Rosano / entries tagged "reflection"

when bad things happen in the world

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 19:03:35 +0000

My projects won't save a life or end that bad problem over there, but without hesitation I know my actions to be completely holistic.

Human suffering on an immense scale has been an inseparable part of how we got here. It's not new, but still impacts us so strongly that seeing people in pain or learning about possible future issues can numb us into paralysis ("there's nothing I can do", "let me think about something else") or provoke us into finding solutions ("what can I do?", "how do I make a difference?").

I went through a short period considering myself an activist when I was helping organize events and student initiatives to raise awareness about various issues: this was a time when I shared news and political outrage on social media, using whatever platform I had to publicly call out hypocrisy in anger, often shouting into the void; saying it this way is not meant to demean anyone who does similar-seeming things, but a way to acknowledge my own misalignment of intentions as I operated under confusion without realizing—I thought that's what my response needed to be.

With a greater understanding of how power works and propagates itself, I now focus on things that bring me satisfaction. Dealing with root causes rather than symptoms is harder because it's invisible and not a job for one person, or even a group of people: it really requires humanity overall to be more cooperative. So every time I feel the real and consequential urgency of moral injury, and find myself thrown into deciphering a problem larger than myself while I brush my teeth anxiously or lie in bed unable to sleep, I try to remember that my individualized frenzy is misplaced: it's not just me that will solve this—it's the whole planet working together. How can this be accomplished? Is it even possible? Or a good idea? I don't have all the answers but trust in figuring that out collectively, and rather than joining a group or starting one, I've chosen to create bridges between them.

Part of bringing people together involves being inclusive and seeing diverse forms of contribution as useful and necessary: what's needed isn't always visible, vocal, and popular forms of 'activism', or what is considered as such either by 'activists' or the people who claim to disdain them. Everything is politics. I like how this analogy of the spear describes a spectrum of contributions coming together:

Direct action is the tiniest tip of a spear's blade: sharp and vital for making a mark, but not powerful on its own.
The metal part between tip and handle represents organizing around that, showing up, and substantiating the above with food, calls, gatherings, emotional support, bail, paperwork, etc…: everything here enables the tip to have some kind of impact and is often considered activism, but the result is very acute (and seen as fringe) without further support from a larger populace.
Supporters of a movement inhabit the much longer portion of a spear's handle, and represents a diversity of perspectives, some of which may not feel satisfactory to the metal and tip; it doesn't get as much attention as the other parts even though it's what creates leverage and forward movement for deep impact. At the very end of the handle you might find people who show up to take a selfie and leave: this is considered 'merely performative' by some but is also important for bringing ideas out of the fringe and into normal discussion, shifting thought.

To find my own place within this sphere, I avoid doing things that make me feel replaceable, where the result would be comparable if someone else was in my place, and prefer activities where the outcome drastically changes because I'm there. This leads me to spend most of my time on personal projects, which often provokes a comparison about whether I'm doing 'enough' or 'my part' in times of crisis, probably because it's not how most people get to spend their days. Yet, every time I question myself, the deliberations lead me circling back to the same place: my projects will likely not save a life or end that bad problem over there, but without hesitation I feel and understand my actions to be completely holistic.

How do conversations on Strolling help? After a period of global political unrest and binary views on how things should be, I observed divisions everywhere, and saw myself as part of the problem that divided communities into red and blue. Dissatisfied that greater powers continue to flourish and profit as we squabble over our teams and rip apart the world's social fabric with our own hands, I recognized that dialogue is critical to overcoming conflict and disagreement, and have I've tried to repair what I can by learning to disagree productively, fostering discussion, being a bridge, reconnecting, calling in, reaching out. Strolling tries to honour dialogue and what is possible through merely conversing, and perhaps also expose people to ideas they wouldn't come across anywhere else or be open to; I've been in a bubble so far recording mostly with people who share adjacent perspectives, but on occasions where I disagree, I practice being conducive instead of reactionary.

How do apps help? Technology underpins everything today, and its companies with massive resources would rather profit from transforming us into consumers of their addictive platform fodder than help us cultivate greater agency. I don't believe technology will or can solve all our problems, but if we want a different future, it must involve changing our technology. I participate here because I have specific skills and feel it's under-addressed, as: 1. most of the world does not have the space to develop technical expertise to infiltrate the castles of confusion erected by programmers; and 2. most of those who do have expertise see it as a job or fun hobby without attempting to change why it works the way it does; without criticism towards either, I believe this is the reality and it's not sufficient. My involvement has always tried to help close this gap by documenting for beginners, or decentering the English language in app development (maximum localization), or incorporating non-techie friends into the world of alternative technology. I've also written about agency, separation of data from apps, interoperability, and antipatterns, often with accessible language and minimal jargon, to help more people realize what could be possible.

How does music on Vibrations help? It's my formation and one place where I might hold a deeper credibility. I publish music mostly for myself as a way to recover from the narrow-minded upbringings of my training, and send a message about how different the concept of music could be. People seem to enjoy what I share, and that has taught me to care less about being considered 'professional' (a former pain point) and more about doing meaningful things. I consider music one of the deepest, most underrated forms of social change, and it's completely invisible to most people; I might write later about how [[music is not what's on your streaming platform]]. Daryl Davis talks about reflexes as a musician to 'create harmony' as he reformed over 200 KKK members, and although he mentions it in passing as if light spiritual humour, I think music manifests a capacity to create synergy, and on a practical level help coordinate multiple things in parallel.

In summary: I have some skills, see where it could make a difference, and try to enjoy the process; this may lead to discomfort or financial instability if it's not seen as useful by the institutions of society, but I've learned to harden myself against comparisons and counterproductive thoughts as long as I believe in what I'm doing. The range of 'music, technology, and conversations' might seem disparate and perhaps selfish, but I see it all as complementary and emancipatory: there's no question to me that it's holistic, which fills me with confidence to go forward 100% even as the dumpster fire burns higher.

I'm also proud to have received feedback that my presence had an unlocking and enabling effect on some people, without trying to persuade them to do things the way I do; I believe changing something about your life merely by feeling inspired is actually quite powerful and was my catalyst for many initiatives and habits.

When you think 'nothing I do matters' consider this: in all those stories of time travel, you step out of your time machine into a moment of the past, maybe feeling uneasy about touching anything or making even the slightest change to your surrounding environment, out of fear that any difference would create a cascading effect with unforeseeable consequences as time progresses with the result of your actions; now bring yourself back to the present and realize that the same power is held by each of us, right now. So… What would you like to do today?

Thanks to Heddi for encouraging me to put in words here something that I've often said to myself and others, but never considered writing.

Tagged: Vibrations, Strolling, reflection, community, apps.

14h03 from Toronto / Canada

Thursday, January 25, 2024 14h03

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 14:03:35 -0500

Direct action is the tiniest tip of a spear's blade: sharp and vital for making a mark, but not powerful on its own.
The metal part between tip and handle represents organizing around that, showing up, and substantiating the above with food, calls, gatherings, emotional support, bail, paperwork, etc…: everything here enables the tip to have some kind of impact and is often considered activism, but the result is very acute (and seen as fringe) without further support from a larger populace.
Supporters of a movement inhabit the much longer portion of a spear's handle, and represents a diversity of perspectives, some of which may not feel satisfactory to the metal and tip; it doesn't get as much attention as the other parts even though it's what creates leverage and forward movement for deep impact. At the very end of the handle you might find people who show up to take a selfie and leave: this is considered 'merely performative' by some but is also important for bringing ideas out of the fringe and into normal discussion, shifting thought.

Thanks to Heddi for encouraging me to put in words here something that I've often said to myself and others, but never considered writing.

Tagged: Vibrations, Strolling, reflection, community, apps.

14h03 from Toronto / Canada

I've never worked in a company

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 10:56:35 +0000

Avoiding employment was not an explicit choice I made: it's just how things ended up as I followed my passions.

(Okay, I taught piano lessons in various music schools for a couple of years, and maybe did some odd jobs here and there, but not as a career.)

While studying music in university I started working on an iPhone app for learning songs from recordings, to help myself get into Jazz music but also as a tool for other musicians and music students to improve their playing. This was a collaboration with Wil with various names that eventually became AudioScrub. Not so successful at launch, but after a year or so of more development and people starting to use it and share with friends, it became a meaningful amount—not a lot, but enough to pay my bills, stay independant, travel a little. I surprised myself by learning iPhone programming on the sixth try. It was gratifying to finally make a 'real app' after a while of feeling 'restricted to web apps', and I felt good hearing the emotion in how so many people describe that it's helpful it is to them.

And just after finishing my studies, I started a live music listings project called note the sound to help promote local music concerts by smaller, often unknown artists: I worked with local venues like restaurants, bars, and art spaces, charging a fee per event and created a technology stack that helped with data entry, showing event details, automatically publishing to social media, and generating printable calendars; for some time I even experimented with my own system (inspired by Amazon Mechanical Turk) to pay people to help with micro tasks like finding artist information.

From 2009 to 2021, my income was 40% from iOS apps and 60% from note the sound, regularly working alone. COVID-19 wiped out live music for a while, and when it came back I didn't want to continue with the same structure—customers repeatedly asked me if I would restart as they were happy with the service, which I guess was a good sign; I hope to someday try again but with a different structure where I don't need to be so involved. The iOS apps became less and less motivating because of the amount of work as a one-person operation, so I ultimately stopped. Although I didn't yet replace any of those incomes with something stable, and it might sometimes feel like a uphill battle to do so, I would say 12 years is not a bad run and I'm proud of what I've done.

I've been experimenting with a Fund button integrated into my web apps (which for me are now 'real apps'), gathering support on Open Collective, and using Ghost to power memberships for Strolling. I've often said that my goal was "to get a thousand people to pay me ten bucks a year" as a metaphor for living from passive income—in practice most people want to give me more than that, so the numbers probably will be a bit different; this might sound like a meager sum for many people, but 1) I believe that to achieve this implies that there's probably more than a thousand people and 2) I would be willing to sacrifice some comfort to maintain my freedom to spend my time on what excites me.

Obviously it can be fulfilling to be employed, have a salary, feel secure, work with a team of great people, and I respect the various reasons people pursue that path, but I'm clearly wired for something else and will try to exhaust other options before I go there.

Tagged: reflection.

11h56 from Berlin / Germany

Tuesday, December 27, 2022 11h56

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 11:56:35 +0100

Avoiding employment was not an explicit choice I made: it's just how things ended up as I followed my passions.

(Okay, I taught piano lessons in various music schools for a couple of years, and maybe did some odd jobs here and there, but not as a career.)

Tagged: reflection.

11h56 from Berlin / Germany

What we want

Sat, 15 Jan 2022 16:43:42 +0000

When it isn't possible to both make money and do something meaningful, I've always opted for the latter. This is my attempt to understand why.

In 2021, I went through several periods of self-questioning, not feeling positive or certain about the path I had chosen. Although I usually ended up affirming myself and staying the course, it still sometimes feels like an unanswered question. I recently drafted this text when having similar doubts about my upcoming podcast project: I once again ended up 'advocating for myself', but I clearly have a lot to say and would like to externalize it.

Growing up as an observer of Silicon Valley from afar, I was exposed early on to startups, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, motivational speakers, productivity gurus, self-improvement books, hustle culture, and other vogue exports from the region. I've gone in and out of touch with this over the years, but recently found myself adjacent again with the indie hacker and independent creator movements (of which I am a practitioner). I avoid paying too much attention to what everyone is doing, but try to keep it in the corner of my eye for the occasional nugget of useful information that can help my projects become more successful; keeping distance is important because it's ordinary for me to be influenced by my surroundings, and I often find myself applying other people's patterns to my own situations because it seems interesting or worth exploring: "So-and-so has a thank you page or YouTube channel or newsletter; hmm, maybe I could try that?".

One popular motif from these worlds that I've never taken to imitating is the celebration around 'making enviable amounts of money every month as an independent creator', or the rags-to-riches equivalent of audience building ('zero to thousands of subscribers in no time at all'). Although I am trying to make money with projects and increase awareness of my work, it's never been a rat race or the main motivation for what I do. My intention is not to judge people who are primarily pursuing that: many of them do so out of a sense of responsibility to care for and serve others, which I can respect. I want to explore why I have such a hard time with this for myself.

Why is it that when confronted with the choice between 'popular and profitable' or 'esoteric but meaningful', I always take the hippie route and just do what makes me happy(, man)? Why is my primary motivation generally creative expression or being original, despite coming at the cost of my financial comfort? Is it just my millennial urge to be a unique snowflake? Why do I avoid listicles? commercial pop music? technology selling user data or cultivating addiction? Why can't I just make a button that does what people want? These things are often lucrative, sometimes even without provoking ethical dilemmas, so what is it that stops me from getting into it? Do I consider myself better than everyone? Am I 'fighting the good fight'? Am I really even acting in my own interests?

In exchanges about making my initiatives sustainable, 'providing value' and 'doing what pays' tends to come up, and this is usually where I derail: it's hard for me to agree on what 'valuable' means as I typically derive most of my meaning from things that aren't considered as such by the mainstream. It's odd that my most memorable experiences have usually been around what doesn't conform to metrics of 'value' like having lots of followers or revenue or commercial appeal (for example, jazz concerts, communal eating spaces, travelling in poorer countries, meeting in parks), and that despite having a profound effect on me, they may not be considered 'valuable'; probably doesn't help that I am not super motivated by money, can get by with less, avoiding materialism, kind of detached from things… Part of my conflict might even come from a resistance when what's popular is what's perceived as desirable by other people—wanting what everybody wants because that's what everybody wants—this feels kind of degenerating to me, as it leads to the tail wagging the dog. Could it be highly profitable to make us more whole? or detached from money? or live healthier? or in balance with one another and the environment? If not, then what does it mean when we idealize profitability?

The other reason I diverge from considering 'supply and demand' no doubt relates to creating as a response to my own inclinations. It has been years since I've produced something specifically because another person asked, partially because I haven't come across deeply fulfilling ways to work at a company or sell my time or do what markets want, but also because I tend to respond to my own needs, desires, and ambitions. Although what I create is rarely for everyone, there's usually someone in mind, and I strive to make it available to more people after building for myself; this may not be completely 'in service of others' and must be interesting to me, which might be perceived as selfish. I feel it's like an artist mindset of imagining new things and throwing one's contribution into humanity's pool of ideas, and then observing how people react. Being able to address your own needs can generate concepts that turn out to be important in retrospect: it's hard to arrive at something like sonogrid, or Joybox by following 'what people want'—nobody asked for it, nobody will, and yet I think it's vital for these visions to exist to celebrate what is possible. Of course, they do resonate with certain people, and there is often a sense of "I never thought of that, but now that it's visible, hell yeah"; these dynamics are nicely articulated in the metaphor of explorers, miners, and bridge builders. Sometimes you use alternate materials when certain ideas are cut from a different cloth…

There's actually nothing wrong with pursuing the alternative route: we only question it because our surrounding environment values material success, on which our survival likely depends, but that really says more about the environment. I'm not exempt from having to think about 'material conditions for existence' and respond; I clearly don't do things that I know will only serve myself, generally preferring to put outward with a possibility of others resonating, or, augmenting themselves—I have no doubt that this will work out over the long-term. Being either purely esoteric or highly commercial is not interesting to me. If I was in a position of desperation, I would likely try to remedy my situation, but I've consistently been almost well-enough to graze by, and keep trying to see how far I can take it. My choice has been made, I'm okay: at peace again, I continue. I like what I like and don't have to justify it—I'm writing this for anyone who needs the extra push. If lots of people are trying to do what sells, and what sells doesn't feel conducive to a meaningful life, then perhaps it's worth examining what makes us feel that way. I support creating a healthy, restorative motion towards wanting what we really need, and really needing what we want.

Tagged: reflection.

11h43 from Toronto / Canada

Saturday, January 15, 2022 11h43

Sat, 15 Jan 2022 11:43:42 -0500

When it isn't possible to both make money and do something meaningful, I've always opted for the latter. This is my attempt to understand why.

Tagged: reflection.

11h43 from Toronto / Canada

2021

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 06:09:20 +0000

After mentioning in my last birthday reflection how I wanted to avoid doing an end-of-year recap, I've decided to do an end-of-year recap… Ever since reading the Pinboard anniversary posts, I felt the urge to make one—the charts and odd commentary, uh, inspire me. So this will be less personal and more fiscal—a mix of reflection, stats, link roundup, and (of course) music.

The biggest question of the year for me (asked by friends, strangers, internet acquaintances, parents, my therapist, the occasional bird, and myself) is: "How do I plan to make all this sustainable?" This hit me like a small pebble at least once every few weeks and my best answer was always "I'll do whatever I can to last a year or two and everything will work out after that…"—it makes sense to me (even now), but leaves many others raising one of their eyebrows. It's hard to see, I get it: I too questioned things, especially during periods of fatigue from doing too much… I wondered towards the end of the year about what energized me versus what didn't, and came to the conclusion that the work of recurring events needs to go for now.

The idea was an imitation of various individuals and organizations who create continuity through group meetups. Although the reasons for doing them align with my motivations and objectives, it would make more sense if I had fewer projects or if other people did most of the organizing. Even though it isn't that much on a day-to-day basis, the psychological load impedes me from concentrating on other things and I end up being able to handle only smaller tasks for most of the month, not advancing on my main projects. This was probably amplified because I was doing not one, but generally three events per month, but I think even with a single date, I would rather not deal with the before and after of making it happen. Also draining is the feeling that experiences don't accrete: the lack of recordings (often for good reason) leaves no collective artifact to share afterwards, which means I'm less present during the event as I frantically take notes to avoid letting everything 'slip away'—it's important for me to 'have something to show after', and I don't think written notes capture the experience well enough, so I might exclusively do recorded events from now unless it's mostly social in nature. I imagine focusing more on my upcoming podcast project, which could solve all these issues by 1) requiring less planning or promotion, 2) being recorded, and 3) compounding more easily over time.

A useful question that helped me find clarity is "How does it help you to continue producing for another year?" I would typically be satisfied with intrinsic motivations and the fulfillment of creating, but it ultimately isn't sustainable without what one might call 'material conditions for existence'. Perhaps now is a good time to look at stats and talk about money:

2020	2021
twitter	113	339
mastodon	87	207
github	7	46
visitors	?	>19.9K
mailing list	110	166
ephemerata	116
note the sound	$1.4K	🏁
ios apps	$4K	$3K
fund button	$87 (via 1)	$134 (via 5)
open collective	$750 (via 13)
café members	17
screencasts	15
public garden pages	~40	155
events organized	15

I've been re-imagining my income situation since the COVID-19 pandemic knocked out note the sound in the first quarter of 2020; it used to be 60–70% of my income and will likely not return for the foreseeable future (but hopefully, maybe someday). I also decided to stop making iOS apps and lower prices or make them free, which reduced and eliminated the other 30–40%. In 2021, I experimented with in-app payments via my fund button and direct patronage from financial backers, describing tradeoffs of each in Platform puzzle pieces for sustainable community. The amounts that came in so far are too small to sustain me in most places, but I think it's a useful start and with some changes (see [[Why the fund button is slow (TBA)]]), I think I can dramatically improve the result.

On the bright side, everything else is growing! See Measure progress for more commentary on the other figures or 100 steps to success for these eighteen experiments from 2021:

I don't have any doubts about all this becoming sustainable, especially with long-term persistence and constant learning. Doing anything worthwhile takes time, and I'm opting to use my current flexibility (year of savings/runway) to organize things in a way that gives me maximum leverage over my future—I hope that next year it will be easier to see why.

Below are my most popular texts from this year.

Secular churches for continuity (which won Interintellect's first Writing Challenge)
Dating apps, take one (sparked many conversations with friends and strangers)
Wetware of writing and doing (video presentation with text version)

(Apparently I wrote over 12,000 words when you count the other long-form ones, which is not quite a novella but comfortably a novelette)

It should come as no surprise that the albums I've most listened to are from Brazil.

Paulo César Pinheiro: Capoeira de Besouro (2010)
João Donato: Quem É Quem (1973)
Cristina Buarque e Samba de Fato: O Samba Informal de Mauro Duarte - Volume 1 (2008)
Joyce: Revendo Amigos (1994)
Pedro Martins: VOX (2019)

Last but not least, shout out to Brian Ginsburg, Elisa Guimarães, Lawrie, an anonymous donor, miguel francisco, Andy Matuschak, Reef Loretto, Feathers Cloud, Charles E. Lehner, Deta, Sasquatch in Orange Shoes, and Boris Mann for becoming backers in 2021. You're all pioneers ❤️💫.

Thanks to everyone using my apps, reading my words, sharing my projects, and contributing in innumerable other ways. I look forward to see what the future holds and hope you'll join me there.

All fiscal posts: 2021, 2022

Tagged: process, reflection.

01h09 from Toronto / Canada

Saturday, January 1, 2022 01h09

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 01:09:20 -0500

2020	2021
twitter	113	339
mastodon	87	207
github	7	46
visitors	?	>19.9K
mailing list	110	166
ephemerata	116
note the sound	$1.4K	🏁
ios apps	$4K	$3K
fund button	$87 (via 1)	$134 (via 5)
open collective	$750 (via 13)
café members	17
screencasts	15
public garden pages	~40	155
events organized	15

On the bright side, everything else is growing! See Measure progress for more commentary on the other figures or 100 steps to success for these eighteen experiments from 2021:

Below are my most popular texts from this year.

Secular churches for continuity (which won Interintellect's first Writing Challenge)
Dating apps, take one (sparked many conversations with friends and strangers)
Wetware of writing and doing (video presentation with text version)

(Apparently I wrote over 12,000 words when you count the other long-form ones, which is not quite a novella but comfortably a novelette)

It should come as no surprise that the albums I've most listened to are from Brazil.

Paulo César Pinheiro: Capoeira de Besouro (2010)
João Donato: Quem É Quem (1973)
Cristina Buarque e Samba de Fato: O Samba Informal de Mauro Duarte - Volume 1 (2008)
Joyce: Revendo Amigos (1994)
Pedro Martins: VOX (2019)

Thanks to everyone using my apps, reading my words, sharing my projects, and contributing in innumerable other ways. I look forward to see what the future holds and hope you'll join me there.

All fiscal posts: 2021, 2022

Tagged: process, reflection.

01h09 from Toronto / Canada

Secular churches for continuity

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 17:09:07 +0000

I tend to describe modern life as 'fragmented'. Lacking a 'canonical place' to create continuity from shared experiences, people rarely collide on a regular basis and end up separated from one another, despite wishing otherwise.

Although there is an abundance of spaces, events, and communities, they tend to lack continuity unless you are a part of groups specific to work, school, clubs, activities—I'm not aware of something that spans all of these contexts, other than places of worship. I re-encounter people mostly 'by chance' (it so happens we showed up to the same thing at the same time) or 'by appointment' (we booked a one-off time to meet and honoured it)—with luck, it might happen more than once, but continuity is a struggle. Committing to a recurring schedule is challenged by modern forces, including but not limited to: 'survival' responsibilities (like work, family, self-care, etc…); a culture of busyness; the feeling of limited time to pursue one's own interests; the idea that recurring meetings stagnate the dynamic (perhaps there won't be enough to talk about); compartmentalized living creates friction to knowing one's neighbours…

I might not be seeing past my personal difficulties in dealing with this, or maybe I'm just hoping to recreate something I felt was lost when I left the church, but I'm sure other people also struggle with these impediments, or worse, feel like they have no place to go.

What's missing

I grew up inside the church and it was a significant part of my life until adulthood, so it's the context I'm most familiar with. After spending the more recent portion of my life mostly in secular spaces, I notice things that I miss and would like to have as part of my experience:

it happens every week, but it's okay to miss it; even if people attend different time slots than you, you might catch them between services and have a chance to connect; you can pass various stages of your life there, or possibly all of it.
'everybody' is there; a mix of friends, colleagues, coworkers, family, acquaintances; across interests, age groups, levels of education, and physical or mental capacities.
low barriers to participation encourage the previous point; being a 'professional' is not necessary; there are no entry fees or technical requirements; 'non-believers' are usually welcome.
community space where other things happen during the week; probably a local, physical place, but various aspects could be translated online; there's probably one near you.
not cohort-based like schools; people may leave, but not on a schedule; it's natural for different waves and generations to interact over time.
'everyone' doing something together, perhaps through music or rites; there are various roles for people to participate (singing, reading, communion, announcements, organizing, training, collection); kind of a giant communal moment where all participate.

There are likely plenty of structural issues to consider, but I'm focusing on the parts that would be useful in other contexts. The result is a microcosm or universe with many subgroups and intersections, and a great serendipity generator.

Defragmentation possibilities

I'm not sure what to propose as a way to cultivate these properties in a secular context, but I have seen some ideas hinting at 'broader ranges' of people together on a regular basis.

The Sunday Assembly might be a literal translation: a weekly gathering of people who listen to talks and sing popular music together.

Places devoted to social lubricants like coffee or alcohol are probably more accessible and prevalent these days. I like the way Emmet Shear describes how congregation in these places have decreased with technological change:

Vienna in the 1900s, was famous for its café culture. And one of the big drivers of that café culture was expensive newspapers that were hard to get, and as a result, people would go to the café and read the shared copy there. And once they're in the cafe, they meet the other people also reading the same newspaper, they converse, they exchange ideas and they form a community. In a similar way, TV and cable used to be more expensive, and so you might not watch the game at home. Instead you'd go to the local bar and cheer along with your fellow sports fans there. But as the price of media continues to fall over time thanks to technology, this shared necessity that used to bring our communities together falls away. We have so many amazing options for our entertainment, and yet it's easier than ever for us to wind up consuming those options alone. Our communities are bearing the consequences. For example, the number of people who report having at least two close friends is at an all-time low. I believe that one of the major contributing causes to this is that our entertainment today allows us to be separate.

Online communities may have some potential as they are always-on and can bring together the largest possible quantity of people, but molding the technology to avoid chaos or context collapse is a challenge. I'm most optimistic about decentralized communities around writing (longing for the blogosphere days), and deeper conversations with a diverse range of people (as might happen in Interintellect). Social networks each have subsets of 'your people' depending on how they relate to technology, and I've been trying to get around this by starting a weekly thing, creating affordances for more participation, and leveraging specific platforms to increase sustainability.

My hope

I would most like to see lifelong communities built around continuous learning, as described in this post about Free Schools:

Communal spaces (and schools) should be like this: always open, welcoming, and safe. A space like this, provides a place for people to learn, build, get practical experience, and express themselves.

Imagine schools or libraries as plentiful, and run by people within their own communities. Normalizing the desire to learn and grow would give anyone a common 'place to go', regardless of what they believe. How can this be encouraged today?

If you're thinking about ways to defragment society, please share your thoughts here with me, or in your public square.

Tagged: community, reflection.

12h09 from Toronto / Canada

Wednesday, December 22, 2021 12h09

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 12:09:07 -0500

What's missing

it happens every week, but it's okay to miss it; even if people attend different time slots than you, you might catch them between services and have a chance to connect; you can pass various stages of your life there, or possibly all of it.
'everybody' is there; a mix of friends, colleagues, coworkers, family, acquaintances; across interests, age groups, levels of education, and physical or mental capacities.
low barriers to participation encourage the previous point; being a 'professional' is not necessary; there are no entry fees or technical requirements; 'non-believers' are usually welcome.
community space where other things happen during the week; probably a local, physical place, but various aspects could be translated online; there's probably one near you.
not cohort-based like schools; people may leave, but not on a schedule; it's natural for different waves and generations to interact over time.
'everyone' doing something together, perhaps through music or rites; there are various roles for people to participate (singing, reading, communion, announcements, organizing, training, collection); kind of a giant communal moment where all participate.

Defragmentation possibilities

I'm not sure what to propose as a way to cultivate these properties in a secular context, but I have seen some ideas hinting at 'broader ranges' of people together on a regular basis.

The Sunday Assembly might be a literal translation: a weekly gathering of people who listen to talks and sing popular music together.

Vienna in the 1900s, was famous for its café culture. And one of the big drivers of that café culture was expensive newspapers that were hard to get, and as a result, people would go to the café and read the shared copy there. And once they're in the cafe, they meet the other people also reading the same newspaper, they converse, they exchange ideas and they form a community. In a similar way, TV and cable used to be more expensive, and so you might not watch the game at home. Instead you'd go to the local bar and cheer along with your fellow sports fans there. But as the price of media continues to fall over time thanks to technology, this shared necessity that used to bring our communities together falls away. We have so many amazing options for our entertainment, and yet it's easier than ever for us to wind up consuming those options alone. Our communities are bearing the consequences. For example, the number of people who report having at least two close friends is at an all-time low. I believe that one of the major contributing causes to this is that our entertainment today allows us to be separate.

My hope

I would most like to see lifelong communities built around continuous learning, as described in this post about Free Schools:

Communal spaces (and schools) should be like this: always open, welcoming, and safe. A space like this, provides a place for people to learn, build, get practical experience, and express themselves.

If you're thinking about ways to defragment society, please share your thoughts here with me, or in your public square.

Tagged: community, reflection.

12h09 from Toronto / Canada

Platform puzzle pieces for sustainable community

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 01:07:59 +0000

Thinking about how to integrate multiple systems while building community and sustainable income.

This year, I started to prioritize community building, which led to the creation of the Ephemerata newsletter and The Café forum (see My mother's gift for some origins). Seeking a hub to house everything and make it accessible with one account, I was determined to make it work with forum software and published the newsletter there as a way to have 'something' happening; it's been nice to see people sign up and share comments without me inviting anyone, but it could be more active, and I should invest there once I feel comfortable doing less in other communities. Seeking also to explore patronage or voluntary contributions as a way to fund what I do, I was determined to use a homegrown payment system or an Open Collective profile, but neither are well integrated with community space or the unlocking of 'perks'. Since beginning these experiments, I have become more aware of other platforms and am trying to reconcile the benefits of each one with the properties I would like to have in my toolkit. It's possible for me to 'build my own system' but that would take time from doing what it's designed to support, especially as a single-person operation; this might be a case where it's better to use existing parts and close gaps by creating plugins or automating with tools like Zapier or n8n. Let's review the existing systems…

Community (Talking together)

Discourse is modern forum software that onboards people to participate, encourages reading, and nudges the right things. It's an exciting set of tools and primitives on an open-source foundation—an increasingly common extensible language—and even can be accessed with a native app to see notifications from all servers in one place. It's good for asynchronous communication, giving people badges, and a comments layer for content written elsewhere. As much as I hoped to do everything here and leverage its various affordances for community, it demands more effort (or friction) for people to post, and it's not so elegant as a 'home' for long-form writing (see Evolution one).

I have despised Discord for its chaotic arcade-like approach to communication, but after learning of a unified notifications pane which doesn't require me to click and bounce around dozens of channels to keep up, it's more manageable for me. The main advantage is that it's low-friction, either when signing up (as one account is shared across multiple communities) or when posting ('easily posting quick things' is not just for 'less dedicated people' but also makes it simpler for your tribe to participate); people can sign up and move from passive to more active at their own pace. It's better for synchronous communication—which I generally avoid as it can be anxiety-inducing—giving people a sense of 'together, now'. It's not good if you avoid proprietary systems (the only closed-source project on this page), vendor lock-in and its network effects, information overload from over-notification noise, or chronologically-emphasized systems which are inherently Designed to disappear. I would be open to using this if the messages delete automatically after a certain period, thus making it easier to change platforms later.

These posts talk more about the tradeoffs of both and how to integrate them better:

As an honourable mention, I like the ideas in Luma: events require email addresses to attend, thus providing a sense of how many people are interested, while also building a mailing list and offering a discussion space for people to connect in between. You can also accept donations or charge money for things, which relates to the next section. Too proprietary for me, but I think it's well-made and can help you to grow faster.

Funding (Sustainable income)

Thinking about the best long-term solution for funding my work, I started at the outset by building my own payments system and integrating it into my apps (see the fund button): this enables direct integration with my apps (unlocking of features), while supporting both Paypal and Stripe. The novel idea behind this is that there is no data stored by me (everything is embedded in the transaction, which is stored by the payment processor) and people can use 'their own accounts' (but the 0data concept is so early that most people don't have one yet). It lacks a more elegant 'manage your subscription' mechanism, which means that although it's possible to modify and cancel at any time, it might feel cryptic. Another major flaw is the design decision to not collect contact information of the subscriber: anonymity has its merits, but I think if people pay me subscription money, I would prefer to have a communications channel in both directions in case anything goes wrong. In short: my system is functional, but might be a fail.

Open Collective is a new way to crowdfund on a recurring basis. Unlike more popular patronage platforms, it promotes transparency and implements fiscal hosting so that one doesn't need a legal entity to receive payments. The visual design lacks warmth (figures-oriented, as if for accountants) and only makes it faintly visible when it's possible to 'give more than the minimum' (non-techies might miss this option entirely)–I believe both of these things decrease the income potential. I was avoiding it for those reasons, but after trying it out, I think the ideals make sense, and so far it's more 'financially successful' than my other avenues even though contributors aren't getting something material in return (yet).

Ghost has made me turn my head several times in the last few months: own your newsletter and your subscriber payment data; patron-only content; passwordless signup via email and magic links; nice external and internal design; integration with automation systems; easy to host it yourself… Their 'Portal' (a slicker alternative to my own fund button) is super compelling: seamlessly handles free and paid memberships (but no PayPal), offers an elegant 'manage your subscription' interface, and (perhaps not so well-known) you can embed it on other sites. I wish it were less 'broadcast and business'-oriented, but I think you don't have to use it that way—might be better to combine it with other platforms. There are some great interface patterns that could become a common language across the web, and active development is supported by a sustainably-funded team.

The ideal solution

Seeing as none of these individual projects span both community and payments, my imagined ideal system would have these properties:

own your community data; badges; asynchronous conversation; extensible (like Discourse)
own your subscriber data and payment relationship; patron-only content; nice interfaces everywhere (like Ghost)
bring your own account (like my fund button, 0data, or Delta Chat)
transparency and fiscal hosts (like Open Collective)
passive signup and synchronous conversation (like Discord), but ephemeral messages

To work towards this, I think I will try a mix of all these tools, but I'm inclined to put Ghost closer to the center. Despite working on my fund button for about half a year, I might switch to the Ghost 'Portal' as it is a pattern language people understand, has a more robust account system that's passwordless, and can be embedded on any site–it should also simplify the programming integration while giving a better experience for people using my apps. Stay tuned over the course of next year to see how all this evolves.

Thanks to Boris for the prompt to write about this.

Tagged: reflection, community.

20h07 from Toronto / Canada

Saturday, December 11, 2021 20h07

Sat, 11 Dec 2021 20:07:59 -0500

Thinking about how to integrate multiple systems while building community and sustainable income.

Community (Talking together)

These posts talk more about the tradeoffs of both and how to integrate them better:

Funding (Sustainable income)

The ideal solution

Seeing as none of these individual projects span both community and payments, my imagined ideal system would have these properties:

own your community data; badges; asynchronous conversation; extensible (like Discourse)
own your subscriber data and payment relationship; patron-only content; nice interfaces everywhere (like Ghost)
bring your own account (like my fund button, 0data, or Delta Chat)
transparency and fiscal hosts (like Open Collective)
passive signup and synchronous conversation (like Discord), but ephemeral messages

Thanks to Boris for the prompt to write about this.

Tagged: reflection, community.

20h07 from Toronto / Canada

Dating apps, take one

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 02:49:48 +0000

For most of my life, I have not been so open to the idea of using technology to find romantic relationships. Coming from a culturally conservative background, dating itself could only happen under very specific and limited circumstances. Moving past that, a lifetime of experience with computers and everything digital filled me with distrust towards matching systems whether old-school (long questionnaires leading to compatibility rates) or the swiping systems (the 'Hot or Not' game somehow still prevalent today), a perspective that can be summarized as 'machines are stupid'. I decided to give it a try towards the end of 2020 as I was feeling isolated during the pandemic, mostly as a way to make friends and meet new people (which might have been counter-intuitive given the context).

This was my first attempt ever at using dating apps, and I was in Brasília (the capital city of Brazil) between various upper middle-class neighbourhoods with preference for those who conform to something (padrão) that I don't really do well. I tried five of the more popular apps: Tinder, which I loath, but it's where most of the people are and therefore fairly diverse; Bumble, where women make the first move in heterosexual matches, but not as well-used; OkCupid, with more opportunities to be thoughtful in how you present yourself; Happn, highly location-based (literally who passed you by), where I had a handful of calls with fairly sincere people; and Inner Circle, for rich people, where I made somewhere between one and zero matches.

All of them (and likely even most of the ones I didn't try) focus on photos and swiping left or right to indicate intent, while trying to inject random bits of serendipity though game-like mechanisms—like chicken sexing, but maybe more fun. A multiplicity of ways to portray oneself is sacrificed in the name of speed, favouring visual representations and perception through those signals. This might be fine in specific contexts, but when universally applied, mainstream stereotypes of beauty tend to dominate everyone's experience, which pressures people perceived as 'abnormal' to conform, or floods them with noise. I don't think most people realize how much technology steers culture towards certain outcomes: an app starts with affordances for visual communication, then as it grows, we influence each other to do what succeeds in that format; when that shifted culture becomes our new baseline for how billions of people relate to one another, what does it say about our agency, or ability to be intentional in how we shape our world? The emphasis on photos turned me off to the point that I would reflexively tune out attractive people if they seemed to project affluence or a sort of 'mass-market beauty'. The swipe gestures are also error-prone, probably ableist, and not always consistent between apps; there's more than one way to do this, and I hope the well-paid developers of these apps explore a greater vocabulary of matching than 'left or right', perhaps attempt to approximate the spectrum of possibilities in meatspace. When I asked women (sometimes from these apps, sometimes from my own circles) about their experiences using these apps, they seemed to commonly receive too much of what they don't want from people they don't want to engage with—maybe this approach isn't working for everyone? What if, in addition to pictures, you could hear the person describe themselves (like a sort of answering machine greeting)? How would changing the velocity of selecting between profiles impact how much attention we give to each one? What would it look like if apps encouraged us to be vulnerable or authentic?

I managed to have some good experiences despite the shortcomings of these apps, but the connections generally felt disposable. One of my favourite words in Portuguese is 'correria' (translatable as 'rush' or 'scramble': imagine lots of people frantically running around), and for me, it describes the feeling of everyone simultaneously texting dozens of people; it's hard for me to have more meaningful exchanges this way (I'm 'slower'), and having infinite options makes it 'cheaper' for everyone (including myself) to cast a wider net. My months of exploring these apps could be quantified as: hundreds of messages with thirty to fifty matches, maybe a dozen interesting conversations, some video calls, a couple of dates, and essentially no friendships or relationships whatsoever. It was during a pandemic however, and I think the result would have been better if everyone could easily meet in public. The environment seems to encourage people to play games and create a false sense of scarcity, which is odd when you live by abundance and actively dismantle that when it happens. I felt relieved to stop using them, to not need to pay attention to so many notifications and engage in superficial conversations. Everyone has different expectations there, and mine may not have been aligned with most people, or with what the environment encourages.

That all sounds pessimistic, but I do think there's hope for these things if they're made with more thoughtfulness: the bar is currently so low that there's an open field for cultivating more meaningful interactions via matchmaking. Showing people at 'random' can be useful, and maybe even necessary, but there needs to be more than one method of exploring who's out there, and ideally multiple ways for people to represent themselves: less visual, more filterable. I think this kind of tool could have great outcomes depending on how the culture wields it; I'm less interested in seeing what happens when the app wields culture without us realizing it. Although I generally make more meaningful connections in my own contexts, I might give dating apps a second chance post-pandemic, but I know that anything good occurring will likely happen in spite of the apps, not because of them.

Tagged: reflection.

21h49 from Toronto / Canada

Monday, November 15, 2021 21h49

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 21:49:48 -0500

Tagged: reflection.

21h49 from Toronto / Canada

Inner feedback loops

Sun, 18 Jul 2021 13:44:49 +0000

In preparing Tiny concert for a friend, I audio recorded myself playing guitar while singing and listened back to it immediately after. I tried to do this at least once per day and ended up with four or five sessions repeating this process with the same set of songs.

I was surprised by my noticeable progress in just a few days, and that the process felt productive, self-affirming, and contributing to a healthy relationship with music and the instrument—I actually enjoyed the feedback loop. I noted how my own preferences emerge more clearly: I'm definitely modelling my performance off of the recordings from which I learned the repertoire, but hearing myself makes my inclinations more malleable—music starts to feel more like a moldable material rather than something abstract or 'from someone else'. I thought I would feel overly critical, but it actually trained me to accept and even enjoy my own sound. For a few days I also had a nice routine going of breakfast, reading, stretching, recording, listening back—it felt like a thorough wake-up, leaving me ready to experience the day.

I frequently wondered, "Why have I never done this?". I always knew that people do this, and that I could too, but somehow never gave it a try. I've known about this for a while, since studying music professionally and having been around musicians and their culture for a while. Perhaps it's due to dogmas around perfection that made me feel too intimidated to listen to myself: in one context, music being more about execution than improvisation; in another music being professionalized to the point where sounding 'good' takes precedence over emotional expression. I haven't figured out my answer yet, but I find it useful to ask "What stopped me from doing this and what else is it preventing me from experiencing?"

There were obviously various challenges, but I felt uplifted knowing that one grows by learning to deal with situations. One long-time difficulty of mine is to play music at an unfavourable moment (such as in the morning, before my day starts, in sort of chilly temperature). I found myself working through feelings of clammy fingers and lousy tone, using what I have to construct something (the recursive process of using your own resources to validate your own resources), and building ways to deal with what's at hand. Another difficulty is various hesitations and mental disturbances (thinking too much and other things that impede your flow). I found multiple aspects of performance to help hook myself into the music when feeling distracted: pronunciation, enunciation, helping the body embody the music, voice projection, breathing, etc… It was a relief when I reminded myself that it's okay for me to be somewhat shoddy with my guitar playing because in this context the words are more important. I was able to overcome this binary around "now we're playing the song, now we're not" by constructing mini-routines like tuning the guitar before each performance, allowing myself to revise any ambiguities directly or through improvising, not worrying about how the audience perceives it, and generally opening myself up to be more fluid with music and sound.

To me, the ideals of 'gradual incremental progress' (so common in the world of technology) always seemed at odds with the non-linear nature of music, but I now feel like having arrived at some semblance of it that nurtures more than compromises the practice.

I'm excited to try this more in the future, not only as a way to 'rehearse' but as a way to 'compose'. I also see the approach as part of my broader idea about documenting moments:

For most of life it's possible to look back and observe your own progress. This is encouraging at times when you feel less positive about yourself. All it takes is making a note of where you are with words, sounds, or images.

Tagged: reflection, Vibrations, process, meta.

10h44 from Brasilia / Brazil

Sunday, July 18, 2021 10h44

Sun, 18 Jul 2021 10:44:49 -0300

I'm excited to try this more in the future, not only as a way to 'rehearse' but as a way to 'compose'. I also see the approach as part of my broader idea about documenting moments:

For most of life it's possible to look back and observe your own progress. This is encouraging at times when you feel less positive about yourself. All it takes is making a note of where you are with words, sounds, or images.

Tagged: reflection, Vibrations, process, meta.

10h44 from Brasilia / Brazil

Six guns pointed at my face

Fri, 28 May 2021 15:15:09 +0000

Below is a translated revision of my Facebook post in Portuguese, originally for friends but eventually public, followed by some reflections that I wasn't able to articulate at the time. After that, there is a recording I forgot I had, featuring some of my conversation with the officers.

Thanks to Kae Yuan for reading a draft of this.

Tanning without a shirt and lying down in the grass at 3:30 in the afternoon. Asa Norte.

(If you're not from there, you could think of it as the equivalent of a quiet suburban neighborhood in Canada or the United States, where basically nothing happens—just a boring and comfortable place for affluent people to live.)

Six white police officers (mostly male) were walking, patrolling. I was surprised as I had not seen a sight like this in the last year or so of being around. I was observing their movement (as I lie on the grass), perhaps even staring, with the look of 'what are they doing in this neighborhood?'. Perhaps they felt provoked by my gaze.

A young-looking one arrives in front of me, cool and composed, silently points his gun at my face (as I lie on the grass) and spoke calmly: "Stand up and put your hands behind your head."

I said, "What did I do?", first in Portuguese, and later in English. The others arrived, pointing five additional guns at my face (as I lie on the grass). They explained that they were doing a '[procedure for the prevention of the sale of drugs]'. I obeyed, not knowing a better action to take. With fear, I started to engage only in English as one of them knew to speak it a bit.

They searched my pant pockets and my cloth bag while I stood with my hands behind my head (shirt still on the grass). They asked me what I was doing in the country. I explained that I was travelling, living with a friend. With luck, I had my passport to 'prove' this, and with their consent, I opened my bag to get my passport (slowly, carefully, as all guns were still pointed towards my face).

They withdrew weapons after about ten minutes, concluding that "it seems like he's just lying on the grass taking in some sun", and started a warmer conversation with me, "How cool that you're in Brazil. Wow, it looks like you have travelled to many countries." Then I started to relax and speak more in Portuguese, which almost offended the woman interrogating me, "Oh, so you speak Portuguese? Why didn't you speak before?"

They explained to me that this 'method' is normal here and that I didn't see this in the twenty countries I visited because "every place has their own way of resolving things".

They left me after another ten minutes and started the same process nearby with a Black man sitting on a bench; I recognized from his t-shirt that he was one of the waiters at the local French bakery.

Only sharing because a friend told me that it's important for more people to know the reality of a non-white person in this country. This likely happened also because of my ragged clothes—many people in this neighborhood look at me and avoid me thinking that I live on the street or that I will ask them for money.

Above all, it's important to recognize one's privileges and how 'nothing happened' in the encounter. In this richer neighborhood, they won't start by shooting. In the favelas of Rio, first you die.

Reflections

What disturbed me most about this experience was the absence of any drama: nobody was shouting, there was no physical violence, and the police were clearly not acting out of fear for their own safety. This was mechanical, robotic, banal. The first officer acted like someone learning to cook by following a recipe:

Step 1: Approach as if you noticed a shiny object in the grass and wanted to check it out. Is it an earring? Or maybe a coin?
Step 2: Point your gun at it with the minimum of movement, so as to not startle the subject.
Step 3: Try to understand the situation.

It's the silence and the fact of how inevitable this is supposed to be. The calm, calculated clockwork of a system that doesn't question itself. The confidence of an 'expert' that doesn't realize how much they don't understand. I imagine them thinking: "This looks like the type of person we normally seek out, so let's start The Procedure". It's a logic they express with raw power.

Another thing I find disturbing is how after hearing this story, numerous people say to me, "Just change your clothes." I'm sure many women recognize that phrase. It's true, that would be practical. I'm slow to accept this, but I probably will.

Lessons

Producing and writing is my way to deal with many things. It's empowering to feel what an experience provokes inside and allow it to produce an expression.

Sharing your story can lead to conversations that create momentum for change. Certain people in my network have told me that they revised their attitude towards to the police because of my experience. This is part of our force and our power to change, by sharing and caring.

In contrast to other countries, the police at the city level in Brazil are actually military, and so they engage as if they're in a war—when all you have is a hammer, every situation is a nail. Also, their salary is higher than that of school teachers, which might give a sense of priorities.

A snippet of our more cordial conversation, roughly translated to English

Me: I'm basically a tourist.

Officer A: Wow, you travel a lot! [Laugh] And when did you enter the country?

Me: March 2020, more than a year ago.

Officer A: [Addressing other officers to start the procedure on the man sitting nearby: Go there and ('check it out'?)] .
Officer A: What is your visa?

Me: Tourist.

Officer A: It hasn't expired?

Me: I asked federal police about starting the process of getting documents, but…

Officer A: Ah so you came in the pandemic and stayed?

Me: My luck.

Officer A: You don't work here?

Me: I work on the Internet, I do programming, I sell apps online, I don't have a geographic connection for my work, officially in Canada, maybe.

Officer A: Where are you from in Canada?

Me: Montreal.

Officer A: [Pause] Montreal, dang. So you left the cold there?

Me: [Laughs] Why not?

Officer A: Yeah…

Me: I find the warmth of the people interesting here.

Officer B: In Brazil you only came here to Brasília?

Me: No. São Paulo, Campinas, Salvador, Manaus, Rio, Chapada, Recife, Olinda. But I like it here, and I have friends in the city.

Officer B: In Rio, you never experienced any "procedimento de abordagem" ["procedure of approach/attack"?]?

Me: Well I only spent two weeks there.

Officer A: But this never happened to you in Rio? Because it's so common there.

Me: I would not sunbathe in Rio. Brasília is safer.

Officer A: Yes.

Me: Who would do that?

Officer B: It's more dangerous there.

Officer A: Because this area here is more…

Me: Actually I never had problems anywhere even though people tell me that the country is very dangerous. I wouldn't walk around drunk at night or something like that. Probably stay at home.

Officer B: This type of procedure avoids future problems.

Me: Huh.

Officer B: It's not about anything you did. It's really just prevention.

Officer C: The truth is, this is really the procedure, you know? With guns pointed. You're from Canada right?

Me: Uhuh.

Officer C: If we turn to the context of other countries, each country has their own profile. If you went to the United States, it's one. If you went to Europe, it's another. Here in Brazil, it's another.

Me: Huh.

Officer C: But, thank you for your collaboration, okay?

Me: No problem. Have a good afternoon.

Tagged: reflection, travel.

12h15 from Brasilia / Brazil

Friday, May 28, 2021 12h15

Fri, 28 May 2021 12:15:09 -0300

Thanks to Kae Yuan for reading a draft of this.

Tanning without a shirt and lying down in the grass at 3:30 in the afternoon. Asa Norte.

(If you're not from there, you could think of it as the equivalent of a quiet suburban neighborhood in Canada or the United States, where basically nothing happens—just a boring and comfortable place for affluent people to live.)

Six white police officers (mostly male) were walking, patrolling. I was surprised as I had not seen a sight like this in the last year or so of being around. I was observing their movement (as I lie on the grass), perhaps even staring, with the look of 'what are they doing in this neighborhood?'. Perhaps they felt provoked by my gaze.

A young-looking one arrives in front of me, cool and composed, silently points his gun at my face (as I lie on the grass) and spoke calmly: "Stand up and put your hands behind your head."

I said, "What did I do?", first in Portuguese, and later in English. The others arrived, pointing five additional guns at my face (as I lie on the grass). They explained that they were doing a '[procedure for the prevention of the sale of drugs]'. I obeyed, not knowing a better action to take. With fear, I started to engage only in English as one of them knew to speak it a bit.

They searched my pant pockets and my cloth bag while I stood with my hands behind my head (shirt still on the grass). They asked me what I was doing in the country. I explained that I was travelling, living with a friend. With luck, I had my passport to 'prove' this, and with their consent, I opened my bag to get my passport (slowly, carefully, as all guns were still pointed towards my face).

They withdrew weapons after about ten minutes, concluding that "it seems like he's just lying on the grass taking in some sun", and started a warmer conversation with me, "How cool that you're in Brazil. Wow, it looks like you have travelled to many countries." Then I started to relax and speak more in Portuguese, which almost offended the woman interrogating me, "Oh, so you speak Portuguese? Why didn't you speak before?"

They explained to me that this 'method' is normal here and that I didn't see this in the twenty countries I visited because "every place has their own way of resolving things".

They left me after another ten minutes and started the same process nearby with a Black man sitting on a bench; I recognized from his t-shirt that he was one of the waiters at the local French bakery.

Only sharing because a friend told me that it's important for more people to know the reality of a non-white person in this country. This likely happened also because of my ragged clothes—many people in this neighborhood look at me and avoid me thinking that I live on the street or that I will ask them for money.

Above all, it's important to recognize one's privileges and how 'nothing happened' in the encounter. In this richer neighborhood, they won't start by shooting. In the favelas of Rio, first you die.

Reflections

Step 1: Approach as if you noticed a shiny object in the grass and wanted to check it out. Is it an earring? Or maybe a coin?
Step 2: Point your gun at it with the minimum of movement, so as to not startle the subject.
Step 3: Try to understand the situation.

Lessons

Producing and writing is my way to deal with many things. It's empowering to feel what an experience provokes inside and allow it to produce an expression.

A snippet of our more cordial conversation, roughly translated to English

Me: I'm basically a tourist.

Officer A: Wow, you travel a lot! [Laugh] And when did you enter the country?

Me: March 2020, more than a year ago.

Officer A: [Addressing other officers to start the procedure on the man sitting nearby: Go there and ('check it out'?)] .
Officer A: What is your visa?

Me: Tourist.

Officer A: It hasn't expired?

Me: I asked federal police about starting the process of getting documents, but…

Officer A: Ah so you came in the pandemic and stayed?

Me: My luck.

Officer A: You don't work here?

Me: I work on the Internet, I do programming, I sell apps online, I don't have a geographic connection for my work, officially in Canada, maybe.

Officer A: Where are you from in Canada?

Me: Montreal.

Officer A: [Pause] Montreal, dang. So you left the cold there?

Me: [Laughs] Why not?

Officer A: Yeah…

Me: I find the warmth of the people interesting here.

Officer B: In Brazil you only came here to Brasília?

Me: No. São Paulo, Campinas, Salvador, Manaus, Rio, Chapada, Recife, Olinda. But I like it here, and I have friends in the city.

Officer B: In Rio, you never experienced any "procedimento de abordagem" ["procedure of approach/attack"?]?

Me: Well I only spent two weeks there.

Officer A: But this never happened to you in Rio? Because it's so common there.

Me: I would not sunbathe in Rio. Brasília is safer.

Officer A: Yes.

Me: Who would do that?

Officer B: It's more dangerous there.

Officer A: Because this area here is more…

Me: Actually I never had problems anywhere even though people tell me that the country is very dangerous. I wouldn't walk around drunk at night or something like that. Probably stay at home.

Officer B: This type of procedure avoids future problems.

Me: Huh.

Officer B: It's not about anything you did. It's really just prevention.

Officer C: The truth is, this is really the procedure, you know? With guns pointed. You're from Canada right?

Me: Uhuh.

Officer C: If we turn to the context of other countries, each country has their own profile. If you went to the United States, it's one. If you went to Europe, it's another. Here in Brazil, it's another.

Me: Huh.

Officer C: But, thank you for your collaboration, okay?

Me: No problem. Have a good afternoon.

Tagged: reflection, travel.

12h15 from Brasilia / Brazil

My mother's gift

Sun, 09 May 2021 13:10:00 +0000

It usually takes me time to create projects and develop ideas before sharing them with the world. The durations always differ, but I might expect to wait a month or so as details accumulate, one or more weeks to conceive and finalize a visual identity, some weeks or months for implementation if there's programming involved, some time for considering how another person might come to and perceive the space, etc… The entirety of this process was compressed into about three hours in the case of Ephemerata.

I woke up on a Sunday morning ready to begin a normal day: made myself hot oatmeal for breakfast, read some articles. An idea came to me while reading, and I thought, "That sounds kind of cool, I should do that some day." Ten minutes passed by, and then I received a jolt and thought, "Whoa, I should really, really do that, like maybe even drop everything and get started immediately type of thing." I tried to calmly finish eating, and then got to work.

Completely consumed by this idea for a weekly newsletter, I came up with a concept and visual identity, wrote the first edition, and told the world about it before lunch. It was like standing under a waterfall, a deluge of possibilities and details hitting me intensely and all at once. In combination with my discussion forum, this very clearly represented for me a missing piece of the puzzle, one that I've been struggling with for over a year now in my journey to earning a living as an independent creator. The two create a sort of connective tissue for building a community around what I do. This sort of thing might seem obvious to many people who approach things from a less technical perspective, but I was skeptical about this approach for a long time, and it actually took me until now to arrive here.

Reflecting later in the evening, I realized something: it was Mother's Day. And how fitting it was for this idea to have emerged, fully formed, on that day: I gave birth, in a sense, to a new community, and my mother was someone who brought people together. It was like receiving a gift from her, and reconnecting with qualities that she had passed onto me, qualities that I have only recently began to cultivate more deeply. I now believe that this idea struck me so hard because—and I say this with sincerity—it resembles a new way of for me to integrate myself into the world, a gift of life. It gives me a significant resolution to various questions of belonging that have plagued me for ages, and I feel relieved, energized, and excited.

Thanks, Mom, and to all mothers, whose nurture and care transcends their time on earth.

Tagged: reflection, Ephemerata, process.

10h10 from Brasilia / Brazil

Sunday, May 9, 2021 10h10

Sun, 09 May 2021 10:10:00 -0300

Thanks, Mom, and to all mothers, whose nurture and care transcends their time on earth.

Tagged: reflection, Ephemerata, process.

10h10 from Brasilia / Brazil

Coming to the guitar later in life

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 15:58:49 +0000

I was fortunate to be born into a musical family and for music to have been a concrete part of life as long as I can remember. I studied piano for almost fifteen years, from private lessons to a professional university degree in music. I find it strange that despite this backdrop, despite there always being one or more guitars in the house, despite having two parents that play, despite having the opportunity to take group classes with Brian Katz, the instrument never clicked with me until recently. This could have been because I was comparing it to the piano in unhealthy ways: "What's this fretboard interface, why can't I use a keyboard?"; "I can't believe how much one needs to contort the fingers just to play chords."; "It's so hard to create a tone that doesn't sound terrible, on the piano I can just push buttons.". It was always an adverse relationship with the instrument, never leading to a feeling of building something over time.

I was also fortunate to have opportunities to travel solo around the world. Since 2017, I have been very mobile, out of the country more than in, not having many posessions so that I can just throw everything in storage and fly when the time comes. This made it challenging to maintain a relationship with the piano: it isn't practical to take one with you, and finding one that feels good to play is a challenge in any place. In 2019, after returning from a month in Egypt, I started to look at the guitar differently. I appreciated its portability and how easy it is to find one in the wild, and how it doesn't have as much classical music 'baggage' as the piano. I also felt compelled to reproduce the melodies and ornamentation in arabic music that were around me in my trip. I began approaching it casually to goof around and found myself relating to it more deeply. I started to really dig the sound—the resonance of the nylon strings, a tone very tender, mellow, and sombre. It was a pleasure even just to play a single note, to feel my finger putting pressure on the string and making contact with the wood, to hear the resonance within the instrument and in the ambient space. It was a beautiful experience for me to be directly connected with the production of sound, as an extension of my body in a way that never felt possible with the piano. At some point I felt I was relating to it more profoundly than I ever had with any other instrument, and questioned whether I had 'started on the wrong foot' so to speak…

Since then I have been playing off and on, but everytime I come back it gets better. I still sometimes compare to the piano, but perhaps in a more healthy way, celebrating the unique qualities of the instrument:

There is no pretension of 'doing the same thing equally with both hands', it makes no sense here.
It's alright just to play a simple melody without chords or accompaniment. It sounds good and even feels good.
You can relate to it with more intimacy, physical proximity—you can actually tune it. It also changes your body as fingers develop calluses from playing regularly.
Sound production is comes from fingers and touch: no abstractions, no mechanics.

A friend describes me sitting with the instrument, somewhat frustrated that I improvise freely without playing familiar songs, saying 'he spends all his time with the guitar just talking'. In some sense, it does feel like I'm returning to meet an old friend and there's lot's to discuss, and I'm grateful for that.

Monday, February 15, 2021 12h58

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 12:58:49 -0300

There is no pretension of 'doing the same thing equally with both hands', it makes no sense here.
It's alright just to play a simple melody without chords or accompaniment. It sounds good and even feels good.
You can relate to it with more intimacy, physical proximity—you can actually tune it. It also changes your body as fingers develop calluses from playing regularly.
Sound production is comes from fingers and touch: no abstractions, no mechanics.

Sixth time's a charm

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 15:05:24 +0000

I thought this is something only 'smart people' could do.

My journey towards independantly creating iPhone apps was not straightforward.

I tried on at least five occasions over several years to learn how to do it and always ended up blocked in the process, not coming away with an understanding of how the system works.

Despite having years of experience in web programming but was not able to transfer much of the knowledge. This is partly because web uses technical concepts invented in the 1990s whereas native apps require different paradigms from 1980s that are more primitive and complex.

I ended up finding Wil and collaborating together to create my first app, one that helped in the process of learning and transcribing songs. I left the programming to him while and did everything else.

Still wanting to unravel the mystery, I continued thinking about another attempt. Something clicked on the sixth try.

At some point I became aware of an unexplored path and decided to pursue it to create the most basic prototype possible: an app that does nothing, but that functions as a proof of getting the pieces working together. After succeeding with this, I proceeded to make another naive one that only stores and edits data: the underlying blocks of most actions that people perform with apps.

With a better lay of the land and an understanding of how to compose from available parts, I managed to realize an idea that had been nagging me for a while: a remote control for the system music app that lets you spontaneously start learning the song that's currently playing, without needing to 'create a project' or 'import'—to seamlessly transition from casual to deep listening.

Almost a decade later, I have created half a dozen apps on my own. It's hard to remember what it was like to not know how to do this, but I know that at the time I had no idea what was what, feeling I would never figure it out or that it's something that 'smart people' or 'trained people' could do. It's a lesson in patience, perseverance, and allowing time pass to help digest ideas and put things in perspective.

Tagged: reflection, apps.

12h05 from Brasilia / Brazil

Monday, February 15, 2021 12h05

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 12:05:24 -0300

My journey towards independantly creating iPhone apps was not straightforward.

I tried on at least five occasions over several years to learn how to do it and always ended up blocked in the process, not coming away with an understanding of how the system works.

My journey towards independantly creating iPhone apps was not straightforward.

I tried on at least five occasions over several years to learn how to do it and always ended up blocked in the process, not coming away with an understanding of how the system works.

Still wanting to unravel the mystery, I continued thinking about another attempt. Something clicked on the sixth try.

Tagged: reflection, apps.

12h05 from Brasilia / Brazil

Rosano / entries tagged "reflection"

when bad things happen in the world

Thursday, January 25, 2024 14h03

I've never worked in a company

Tuesday, December 27, 2022 11h56

What we want

Saturday, January 15, 2022 11h43

2021

Saturday, January 1, 2022 01h09

Secular churches for continuity

What's missing

Defragmentation possibilities

My hope

Wednesday, December 22, 2021 12h09

What's missing

Defragmentation possibilities

My hope

Platform puzzle pieces for sustainable community

Community (Talking together)

Funding (Sustainable income)

The ideal solution

Saturday, December 11, 2021 20h07

Community (Talking together)

Funding (Sustainable income)

The ideal solution

Dating apps, take one

Monday, November 15, 2021 21h49

Inner feedback loops

Sunday, July 18, 2021 10h44

Six guns pointed at my face

Reflections

Lessons

A snippet of our more cordial conversation, roughly translated to English

Friday, May 28, 2021 12h15

Reflections

Lessons

A snippet of our more cordial conversation, roughly translated to English

My mother's gift

Sunday, May 9, 2021 10h10

Coming to the guitar later in life

See also

Monday, February 15, 2021 12h58

See also

Sixth time's a charm

Monday, February 15, 2021 12h05