embracing apparent contradictions, diversity and change
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DRAFT, CURRENTLY BEING REVISED SUBSTANTIALLY.  New recommendations here. Thanks all for the feedback!
Final version to appear in The Exception.
Collaboratively authored with Tracy Viselli.
Last night’s #topprog Tweetup, discussing the next steps for the new progressive Twitter hashtag, had some excellent discussions.  Chris Cardinal (aka @cacardinal) has set up a skeleton web page on topprog.org and did a great job facilitating the tweetup; he’ll be writing up a summary later today.  Somehow, though, I wound up with an action item — writing up a couple of quick scenarios for ways to use #topprog.  How’d that happen?!?!? Looks like my meeting skills are rusty!
Still it’s a good thing to focus on. Twitter hashtags are extremely flexible, and there are zillions of things we could do with them. What are some of the sweet spots? And how do we use #topprog to accomplish them?
I’ll kick things off with a couple that seem important: action alerts and events. Suggestions and feedback are very welcome: in the comments here, or tweeted to #topprog if it’s 140 characters or less 🙂
Personal
social computing
Tales from the Net
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I’ll be offline for the next week or so, back visiting my Mom in Folly Beach, South Carolina. Oh, I might go by a Starbucks at some point, but for the most part, don’t expect to see me ’round these parts. You’ll have to make do with the Folly Surf Cam,
Try to keep the net running without me!
From Pyramind’s announcement:
Beat University is a non-profit partnership between San Francisco institutions Pyramind, LoveFest and Supperclub to raise money for the only dedicated electronic music scholarship fund in the entire U.S. The quarterly series of electro, house, and trance parties at top dance venue Supperclub will donate all of its proceeds to help up-and-coming electronic music producers fund their education at Pyramind, the city’s leading digital audio and music production training facility.
Supperclub’s a great venue, and the DJs didn’t disappoint. In the main room, Digital Paradigm had the floor packed by the time I got there at 11:30, Frost Raven followed on with a psytrance set, and Liam Shy rocked as always, with a lot of unreleased stuff. Unsurprisingly it was a very young crowd, and interestingly almost nobody was drinking. The vibe was happy and casual. Good stuff!
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What a difference a year makes … the venue’s the same, another New Year’s Eve at SomArts in SF, and Liam’s playing again in the psytrance room. The rest of the world, and my frame of mind? Very different.
I’ve been rereading a lot of my posts from the last year as we work on wrapping up our first draft of Tales from the Net … the ones on psytrance may or may not wind up in the book, but in any case they’re an amazing lens for the year.
It’s the Fourth of July, and we’re fighting for our civil liberties is at the midpoint, balanced between two cities and two causes: the happiness of Pink Saturday in the Castro in the aftermath of the unanimous California Supreme Court marriage equality decision, and the blossoming of Get FISA Right and social network activism — it was the day after Senator (now President-elect) Barack Obama had responded to our open letter. It brings tears to my eyes when I reread it now.
Eight inches of snow in Seattle wreaked havoc with our travel plans but the good news is that I wound up getting to go to the Geo-solstice, at the Gingerbread House, geomagetic.tv’s party celebrating nine years with the Phoenix Family. Solid sets from Saturnia and Witchdokta and then a great one from Dr. Spook. Good stuff upstairs too from ClyMAX, Diplomatic, and Kush Aurora.
It was a young crowd … hanging out on the stairs at one point, a guy started up a conversation with me by saying “at your age, you’re still coming out here, do you still feel the vibe?” Yeah, totally, but I’m not sure how I feel about the the “at your age” part. The dialog continued:
“Is this something you were doing back when you were our age?”
“No, I was a punk.”
“Huh. In one sentence, what’s the same between the scenes?”*
“Out of the mainstream. It’s not the mall.”
“And what’s the biggest difference?”
“Musicians are a lot more competent now. Back then a lot couldn’t even play their instruments.” Which was part of the rawness and excitement but still.
Then he had me pick one word to write on him to sum it all up — somebody had just written “juggler” on his chest. He pointed to a place on his shoulder. I thought about it for a moment and wrote “better”.
jon
* are they teaching precision questioning in college these days?
Justice Department attorney Carl Nichols didn’t get through his first full sentence defending the constitutionality of retroactive immunity for spying telecom carriers before U.S. district judge Vaughn Walker interrupted to ask about President-elect Barack Obama.
“We are going to have new attorney general,” Walker interjected in Tuesday morning’s hearing in a San Francisco courthouse. “Why shouldn’t the court wait to see what the new attorney general will do?”
— Ryan Singel, Obama Will Fight For Wiretap Immunity, Bush Lawyer Tells Judge, Wired’s Threat Level
Unsurprisingly, Nichols did his job and responded by saying that the Obama administration would defend the constitutionality of the statute, noting that “The Department of Justice rarely, if ever, declines to defend the constitutionality of a statute.”  Well, yeah, he would say that, wouldn’t he?
In reality, it’s very difficult to predict how the new administration will react. Prominent Catholic Obama supporter Douglas Kmeic, quoted in Carol Williams’ LA Times article, describes the tensions:
“They would want to get rid of these cases, to move on,” Pepperdine University law professor Douglas W. Kmiec said of the incoming administration. “But I also think there will be a proper impulse within the Obama Justice Department to get the law right. It’s one thing to have a clean worktable, and another to have a clean worktable where the laws have been brushed to the floor and all lie broken and scattered.”
Psymbolic 4, at the Gingerbread House in SF. Liam Shy, Dr. Spook, Predators (with their CD as a bonus) … it had been a long week so we left at about 3 a.m. and missed the last few DJs, but a fine night nonetheless. As we said our goodbyes to Spook on the way out, he commented that it was a happy crowd.  Gee, I wonder why?
A few months ago Amy Alexander had said to me that if Obama won, there would be a huge mental sigh of relief across the country. Indeed.
And what better way to relax!
From Eluminatus:
A change is coming
Why be shrunk by fear when you can choose hope?
Why be manipulated by hate when you can choose desire?
Why settle for singularity when you can have multiplicity?
Control is an illusion and influence is possible.
Look for meta-level solutions.
Avoid false dualities.
Change is performative.
(March 2004 – October 2007)
Colleen Mondor, Lee Wind, and my brother Gregory K came up with a great idea for a cooperative blogging project at the recent Kid Lit ’08 conference in Portland: people writing about why they personally think that voting matters. Over fifty people wound up participating, and since most of them are writers or reviewers as well as bloggers, it’s no surprise that the results are pretty incredible — deeply personal stories from a variety of perspectives.
Colleen’s got the roundup on Chasing Ray. Strongly recommended!
And I’m happy to say that Greg followed the Voter Suppression Wiki’s recommended best practices, and included the phone numbers for 1-866-OUR-VOTE and 1-888-VE-Y-VOTA at the end of his post Why I Vote on Gottabook 🙂
Last year on Hallowe’en , right before my last day at Microsoft, I wrote
Hallowe’en’s always been one of our favorite holidays, and of course our hood is one of the best places to celebrate it. We’re both in a fairly low-key mood tonight, so rather than trick-or-treating, we’ll have a nice relaxing dinner, perhaps a glass of champagne and a bottle of wine (Chateauneuf de Pape probably suits our mood better than Adastra) … and no doubt a scrumptious dessert.
This year, after a summer of fighting for civil liberties and a new rebirth of freedom, it’s the homestretch — and I’m right in the middle of it, with Voter Suppression Wiki and Twitter Vote Report. Jeff Santos had me on 1510 the Zone (a Boston sports radio station doing a week-long special election series) to talk about voter suppression today, and introduced me as a patriot — and not in the corrupted neocon sense of the word either. (I mentioned 866-OUR-VOTE and 888-YE-Y-VOTA and veyvota.org at least a half dozen times, and AALDEF as well.) Fox News did a fair and balanced piece on TVR today; Voter Suppression Wiki will be able to get the word to CNN on election day if we need to, and Brad Friedman’s will be checking in with us. I feel really lucky to be working with such incredible people and organizations — the Voter Suppression Wiki and everybody else at the intersection of the grassroots election protection and citizen journalism movements…. and I wonder if the rest of the world looks at the 8-hour-long lines in Georgia as a parallel to the first post-apartheid election in South Africa?
Who knows what Tuesday will bring. Right now, it’s infintite possibilities … and the sense that a change is coming.
And after dinner once again at Ma Tante Sumi (Chateauneuf du Pape again), Geomagnetic.tv’s Phantasmagoria 8 is tonight — Hallowe’en and psytrance in San Francisco, hanging out with the woman I love most of all on a special night.
What a difference a year makes.
