So far I've blogged every day this week, and I'm not about to kill the streak just because I'm falling asleep at my keyboard in an Eastern European hotel room.
So, for your viewing pleasure: Guy Reenacts Movie Scenes With a Dog. Projects like this are why the Internet exists in the first place, right?
Most every day I try to read something that makes me uncomfortable. Something that challenges my worldview, reminds me of my privilege, prompts me to think about unmet wants and needs of others in the world, or that just helps me step outside of my everyday understanding of how things work.
A few sources I turn to when I want to be uncomfortable include:
Sometimes my discomfort turns to anger or sadness, sometimes it turns into ideas, sometimes it even results in action. Most often it's helpful to me, sometimes it's not. But being uncomfortable now and then feels important.
Shortly after a new tube of toothpaste goes into use, I start rolling the tube over on itself and putting a binder clip on the end:
The result is an "always full," strangely satisfying, easy-squeezing user experience throughout the life of the tube, and (I hope) less wasted toothpaste. Hat tip to my grandfather who I believe did a version of this, probably with rubber bands.
When a tube is done, there are lots of things you can do with it before throwing it away.
Zilla van den Born's friends and family were enjoying following her trip to South East Asia via her posts on Facebook. Exotic restaurants, temple visits, snorkeling - they all looked like so much fun!
Except they weren't real, and neither was the trip.
“I did this to show people that we filter and manipulate what we show on social media, and that we create an online world which reality can no longer meet."
Most people don't work this hard to present a patently false version of reality to their online connections, but social media culture often encourages us to present the best, shiniest version of our reality. (Even reading my post from yesterday about how I spent the last week, I'm realizing that I presented a pretty idyllic narrative when of course there were things that were less than ideal along the way.)
In the midst of sharing silly, fun, whimsical things, it feels important to find ways to make sure our online connections trend toward authenticity and sincerity. And in the cases when online tools don't facilitate genuine connection (whatever that looks like for a given person), maybe we shouldn't invest as much of our time in them at all.
I'll think about that while I ride my unicorn around the rainbow today. Photos coming soon.
We're still some time away from the next Mayoral election here in Richmond, Indiana, but whoever is going to run and win to keep or take office in 2016 will have to begin their initial preparations this year.
(A number of people have kindly suggested that I would be a good candidate for the job. I appreciate this and I'm honored by it. But to be clear: I'm not running for Mayor in the upcoming election.)
Before the candidates announce themselves and the conversation becomes about those individuals and their qualifications, I want to share my own hopes for what Richmond will see in its next Mayor.
The legal requirements for running are pretty basic: "A candidate for the office of mayor...must have resided in the city for at least one year before the election." Hopefully we'll set the bar a little higher than that.
The below list is not meant to be a critique of our current Mayor or of any past person who has held the title, but rather a forward-looking inventory of what I think the city needs most right now:
I recently watched the documentary We Cause Scenes, which follows the origins and viral success of Improv Everywhere. They're the New York City-based group that seems to have pioneered flash mobbing (though they would not call it that), conducting silly and edgy experiments in unexpected public displays of chaos and fun. You may have seen their work in YouTube videos like the No Pants Subway Ride, the Best Buy Uniform Prank, and Frozen Grand Central:
I wish that we lived in a world where the legitimacy of a personal relationship commitment wasn't connected to whether or not a given government or institution was willing to recognize it as such. I wish that the sanctity and significance of marriage or other forms of commitment were derived solely from the care, intention and hard work that its participants (perhaps including their families, friends and surrounding community) invested to make and maintain those vows.
But that is not the world we live in, at least not anymore, or yet. For now, we ask and allow our state and federal governments, religious institutions and cultural leaders to tell us what kinds of personal relationship commitments are legitimate and what kinds are not.
I suspect that reading Tony Saghbiny's book The Millennium Curse: Why Activism is Failing might be a disturbing experience for you. It was for me.
If you consider yourself an activist in any form, there's a good chance that the book will challenge some aspect of the way you think about what kinds of activism are useful and effective. If you're proud of the successful Facebook or Twitter campaigns you've orchestrated to raise awareness about a certain issue, you'll probably be made uncomfortable. If you have invested heavily in becoming the change you wish to see in the world, you might feel insulted or deflated. If you think of yourself as a pacifist, you might feel like hitting something. And if you're pretty content with the status quo, or if you're not someone who appreciates activism in any form, it might be upsetting to think about the very existence of such a book, let alone some of its implications.
The Millennium Curse tackles head on the question of why much of modern activism is proving itself to be largely ineffective.
I had a chance to watch the holographically generated performance by Michael Jackson at the recent Billboard Music Awards, and if you haven't seen it already and have any interest in such technology (or even just music and dancing), it's worth a watch:
Of course producers and special effects experts have been resurrecting and recreating performers, celebrities, actors and historical figures for some time now, so having the technology to make a deceased musician perform a new song live on stage is perhaps an expected (albeit impressive) next step in that process.
Still, I wonder if we'll reach a point soon where it might be helpful to have performers declare what advanced tools and technology are being employed to produce a given entertainment experience. Just as we label some of our food as having come about through one production process or another, maybe we will want or need an "ORGANIC" label for our live shows that meet some appropriate standard.
As a follow up to my last post about what's happening with Summersault, I thought I'd share a smattering of historical stats related to the life and operations of the company:
