Author: Sahar

Categories
Misc

Why I now have an acting reel

About a week ago, I went and did a shoot for a commercial. It was my first time doing so for pay. After everything I did, I’m not sure I’ll be asked to do it again.

Here’s how it went:

I show up. There are a variety of people sitting around the lobby of one of those corporate offices that makes a token nod to startup culture, but just barely. An office that has the same faint whiff of despair that you’d expect from a white-collar workplace, but with maybe a bowl of warheads by the reception desk and one or two slightly more colorful chairs. 

There are two young white women who already have their makeup ready. A distinguished-looking older man. A latina, a notably mild-mannered black man, and me.

The makeup artist gets me ready. We chat about her child, and skiing. We have very little of substance to say to each other.

All six of us actors are arrayed in a board room. We get laptops. I make sure to switch for one that actually works, and start googling furiously and surreptitiously. The director explains that we’ll be acting out a meeting between a marketing team and a PR agency. They’ll dub out any words we use, so feel free to say whatever we want. This will be mostly b-roll footage, no worries. Okay, the cameras are rolling. Go!

One of the women starts timidly talking about the cactus on the desk, and how it should be included in the meeting. Aha. A joke. I nod along, and still surreptitiously Google.

Okay, I’m ready. I clear my throat, prepare my hands for natural gesturing, and say, conversationally:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord
and serf, guild-master and
journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition
to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight,
a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution
of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal
society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established
new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place
of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct
feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more
and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes
directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. 

Stunned silence. 

Then – the floodgates! We talk about class struggle. We talk about why americans have yet to take to revolution.

One person ventures that the working classes are content. I remark that, rather, they’ve given up.

We talk about a job my girlfriend had once, and how all the managers at a golf course were white, all the staff were black, and almost none of the staff hoped for a better life than calling snotty 14-year old brats “sir”.

The older man (a conservative, I suspect) detours to a talk about golf. And how those jobs might actually be the best jobs around in that rural area.

We go back to joking about the cactus.

When it comes time for me to speak again, I try and redirect the conversation by paraphrasing Anatole France:

How wonderful the law is! In its majestic equality, both the rich and poor alike are equally
prohibited from peeing in the streets, sleeping under bridges, and
stealing bread!

The older (conservative?) man quickly rejoinders that peeing in the streets should be allowed. But should breastfeeding?

We consider the matter. All the while gesturing and nodding as if an important business meeting is going on. The cameras roll.

I point out that we have free public restrooms in America because of an activist campaign by a teenager in the 1970s.

No one seems as impressed as I am. They talk about sports. They talk about work. Someone mentions their union. I am excited. They don’t like their union. I am disappointed.

Finally, the shoot is almost done. The director asks each of us to speak uninterrupted for a minute or two in case that’s needed for B-Roll footage later. I go last.

This is my chance. My last, best chance. It’s time to bust out Mario Savio:

There comes a time when the operation
of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that
you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve
got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the
levers, upon all the apparatus – and you’ve got to make it stop!
And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people
who own it – that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented
from working at all!!

(All this while gesturing and pointing as if I was presenting a proposal for increasing CTR through better targeting google ads or somesuch nonsense.)

The shoot ends. Each of us will be getting a check. Each of us is eligible to get our acting reel.

Did I end up radicalizing a whole room full of actors, cameramen, and crew? Probably not.

Did we have a good conversation based on socialist frames? Yes.

Did I help garner sympathy with a labor/radical agenda? I hope so.

But I tell you this – I had a hell of a time.

Categories
Misc

Habits, Task Diaries, and APIs

Habitica is awesome. The service, which until recently went by HabitRPG, is one of those gamified “as you do good things in life, you gain level up” sort of lifehackery services. Here’s why I like it so much:

  • It’s smart enough to sort different tasks into 3 different buckets: habits (which you can do/not do at will), dailies (which you must do every day) and todos (which you do once)
  • It doesn’t take itself too seriously
  • It has a team aspect that really does help, but doesn’t overwhelm you with features.

Here’s the problem – I have two other todo list type things I already use.

iDoneThis, which is a delightful early Web2.0 holdover, emails me every day and asks, simply, what I’ve accomplished. I’ve got 3 years worth of diaries on that thing – it’s the most consistent diary-style service or habit I’ve ever used.

EngMatchingLogs, a newer service by Hakka Labs, does something similar, then uses machine learning to match me up with a new friend every week. It’s quite delightful!

There are also small apps on my mac that interface with iDoneThis for easy todo list integration.

Wouldn’t it be nice to create a tool that syncs between all those services? Checking off something on Habitica could add an entry in my iDoneThis as well write to my EngMatchingLog.

Someone should make that.

Categories
Misc

Idea — Communist Loren Ipsum Generator

There should be a webapp where one specifies the amount of text they want. And instead of Loren Ipsum text, it should return a selection of particularly noteworthy or well-regarded socialist, communist, or radical text, speeches, etc.

Example use case:

I have to be an actor for stock footage. They want me to speak lines (but the audio will be cut in editing) so that it looks like a real meeting is happening in the background. Ahead of time, I know that I’ll have about 30 seconds worth of speaking, so I look up 30 seconds on the Communist Loren Ipsum app. During the shoot, I recite the killer graph from Mario Savio’s speech about throwing oneself upon the gears.

Another example use case:

I am creating a web app and need some sample fake tweets. I use Communist Loren Ipsum generator’s API to dynamically fetch tiny socialist slogans for use in those sample tweets on an as-needed basis.

Categories
Misc

Letter to a friend struggling with mental health

Have you read Ella Enchanted?

The sad fact is that you were born with a curse like Ella.
This is not your fault.

But
unlike Ella we don’t live in a narrative world of freedom and light and
there may never be a sort of “love conquers all” thing that frees you completely.

But also luckily for you we live in a world of freedom and magic and sunshine in other ways.

You are stronger than you think.

And when you are visited with this curse over and over again
It’s just that darn witch making your life harder.
Because you passed the last trial
With flying colors.

And the key to passing the test is the same key you’ve always had.
Like Dorothy in Oz.

It’s love!

Accepting love from your friends
who support you even especially when you’re in a trial.
Instead of less.

love for yourself.
because like Samwise Gamgee
we can’t carry the ring for you
but we can carry you

Categories
Misc

My memoirs in 5 minutes

Once, we lived in a world on fire. A world of slaughter and war and
fear. Out of that world, two special people were able to flee, to bulid,
to thrive.

This is not their story.

Once, there was a little boy. And his middle name was Moses. He was a stranger in a strange land. He did not collect baseball cards. He did not pray in Shul. He would never wear a black hat.

This little boy, let’s call him Moses, may have believed in god. He definitely did not believe in himself. His namesake could speak seven languages. Moses could only master two. Moses was mediocre at kickball. Moses did not know Torah.

Moses staged elaborate plays with his stuffed animals at night. When no
one watched.

One day, Moses’ best friend called him his “seventh best friend”. He was crushed.

Moses did not like to read. But his parents forced him. Moses did not know Torah, but he did know to honor his father and mother. And so he did.

One day, he found an artifact which would change his life. Tucked in the corner of his teacher’s shelves – his tyrannical, harsh (overworked, underpaid) teacher – was the first chapter book he ever read.

It was about adventure.

It was about children living on their own, as a family. Building a home in the woods. Scavenging. Thriving. Nothing would ever be the same.

Moses grew. He escaped the citadel of black hats and stern words and small thoughts. He found a new school with a sunrise painted on the side. He grew glasses from all his reading. His adversaries were not black hats but small hearts, all the same.

He was handed the poisoned chalice of praise, and drank deeply. From now on, he would be known as “smart”. He’d never be able to tear himself from that wretched goblet again.

Moses grew, and grew strange. He chased Pokemon in his
dreams. His days were the tormented mix of boredom, frustrated
exuberance, and the casual cruelty of children. He started keeping a book constantly at his side, ready to whip it out and escape every time
the teacher turned her back.

The isolation of being a foreigner ripened into the isolation of being strange. And so Moses drifted towards the other strangers. They were weak, but most had drunk from the chalice as well. They were brothers trapped by the addiction to smart.

And so they built themselves a small shtetl in the concrete walls of the middle school. Some would be able to leave through sports. Most would only be forced out with the triumph of age.

The triumph of age. The triumph of making friends, joining clubs, of having youth take you seriously. The triumph of death inexorably approaching, of being torn from the breast of friendship and scattered to the four winds.

And so our hero found himself a stranger again in a new home, surrounded by new strangers still. He found himself able to make a fresh start. And so he did.

He found love mixed with tragedy, and to this day confuses one for the other.

He found a new village in the campus. A bulwark against the cruel world outside. A community that contained its own diseases: cruelty, status, and posturing. But one that also contained power, solidarity, and action.

In that village Moses started taking up arms against a
sea of troubles, and by opposing, moderate them. As you know, the people united will sometimes win and sometimes lose. Moses couldn’t save the world, or even america. So he painted demon faces on the petty tyrants at hand and rallied the villagers to cast out the dracula. Sometimes he even succeeded.

And then – the triumph of age. The casting out. The peering through a glass window at the place that once was home. Ever the rootless jew, Moses left his last village and wandered through the desert.

He wandered through the desolate cities of Oakland and Springfield and New Haven and Rochester. He wandered through the gardens of eden in Oakland and Springfield and New Haven and Rochester. He was a itinerant knight, a Robin Hood, and a little boy with a pot helmet and a wooden stick for a sword.

And now he doesn’t know what to do next. There’s no village. All the old certainties – in his coding ability, in his affiliation with the professional left, in the abundance the world had to offer – all are gone.

What’s left? Just a little boy with a stick for a sword and a world full of dragons to explore. 

Categories
Misc

Dante <3 Beatrice

Beatrice, this is a letter from Hell.

I’m visiting the sepulchre of agony, and the dust, the dust is cloying. I’m here to grow towards God, but all I know is when I see your face my body walks freshly scrubbed through the eternity of circles. Not even Virgil protects like you do.

Beatrice,

Growing towards you is not an option. You’ve bounded yourself with brambles in your lonely castle. You’ve got all the growth you can handle.

Beatrice,

Not one not two not three times I’ve knocked on your door to hear you were a sleeping beauty. You said you were too busy waiting for your prince to open the door to let me in so I walked straight downwards because hey, at least its warm down here.

Beatrice,

Not once not twice but three times you’ve knocked on my church door but you never laid down your 99 theses. You just dashed down a line and hoped it’d be enough to snare me. But one idea isn’t a theology. But one attraction shouldn’t break bonds of monogamy. But one night doesn’t build a real relationship with me so hell no down I go to grow towards god and away from your brambles.

Beatrice,

What am I to you? A chore after Virgil’s shift is done, a temporary traveler to the truth, a mortal that needs handholding to reach Paradiso? Because I love hands and I love holding and hey, with you I’m nowhere short of paradise. But if that’s true, rip the scales from my eyes. If that’s true, tell me no more words fine because hey, I may wander but I’m not a wanderer. I may observe but I’m not just an observer. I may be a stranger but I don’t want to be strange to you so

             Beatrice!

Set a torch to your brambles. Set a brush to your tangles. Wipe the dust out your eyes and write me a letter of theological revolution to nail on my door.

Do that and I will rocket past Charon. Do that and I will thumb my nose to Mammon. Do that and I’ll grin at Lucifer as I bound away because evil will have no hold on me.

Until then I’ll be here growing towards God.

Part 3 in a series

Categories
Misc

Red River

You are delight and downturn.

You are the rush of dove feathers, startled, every time I see you near.

When I write you a letter you give me a papercut. A papercut that bleeds just a drop every hour you don’t write back. There’s a red river by my writingdesk.

You are desire and distance.

You’ve awoken a lion in me. It has been asleep lazying about on the savannah because no lionness could rouse him from slumber. Now suddenly even chasing antelope doesn’t seem so pointless.

You are distance and desire.

There are two chasms between us that one of us must cross. I can lay down the planks, urge you to swiftly take those two steps across the canyon. I can turn them into mighty bridges decked with roses. But still you must cross.

For you, I am tranquil in a new way. With you, I can see the stars flame out. Next to you, a month seems like a day. Thinking of you, I am wisdom and peace bound up in certainty and justice because lady, you’re worth dreaming about.

But there’s a red river by my writingdesk.

I also wrote this. Read it as if it was a spoken word piece. Part 2 in a series

Categories
Misc

Strata

Oh, I just realized I forgot to mention —

A little while ago Zack and I were honored to make a webcast for O’Reilly building off our well-regarded Strata talk. 

Here it is! 60 minutes of streaming goodness.

Categories
Misc Personal

Stallman Was Right: Ello, Facebook, and Freedom.

It’s ello time. And now that we’re in day 2 of ello-mania, some smart articles are popping up.

My buddy Cayden has the so-far canonical synthesis of everything written so far, and he’s definitely on the right track in his analysis of ello:

 With Ello positioned as the anti-Facebook, a door closes. Our imaginations are bound to the platform choices we’ve been presented with. We are locked into a politics of scarcity that is very unfamiliar to me on the internet. As I was remarking to a friend yesterday, the thing I’ve always loved about the internet was its anarchistic abundance, its sense of possibility. The thing that disturbs me the most deeply about positioning Ello versus Facebook is the way that abundance is foreclosed on.

This is all, obviously, striking a chord with me. And the whole facebook-exodus-in-a-teapot (I doubt many think this will lead to a real break on anyone’s part) raises the question: “Why not go back to the good old days of actual blogging?”

I sketched out a few ideas in my comment on the site, which I’m reproducing here:

Cayden, I think you’re on the right track on a lot of what you say. I especially like how you tied together the critique on funding (which should get a LOT more attention!), design, and privacy all together.

Your closing thought is also strong — wish you had taken a few more extra steps though! I wonder where you would have ended up.

As I said over at Max’s, this whole set of facts is further confirmation of an evergreen saying: “Stallman was right”.

As organizers, we are trained to think about power. When talking about the economy, when talking about interpersonal relationships, reading the news (“who benefits from this coming to light *now*?”), even when talking about literature or pop culture. That’s the mark of a good organizer — being able to see deeper. Yet when it comes to the ever-increasing part of our lives that is mediated through screens and processors, all too often we are faced with people’s tendency to shut down that part of their brain.

We know what the good solution to facebook would be — owning our own data. Writing comments directly on a blog post instead of on the facebook share linking to it. Placing our lives and content on servers and programs (wordpress, media goblin, rails, jekyll, etc) that we control. Shrinking the sphere of social media to sharing links to value instead of hosting value itself.

At least, that’s part of the solution. And something we can actually do now, without assuming a legion of technical help.

We do have the tools to break free. At least partially. Here’s hoping that Future Me spends more time over here, blogging in the independent democracy of Sahar’s Server, rather than over there, in the Facebook Fiefdom.

Categories
Left

Eric Holder is evil and complicit in evil

The New York Times reports that Eric Holder is going to resign:

President Obama’s announcement on Thursday that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. would leave the administration sets up an election-season scramble for a replacement to carry on Mr. Holder’s civil rights crusade, wage rhetorical combat with Congress and manage the legal complexities of a presidency increasingly drawn into war with terrorists.

The new paragraphs of the article talk about how Republicans don’t like him for various imagined scandals, the political ramifications, and how Obama is weighing options of how to replace Eric Holder.

In fact, it’s not until almost the end of the (longish) article that the Times remembers to mention that Eric Holder made a choice not to prosecute the banksters that flagrantly violated laws, ethics, and contracts and caused the Great Recession. Or that Eric Holder oversaw an absolutely inexcusable reign of terror against whistleblowers. Or that he’s the key legal approval of the vast regime of spying and assassination of American citizens. (And non-citizens!)

The article, which is now titled: “Eric Holder Resigns, Setting Up Fight Over Successor”, used to be called: “Attorney General Eric Holder, Prominent Liberal Voice in Obama Administration, Is Resigning”.

Behold! Your “liberal” media.

Eric Holder is the guy who says: “Yes! It’s completely legal!” regarding:

  • Massive NSA spying
  • Patriot Act
  • Killing(!) American citizens without a trial
  • Everything that happened to Aaron Swartz, Jeremy Hammond, Chelsea Manning, etc
  • Massive, unethical, and illegal gifts to banks within the larger terrible policy of bailouts
  • “Too big to jail”

Eric Holder decided not to prosecute banksters for clear, flagrant, and huge violations of the law. To this day people walk around saying “the funny thing about the financial crisis is that it all happened legally.” This is an awful lie. He is the reason there are no bankers in jail.

Eric Holder is a bad man.

I’m sad to see people on the left defend him. And its things like this — the shoddy thinking by the so-called liberal NYT and the so-called liberal Eric Holder being terrible — that lead to people my age saying “if that’s liberalism, I want nothing to do with it!” Then they go off to become anarchists or socialists.

More power to them.

Categories
Misc

Public art > ads

Thank you Seattle! I had a great time!

Categories
Misc

Meeting friends is somehow easier when traveling

(Written on July 10)

One day, I was walking for about an hour through the streets of Wallingford, Seattle. Then I reached the Gasworks park – one of the most interesting spots I found yet. People my age were hanging out all over – playing frisbee, volleyball, or drums. Sitting and watching the sunset. Or, in one case, having a picnic.

I spent an hour retreated to the shade, catching up with my friend Sarah. I tell you – those inline microphone/headphones are amazing. So much more comfortable than holding up a phone to your ear. Thanks to them, I spent quite a lot of time just walking down streets and chatting with old friends.

An hour later, though, the sun had set some more, and I could venture forward into the open ground. These fine people were having a picnic. Now, I noticed that I was scared of approaching them – they looked so happy! But defeating shyness is important so off I went “Hi! I don’t know anyone here. Can I join you?”

And so I did. These were a bunch of cool kids who all did an MA program that doubled as summer nature camp.

It’s funny – these were quality people I’d’ve enjoyed being real friends with if I stayed in Seattle. But if I actually lived there, I doubt I’d would have found them. Nor could I find these people through meetup, or other online “answers” to the “I’m lonely” problem.

Maybe having adventures like this takes a certain mindset. It’s easy enough when traveling – but takes effort when sedentary.

Categories
Misc

Anarchist spaces and hackerspaces

(July 9, 2014)

After visiting Black Coffee, I strolled down the street to visit the long-standing “Left Bank Books”. Thanks to a peculiar form of rent control, it was an oasis of bookish calm surrounded by the high-rent tourist destination of the Pike Street Market.

Of course, parts of the market weren’t bad.

Like this sign:

Or this chalk-graffiti pig:

Seattle has its own AT-AT style cranes too:

But eventually I had to travel back east to hang out at a(nother) feminist makerspace – the Seattle Attic.

I took to it from the start. Mercedes Lackey is awesome!

A look into the space:

Room 1:

Room 2:

The people here were, with a few exceptions, friendly and forthcoming. They were the sort people I hung out with in late middle school / early high school – earnest. Into knitting and books. Confident in an offbeat way. I felt at home

After the Seattle Attic (which the great Sumana tipped me off to), I headed to another space in Seattle – more of a hackerspace than a makerspace.

This was a quite different space. More men, of course. Seems like everyone there had a connection to Microsoft. A guy was showing off a project he was working on for over a year – a way to use the Kinect API to mix and remix sound instantaneously through hand signals. He called it Holofunk Danceparty. It was awesome.

Two different models: Mercedes Lackey vs Holofunk. Both felt comfortable, in their own way. But neither represents me or my aspirations any more. I still haven’t found a space or community that I’m truly at ease with. Onwards to more searching!

Categories
Misc

The hip anarchist cafe in Seattle is called “Black Coffee”

It’s pretty baller!

On my second day in Seattle, a friend of mine mentioned “Black Coffee Coop”, so I looked it up. Another anarchist cafe! Cool. I went and checked it out.

The outside has a cool little stand, and also chalkings like this:

You know how its hard to tell insurrectionary anarchists apart from the houseless sometimes? A dozen people like that were milling outside. The outside also had a great wall of fliers.

The inside is even cooler, but no one is allowed to be photographed inside. Bookshelves, tons of couches and outlets, an upstairs space. It’s a bustling cafe in the heart of town. Seems like business is going well, though I was talking to a worker-owner there and he admitted that he payed himself almost nothing in order to keep the place running.

You might remember the other color-themed anarchist cafe in the pacific NW – red and black cafe. Turns out that R&B gave Black Coffee a ton of advice when they started out. Cool!

(I’m told there is a big banner from a Rochester group (Metro Justice? Red and Black?) hanging prominently there. I didn’t see it, though I wasn’t looking too hard)

You might remember the other color-themed anarchist cafe in the pacific NW – red and black cafe. Turns out that R&B gave Black Coffee a ton of advice when they started out. Cool!

Even the bathroom was rad.

Categories
Misc

A strange conversation

I spent my first full day in Seattle mostly in front of a laptop. Yeah, I know. :-/

Went to a tea house, got a really fancy setup – teapot, milk, cup, special tea strainer, tea cozy, pot of hot water. I wrote about 15 blog posts, I talked to a friend in CT for her birthday, tried to figure out what to do next. 

I was there all day. So I moved around to let people sit in my seat, said hello to strangers, met someone who writes for ReadWriteWeb. You know how I do.

THEN. A woman walks up to me – “Hey! I noticed how you were making friends and being helpful all day. I wanted to introduce myself”.

We ended up talking for an hour. About life. About boyfriends and commitment. How men in the US (in her experience) are looking for hookups instead of relationships. Her new-agey life coach business.

We ended up talking about me. How I tend to lead with the heart, and then get burned by it. Her advice was a bit hard for me to understand. As far as I can tell – “Let the haters hate. Lead from the heart and be genuine. But also make sure you trust someone before doing so.”

So which is it?

In talking to me, I suspect she was looking for long-term boyfriend material, so when it was clear that I’m not that for her (for one thing, I don’t live in Seattle), she moved on.

Weird conversation. Seattle is quirky!