter – Brilliant Maps
I’ve always loved maps and map-making. As a kid, I filled notebooks with imaginary island countries or continents (and their cities) on alien planets. My favorite cartoon was Tailspin because of that fantastic rock formation that ringed their island. Many of the framed pictures in my office (and our home) are maps or geography related now.
My favorite class in high school was my 9th Grade Geography class. I rocked that class and I’d quit my job today and go get a degree in Geography or Cartography if I had any real guts (follow your passions, kids). Maps are time machines. They take accumulated knowledge and transport ideas into the future. They are magical and products of our best hopes (or deepest sins).
Brilliant Maps is one of my favorite sites on the web, and I highly recommend / warn you view it (serious rat hole timesuck if you’re being “productive”).
I try hard to let my daughters and my son develop their own interests and not over-influence their choices in life (well, besides Star Wars but that’s a given). I see my 8 year old constantly observing me and picking up my copies of X-Men trade paperbacks that I “casually” leave on our coffee table after reading, and my 5 year old asking what show I want to watch on Netflix. I see my newborn son tracking me with his eyes and watching my hands fly across my clickety clackety keyboard (as MH calls it) while he fights a nap as he lays on his playmat and I sneak in some work at my desk. It’s inevitable we heavily influence our kids’ choices, of course. I just don’t want to ever be that parent reliving my glory days on the baseball or golf team through them. I want them to discover agency and identity in a positive way that feels so hard to create in our over-protective-surveillance-bubble-wrapped-life that we’ve created with our mobile phones and low attention spans. Don’t get me started on GPS devices.
One of the things I secretly hope all three of them really come to discover, value, and have a life-long obsession over are maps and geography.
So, if you’re reading this MH, LC or Jr in some future time (I wonder what device my kids could possibly be reading this text on in, say, 50 years… I bet it’s some sort of a neural network link where you can dip into the stream of history and experience any recent time / place / event virtually as if you were there… possibly even talk to a person who is “dead” but very much alive in the digital universe… weird… and yes, I have a “digital death plan” in place to have this site and many other things I manage keep going in the unfortunate (?) event I kick the bucket unexpectedly) after I’ve recycled my atoms back to the universe, I hope you like maps as much as I do. You’ll find some of my favorite books on the “maps” shelf on one of our bookcases and there are some hidden surprises in there for y’all.
Otherwise, if you read this and I’m still a breathing entity…stay away from my books and go get your own from the library.
“I keep remembering that, between Google Reader and its limits (items must have titles), and Twitter with its limits (only 140 chars, no titles, one link, no styling), same with Facebook (no links or styling) that my online writing has diminished dramatically, conforming to the contradictory limits of each of these systems.
I keep working on this, still am. Every day.”
Source: Blogging like it’s 1999 | Dave Winer
“Music is the binding agent of our mundane lives. It cements the moments in which we wash the dishes, type the resumes, go to the funerals, have the babies. The stronger the agent, the tougher the memory, and Bowie was NASA-grade epoxy to a sprawling span of freaked-out kids over three generations. He bonded us to our weird selves. We can be us. He said. Just for one day.”
Source: Strung Out In Heaven: A Bowie String Quartet Tribute, by Jherek Bischoff and Amanda Palmer
David Bowie’s track Blackstar off of his same-titled album is my favorite song (AND VIDEO… yowzers) at the moment.
I’ve followed Amanda Palmer for years and have been to a few of her shows. She’s not my favorite marketer, but her cover of Blackstar is goosebump raising. As is her work on Space Oddity, Ashes to Ashes, Heroes etc…
Great work from an artist who “gets it” and isn’t afraid to be herself, which is something we could all learn from her.
Thanks to Elisabeth for turning me on to this.
“It turns out that the huge explosion in the number of brain cells in the brain’s outer layer, called the cortex, forces that layer to swell and then collapse in on itself to form those characteristic creases. This cortical origami—which has also evolved in a handful of other brainy species, such as dolphins and some primates—may be nature’s way of solving the tight packing problem.”
Source: Human Brain’s Bizarre Folding Pattern Re-Created in a Vat – Scientific American
Amen (emphasis mine):
“With social media, be it Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram, I’m always aware of the audience. I have a general idea of who is following or friending or, most especially, favoriting. And so I’m tempted to write for that audience. Its not so much that I write for the likes —though they have their intoxicating qualities. Its that I start to write based on who I perceive that audience is. I start to mutter about what I think they will be interested in, rather than what I’m interested in.
There is an anonymity of audience when it comes to blogging. It’s like being on stage with the spotlights blinding you from anything beyond the first few rows. You’re up there putting it out there. Those friendly and familiar faces in the front row can be encouraging, for sure, but who knows who, if anyone, is in the rows beyond.”
Source: I’m Not Saying Blogging is Better – by John Chandler
Disgusting that we need to have such protections. Even more disgusting that our white, male, heterosexual lawmakers refuse to believe this is worth their approval at the behest of the fears of leadership and / or disappointing their chamber of commerce donors…
“Seven years after President Barack Obama signed legislation that makes it easier for women to challenge discriminatory pay in court, South Carolina remains one of only four states in the country without equal pay protections.”
Source: Why does South Carolina remain one of 4 states without equal-pay laws? | McClatchy DC
More churches, small businesses, and barely surviving companies need to heed this advice…
“Those who want things always to stay the same are not living in the real world,” Ms. Wintour said in a recent interview at her office overlooking the Hudson River at Condé Nast’s new headquarters, One World Trade Center. “It’s like perfection. Doesn’t exist.”
Source: Condé Nast Adapts to New Forces, Unsettling Some Inside
Merianna just called me a “Dura Europos Fanboy” as she walked past me reading an article in this morning’s NY Times by Prof. Michael Peppard about Dura Europos while drinking coffee from my Dura Europos mug.
“‘Mic number one was a valve U47, and with the other two on gates I made sure that number two, an 87 placed about 15 feet away from him, would go on at a certain level, while the third mic, another 87 that was all the way at the other end of the room, didn’t open up until he really sang loud. That reverb on his voice is therefore the room itself, none of it is artificial, and it’s his voice triggering the gates. What is really great is that the sound of the opening two verses is really intimate. It doesn’t sound like a big room yet, it sounds like somebody just singing about a foot away from your ear. The whole idea worked, and what you hear on the record is probably take three. We wouldn’t go beyond that. He was really worked up by then and I can tell you he was feeling it. It was quite an emotional song for him to sing, he deliberated long and hard over these lyrics, and he was ready to go, there was no holding him back'”
Source: CLASSIC TRACKS: Heroes
“Chelsea and her husband Clint, who asked that I use only their first names, belong to a small subculture of religious couples who practice “Christian Domestic Discipline,” a lifestyle that calls for a wife to be completely submissive to her husband. Referred to as CDD by its followers, the practice often includes spanking and other types corporal punishments administered by husbands—and ostensibly ordained by God. While the private nature of the discipline makes it difficult to estimate the number of adherents, activity in several online forums suggests a figure in the low thousands. Devotees call CDD an alternative lifestyle and enthusiastically sing its praises; for critics, it’s nothing but domestic abuse by another name.”
Source: Spanking for Jesus: Inside the Unholy World of ‘Christian Domestic Discipline’ – The Daily Beast
Gross.
Integral calculus, like theology, are areas we imagine we have forward progress as humans… not always the case.
“What is perhaps more surprising is the sophistication with which they tracked the planet, judging from inscriptions on a small clay tablet dating to between 350 B.C. and 50 B.C. The tablet, a couple of inches wide and a couple of inches tall, reveals that the Babylonian astronomers employed a sort of precalculus in describing Jupiter’s motion across the night sky relative to the distant background stars. Until now, credit for this kind of mathematical technique had gone to Europeans who lived some 15 centuries later.”
Source: Signs of Modern Astronomy Seen in Ancient Babylon – The New York Times
This week, Thomas and Sam discuss the live streaming of life and debates, the Trump Red Zone™, Presidential endorsements by leading religious figures, the myth of evangelicalism, and performativity in public religion.
The post Thinking Religion 65: Gotta Have Faith appeared first on Thinking.FM.
“Changing the button is like Coca-Cola messing with its secret recipe. Cox had tried to battle the like button a few times before, but no idea was good enough to qualify for public testing. “This was a feature that was right in the heart of the way you use Facebook, so it needed to be executed really well in order to not detract and clutter up the experience,” he says. “All of the other attempts had failed.” The obvious alternative, a “dislike” button, had been rejected on the grounds that it would sow too much negativity.”
Source: Inside Facebook’s Decision to Blow Up the Like Button
This is a huge change for the network, and will elicit a number of (fascinating) response types from love to hate judging from previous changes Facebook has made to its privacy policies and Newsfeed over the years… it’ll sort itself out after a few months but expect to see and hear lots in the media about this change!
Similarly, there was a loud outcry when Twitter switched from “stars” to “hearts” to symbolize “favoriting” tweets on its network back in November. Even the ease of “liking” something on Instagram has been a major cause of its success (especially with younger demographics).
So, social feedback on networks such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram can be seen as a major component of why people use them to post personal thoughts, pictures, or updates. Skinner boxes are alive and well, so we’ll see how Facebook handles the transition in the coming months.
Seriously, go listen to the first few minutes of this This American Life episode if you’re a doubter.
#OMGPRETTY
