Tag: culture

Literacy means condensing

a stunning essay on what literacy means: condensing. an art we have lost when words became cheap. even artificial constraints like 140 characters seem to primarily bring out the moronic, not the profound.

Many hours of thought went into this 11-word candidate for eternal quotability. When I was done, I was tempted to immediately unpack it in a longer essay, but then I realized that that would defeat the purpose. Maxims and aphorisms are about more than terseness in the face of expensive writing technology. They are about basic training in literacy. The aphorism above is possibly the most literate thing I have ever written. By stronger criteria I’ll get to, it might even be the only literate thing I’ve ever written, which means I’ve been illiterate until now.

Tears in the fabric of reality

this is the best explanation of how the future becomes the present i have ever read. it asserts that there is a normalcy field that hides how alien our world really is. for instance, we don’t experience airplanes as they really are (5G acceleration, zero g, etc), but like a train or coach ride. in a sense we continue to apply 15th century metaphors.

normalcy field failures are becoming more and more common due to the accelerating rate of change. when the normalcy fails, people experience creepiness and call for protection.

Proactive Politics

Let’s take a look back at the seminal date February 12, 2004. Just a month before, Gavin Newsom had been sworn in as Mayor of San Francisco for his first term. On that day in February, he ordered the clerk of the City and County of San Francisco to allow same-sex couples to get married. When news broke of his decision, he was flooded with a torrent of angry messages sent by people from around the world. He received and still receives death threats. Of course, Newsom also faced attacks from Republicans, but even more frustrating (and hypocritical), he was much maligned by his fellow Democrats.

Most of these Democratic politicians lacked the courage to publicly criticize him–why lose out on political contributions from the LGBT community and their allies? Instead, they did it behind closed doors, and through more subtle actions. Previously extended invitations to speak at events like the Democratic National Convention were rescinded, some elected officials even refused to be photographed with him.

Against Yoga mat donations

With the near unanimous support of its Congress, Honduras recently defined a new legal entity: la Región Especial de Desarrollo. A RED is an independent reform zone intended to offer jobs and safety to families who lack a good alternative; officials in the RED will be able to partner with foreign governments in critical areas such as policing, jurisprudence and transparency. By participating, Canada can lead an innovative approach to development assistance, an approach that tackles the primary roadblock to prosperity in the developing world: weak governance.

this is great: exhorting canada to export governance, not yoga mats, to help honduras. this could actually work (see singapore). there is a TED talk on charter cities too.