Batfort

Style reveals substance

Category: Pulling at Threads (page 6 of 7)

For the Love of Pepe

This week, man.

Between the DACA debacle, the #contentemmys, and Gab.ai’s meltdown, I didn’t think much more craziness could happen in a week.

I was wrong. Of course!

Matt Furie, the original creator of our beloved Pepe the Frog, is suing and DMCAing (it’s like SWATing, but with DMCA takedown notices) alt-righters who have used Pepe.

From the article:

“[Furie] was very serious when he said that we wanted to make clear that Pepe was not the property of the alt-right and couldn’t be used by the alt-right,” Louis Tompros, one of Furie’s intellectual property lawyers, told me.

Gee, where have I heard that before?

Oh, right:

One would think that, if one were serious about influencing the popular consciousness (as one supposes that a person in the public eye doing something like comics or comedy does), one would be absolutely ecstatic for one’s meme (read: thought virus) going viral. Wiggling its way into the brains of people everywhere. Being plastered on every mobile phone, tablet, and computer from San Francisco to Barcelona.

But alas, this is not to be. These people are so petty and small-minded that they can’t even set their jokes free.

This is why the left can’t meme. You can’t direct a meme. You can’t centrally plan a meme. You can’t copyright a meme and then DMCA takedown everyone who doesn’t follow the rules.

Memes are wild, memes are free. And if a meme loves you, it’ll come back around.

In conclusion:


Also from the Motherboard article: the laughable idea that r/The_Donald is “one of the the alt-right’s most popular gathering places.”

On putting things in boxes

Lately I’ve been feeling like all I do is put things into boxes, both physical objects or conceptual entities.

My day job involves administration and people — lots of administration, lots of people — and yet it still feels like most of what I do is classifying information, sorting things, and putting stuff in boxes. Or if I’m lucky, lists.

Data goes in little spreadsheet boxes.

Event RSVPs go into their lists (numbered, of course).

Responses from an investigative interview get sorted and categorized.

Planning ideas get dissected nine ways from Sunday and assigned dates and executors, flayed out like butterflies held down with pins.

And even when I get home, I’m looking to move soon, which means packing up my physical belongings and putting them in literal boxes.

It’s exhausting.

I’m the type of person who likes to make connections. I like music that crosses genres, and things that are hard to describe. I’m very comfortable with things NOT fitting in boxes, with the ambiguity of unclassified data.

(There’s a reason I like Beethoven so much more than Mozart.)

It’s good to classify things. Classification is necessary to guide communication and clarify thoughts and ideas. But sometimes ideas need to breath and run free.

When my own instinct is to run free, it’s exhausting for me to toil at chasing those things down and put them in boxes. I’d rather be out there with them.

But a society can’t function when everything is running free. Sometimes we need boxes — like, say, a wall — to create order and delineate concepts.

There’s a balance. I suspect that balance leans more toward “things in boxes” than “things running free,” but that is part of the price we pay for a civilized society where everyone uses the same language and the same social conventions.

We have to save running free for our own time.

So getting paid to put things in boxes is probably just good practice on how to be a good citizen. We sacrifice a little of our personal freedom to use the same types of boxes our fellow citizens use, so that we can have common ground.

That’s the ideal, at least.

Things that should not be spectator sports

I found myself walking in downtown Portland, Oregon this afternoon, and came upon a sandwich board advertising BRUNCH! $2 MIMOSAS!.

That, in Portland, is hardly worth a second glance.

Weekend brunch is practically mandatory in Portland, so it’s not surprising to see a restaurant laying a trap for the wannabe-weekend-hipster types (especially on a holiday weekend).

However, this particular sign was out front of a very fancy, very French place.

It’s the kind of place that the older generation goes, before the opera or ballet or something, not the types who view brunch as an unofficial sporting match for who can get the most drunk before noon.

And I thought to myself, that restaurant can no longer afford to be out of the brunch game.

Brunch has become a competitive sport. In order to keep up, you have to adapt to the market.

While I was walking, I was listening to a podcast. It wasn’t the type of podcast that’s more like an exploration, where the host provides a sounding board for the guest’s ideas. Instead, it was more like a jousting match — the host wouldn’t let the conversation proceed until the two participants agreed on the nature of truth (or at least hammered out their respective definitions of truth, I may have lost something in the details).

It was Sam Harris talking to Jordan Peterson, btw.

Another kind of spectator sport: conversations.

No longer are conversations decentralized and held between two people, or a small group, in a bar or living room or park.

Now, we listen to other people have conversations for us and judge which side we agree on.

(Of course I understand that podcasts can spawn conversations amongst people, and podcasts are much like radio which also has the same problem.)

If you’re in restaurants, you can’t afford to be out of the brunch game.

If you’re in media, you can’t afford to be out of the podcast game.

Both are really, really weird.

[Citation needed]

Anybody listen to a Batfort podcast?

Modern Renaissance

Every once in a while, you come across regular images that evoke an artistic spirit. These aren’t images where the photographer was trying to create “ART,” but simple photos that are nonetheless striking and aesthetically coherent.

One such photo was posted by the Portland Police’s East Precinct a few days ago. Officers were deployed to a Domino’s Pizza to stop drunk customers from fighting with the pizza people (who in their right mind would mess with the pizza people?), and someone snapped a pic.

The Domino’s, lonely in the night but lit from within like its trying to withstand the darkness, reminds me of an Edward Hopper painting. The saturated colors, the well-lit windows, the strategically placed figures and barely-lit cars in the parking lot, all evoke that lonely, desolate mood–that 2:00 am mood.

Sometimes I think of art as being completely fabricated by the artist, but this goes to show that good art–the kind of art that resonates–reflects reality. And the 2:00 am desolation is common across time periods.

Good composition is also common across time periods, and Antifa graciously arranged themselves into the golden ratio for this photo. David Burge remarked on Twitter about this “Renaissance painting of stupid,” and indeed, it is.

Don’t believe it?

Indeed, all the horrific things that Antifa throws, swings, drop-kicks, hurls, and spits wold not be out of place in a Bosch painting of hell. Modern hell, but instead of cracked out Medieval fever dreams, we have cracked out Postmodern feral rioters.

So thank you, Twitizens, for showing us that art can occur in the strangest of places, even among people who are actively destroying beautiful pieces of craftsmanship across the country. Say what you will about the Confederate statues, but most of them are beautifully rendered.

Perhaps someday we will have a grandiose statue or three commemorating the Battle(s) of Berkeley and the rout of Antifa.

Covfefe will bring us together

It’s been interesting to watch Trump-isms trickle into the general lexicon, especially of people who hate him. Twice in the past two days I’ve come across the infamous “covfefe” as slang for coffee. Both times, from people who are not fans of Trump.

One was in person, with some coworkers at breakfast. We had gone a little too long without the waitress’s attention, and one needed her covfefe fix.

The other was on Instagram, just two gals posting a selfie while they got some covfefe.

I’m used to Trump-isms being thrown around by pro-Trump people. What I’m not used to is anti-Trump people both using a Trump-ism non-ironically AND not also going off into a tailspin about how much they hate him.

Unlike, say, if an anti-Trump references making something great again.

One side likes him for using sometimes-inexplicable words; the other side hates him, especially when he uses inexplicable words. Perhaps the way to bridge that gap is by introducing an inexplicable word that has no meaning.

Except we’ve all filled in a meaning for it, and that meaning is COFFEE.

It’s slipped into people’s heads without triggering the normal anti-Trump defenses, and has stuck there. It’s been 3 months since the original tweet.

I’m curious to see if Trump can do that same thing with a policy, or an action, something more than just a word on Twitter. Some inexplicable, yet easily defined through strength of association, that both fulfills what each side sees in him yet allows all of us, collectively, to “decide” the definition.

If people can accept covfefe, maybe they really can accept Trump as their president.

Art on the right

I’d love for there to be more explicitly conservative or right-leaning artists.

(Saying this without skin in the game, I know.)

But the gloves are now off.

If an entity declares itself for the right, the left-leaning support structure disappears.

This has been made clear by all the people getting kicked off PayPal, CloudFlare, domain registrars, etc.

Galleries are run by leftists.

Art directors are leftists.

The press is made up of leftists.

So to ask an artist to declare a side is asking them for the entire conventional source of promotion and income to dry up.

Is the right capable of supporting artists like this?

It’s one thing to establish the infrastructure, as Pax Dickinson has been discussing.

Infrastructure allows people the chance to sell their wares.

But will people buy?

That is a question.

Applying for jobs is a sick, twisted form of fantasy

I updated my resume today.

One of my least favorite things to do — ever — but I’m fairly satisfied with the results. I used to think that “summary” and “highlights” sections were stupid, but today I realized they are essentially the resume equivalent of this meme:

Nothing *really* has to make sense, you just jam a bunch of words into bullet points that both describe you and fit the position description of the job you’re applying to. Who cares if the syntax matches or if it’s echoed in another part of your resume.

I kind of want to put an “Ivanka” bullet point on my next resume and see what happens.

If you want to be EXTRA, you could translate those bullet points into the cover letter. You know, synchronicity. Repetition. I’m sure it would help (HA, PSYCHE!).

Job applications are frustrating to me because they’re such an asymmetrical distribution of work. In order to put in the effort that it takes to blast past most of the other applicants, you have to take up way more time and energy than the person reviewing your application will give it. I understand the purpose of winnowing out applications, and that the “right” candidate will have put in the work for the job, but it seems so unnecessary.

That’s just the logistical side of it.

What’s worse, to me, is when I fall into the fantasy daydream trap. I start thinking about the life that could be possible if I got this job.

What would life be like if I got this job?

What would my budget be on that pay scale?

Let’s look at housing on Craigslist in that area…

Oooh, that’s a cute place. How would I decorate it?

On one hand, I get that a certain amount of daydreaming is what keeps life liveable, especially when you’re seeking to change things but haven’t yet gotten that far. That’s called “hope.”

On the other hand, I’m sinking all this time (time that I could have spent applying for another job) thinking about the coulds and mights and maybes of this new hypothetical life. Which, most of the time, don’t work out because you never get a callback for the position.

That’s one of my own personal cognitive traps, the “could.”

If I’m the equivalent of Bernie right now, what is one possible version/vision of Pepe?

It’s fun to think about, but not productive.

The trick is to decide when you need to be productive, and when it’s okay to dream a little. At least wait until you have an interview.

Design Thinking

I quite liked this article today, on design thinking in a hospital setting.

The trauma area at my hospital is similar to thousands of others. When a patient with a gunshot wound or a motor vehicle accident arrives, a bed is prepped, the right supplies are on hand, and up to 20 nurses, respiratory therapists and physicians are ready to spring into action.

There is one difference: The leader of our trauma team now wears an orange vest.

The easy-to-spot garment, called the trauma team leader identification vest, clearly identifies who’s in charge. It’s a simple yet effective innovation created by a nurse after a hectic gunshot trauma simulation, in which a huddle of highly stressed emergency room staff members spoke over one another and there were no clear roles. In particular, no one knew who was leading the trauma code. The orange vest became routine part of emergency care at our hospital earlier this year, and the trauma team reports it has helped clarify who’s in charge and strengthened communication among members.

Really it’s just process-thinking, but at the heart of it, I believe that good design is not just aesthetics but is the consideration of what a Thing is for. Its quiddity, if you will allow me to indulge in one of my favorite words.

I’m trying to learn more about “design thinking” because, unlike process improvement, it seems to encourage people to think from first-principles and to not too caught up with words or other peoples’ models of things.

One of the things that trips up intelligent people on a regular basis is an overreliance on language. If you’re thinking about simply the design of something, of how it’s constructed, you’re more likely to go simple: an orange vest.

As opposed to, say, some sort of verbal cue or a sign or an org chart hidden in some closet somewhere.

Our brains recognize shape and color first, then language and other more subtle forms of visual communication, so an effective communication system will rely on that–the fewer words needed, the more they can be spent on really important things, like the proper dosage of a drug.

I’ve been learning about various process improvement strategies in my day job, and while it’s fascinating to learn about all the different ways men have come up with to classify and describe systems, ultimately most of it is total crap. You don’t need any of their conceptual models to strip away the fluff, break down your system into its necessary parts, and ruthlessly examine what could (and should) change.

What you need to do is break down your ego and all the “reasons” why you won’t do stuff like that. Maybe you feel like you’re too good for that, or you made the system in the first place and don’t want to admit that it’s broken.

Most of the “change management” concepts that I’ve learned are really people management concepts, softening the blows to people’s egos and stroking their pride, making them feel smart and included, to get them on board with your project.

If you can get around all that, you don’t need somebody else’s model to validate your own thinking.

You can look at what you have, and put the orange vest on the team leader.

Should I buy flowers for myself?

The answer is yes, clearly. Flowers make any day brighter. And since I’m not eating vegetables, I figured I’d still buy something at the farmers market. So flowers it is.

These are very fresh and very pretty, a pastel version of the red-yellow-blue primary color triangle. Normally I like my flowers to be more monochromatic or tonal, but this one just seemed to work, and the smell is heavenly.

 

Now, the funny thing about buying flowers for yourself is the optics. When I was carrying the flowers, everyone I met assumed that someone else had bought the bouquet for me.

Coworker: Oooh, flowers! Nice. Who got them for you?

Me: I bought them for myself.

Coworker: Even better!

You can add a silent “you go girl” at the end. I work in a very liberal office with a bunch of divorced women.

But the assumptions didn’t stop there. After I clocked off on my way home, even the men on my commute thought that someone had bought them for me. When I informed them otherwise, it “wasn’t right” that I should have to buy flowers for myself.

I think the implicit message in that statement was “Well I should be buying you flowers” but I’m gonna go ahead an ignore that, and you can too since you don’t care about my personal life one whit.

I just think it’s amusing that when a woman carries flowers, people of both sexes automatically think that they were a gift (from a man).

This is both endearing and ridiculous. The image of a man buying a woman flowers is deeply ingrained into our societal memory–endearing. The fact that there’s a presumed story behind the simple fact that I bought myself flowers at the farmers market because they looked pretty and smelled good–that is kind of ridiculous.

The moral of the story is, if you’re looking to attract a boyfriend, don’t go around carrying a bouquet of flowers. Contrariwise, if you need to scare off an unwanted suitor (who would back down in the face of competition), buy yourself some flowers but keep quiet about exactly how you got them. If you let other people fill in the backstory of girl + flowers, it will equal boyfriend.

Just for fun, here’s an outtake that I like because it looks like flowers in a spin cycle. I love inadvertent blur in photos.

Order of Operations

It doesn’t matter how much you tweak your graphs if your overarching story isn’t in place.

Craft your story from the data,

or

Mold your data to your story.

 

Anything else can lead you down a false path.

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