# (1) 12 May 2013, 09:49AM: Tips for New Summer Interns:
Three tips to help new Google Summer of Code applicants and interns, some of which all remote workers could stand to remember:
Cogito, Ergo Sumana
Sumana Harihareswara's journal
Sumana Harihareswara's journal
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# (1) 12 May 2013, 09:49AM: Tips for New Summer Interns:
Three tips to help new Google Summer of Code applicants and interns, some of which all remote workers could stand to remember:
Filed under: WorkWork:Wikimedia
# (0) 12 May 2013, 08:54AM: Sorry!: I am sorry, Lakshmi Singh! I am one of those people of South Asian heritage who criticized your pronunciation of your name. I was wrong and I'm sorry. # (3) 05 May 2013, 09:04PM: A Really Long-Winded Way of Saying That Maybe I Love Techno Now:
That thought about music, love and transformation made me think of how strange and world-changing it is to find a new friend or author or musician or project or workplace and suddenly click.
They taught me in my management classes that thriving is a function of a person and their environment. That helped me to see things unemotionally. "Bad fit" really does exist.
Every collaboration will be particular, like all power and influence is particular (financial, emotional, cultural, military). You'll get leaks and emergent behavior, and sometimes you can funnel energy, but sometimes it refuses to be fungible. It withers and dies, misdirected, confused. Sometimes that joule, that heat is irrevocably specific.[0] It makes you think about lasers and firehoses, flamethrowers and kindling, and limited burns at the urban-wildlife interface, and how high the specific heat of water is, and how water composes most of our bodies, and the compressed energy inside anyone needs just the right conditions to shine.
Do you remember stoichiometry?
That was the bit from chemistry about making sure that both sides of the equation matched, if I remember Mr. Marson's class right. (I wish I still had that extra credit project, where I went through the chemistry books for names and phrases and just made up like thirty or a hundred puns from scratch and wrote them on posterboard.) If you have two oxygens, and then three more, on the left, you'll end up with five, in some configuration, on the right.
Stoichiometry is tautology. There must be a metric zillion idioms, spanning every human time and place, reducing to the identity property plus the forward direction of time. "If you stand in the rain, you'll get wet." "A hungry cat will look for food." They sound like something you'd program into Cyc. We have sayings like "recipe for disaster" and "prescription for catastrophe," but the chemical equation suits some surprises best as a metaphor, because love is chemistry[1], and because sometimes you are an absent-minded would-be scientist, putting two and two and two together and getting surprised when you end up with six and your hair on fire.[2]
If I stop by a restaurant often enough, I'll be a regular. If I work with people on something we care about, those people will become real to me and I'll find myself a member of a new tribe. If I self-medicate my mood with a particular album and incorporate it into the rhythm of my day, how is that not love? Why fight it?
I'm taking stock of my supply cabinets and my heat sources. The summer student's gotten the hang of safety procedures and requisitions and the rhythm of notes and meetings and R and late-night discoveries. I'm really just getting used to the idea that there's always going to be this lab here, that there's always R&D going on in my heart, no matter how polished the products and services I make a habit of offering to the public. That I can't stop growing and learning and changing and experimenting and compounding, that every once in a while I will run across something "new" whose existence was -- I always realize belatedly -- prefigured in the periodic table.
[0] I'm thinking of freshman year at Cal, Comparative Politics, learning about patron-client dyads, thick vs. thin relationships, the innovation that is bureaucracy, the impulse to rational-legalism, how attractive those clear roles seem and how quickly they blur in practice, how healthy humans resist not treating others as full complete people to love and hate and screw.
[1] The saying goes: lust is biology, love is chemistry, sex is physics. My take: I've always asked "what is love?" not as a hair-stroking poet by the river, but as a frantic sysadmin space-barring through man pages.
[2] But we are analog; we can't spec out our futures pixel-perfect. # (4) 05 May 2013, 08:25PM: Music I Listen To A Lot:
And Rob said, "You're an everything person, you just don't know it yet."
I felt like an arrow of enlightenment had hit me right between the eyes.
I get anxious over the betrayal inherent in adaptation. To instead conceive of growth as a radical hospitality towards and nurturing of previously unvoiced parts of myself -- what a revolution.
I like movies and TV shows, I like books and stories and blogs, I love stand-up and sketch comedy, but music and travel are what I find numinous, transformative. They crack open new Sumananess that blinks in the light, unaccustomed.
# 26 Apr 2013, 06:06PM: "Thoughtcrime Experiments", Four Years On:
Four years ago today, Leonard and I released Thoughtcrime Experiments, an anthology of original speculative fiction and art. It's still an enjoyable collection to read, so check it out. The authors and artists continue to publish and thrive, and I get to call them mine, but not in a creepy way! With Ken Liu especially it's thrilling that I got to play a part in the restarting of a career that's so spectacularly taken off. And how it delights me that Mary Anne Mohanraj has written a collection in the world of "Jump Space"!
I still stand by my conclusion from a few months after the initial release: to me, turning nonreaders into occasional sci-fi readers, and occasional readers into rabid readers, is a more interesting unsolved problem than curating and editing unpublished art and turning it into published art. I applaud K. Tempest Bradford's regular short fiction recommendations, for instance. But I'm superglad for the editors who love editing! Yay for writers, readers, editors, and marketers! And I understand making stuff better because I did it. You can do it too. # (1) 26 Apr 2013, 08:37AM: Breakfast Conversation:
"You can look up [shop name] to get the address. They have a map and everything." And:
"Man, Mountain Goats would be just the worst songs to put into commercials. But in your arms, in your arms / I buy vegan shoes..... Like, remember when Devo did those ads where they turned 'Whip It' into 'Swiff It'"? I am listening to The Sunset Tree over and over because I just listened to a great interview with John Darnielle, Mountain Goats frontman. Filed under: Apartment LifeComedy
# 25 Apr 2013, 10:49PM: Yep:
"Upwards of 12 people in a newsroom of 1,000 sometimes find their boss difficult to work with." "Brusque" vs. "does not like to waste time." "Can you keep being awesome & getting great results but also just be softer & nicer about everything?"
"Polite, nice, kind, and good are all different alignments." # 24 Apr 2013, 12:24PM: The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo: "I had tea with the intolerable aunt today," begins Zen Cho's short and fast-moving The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo. (Guardian review.) It is so great. You can read it for free online, and then - even if you don't much like speculative fiction - you will understand why scifi/fantasy fans have been burbling about Zen Cho for the last few years. After you read it, check out the afterword and comments. Filed under: Reading
# (2) 22 Apr 2013, 08:39PM: Naming Opportunities:
"Additional naming opportunities within the Museum are also available."
Things to name include:
Filed under: Comedy
# 20 Apr 2013, 08:16AM: The General: Oh my goodness, Buster Keaton's The General is AMAZING. Aside from being a little pro-Confederacy. Seriously, there is no reason this movie has to be about someone fighting for the racist traitors -- you could just switch sides and it would make just as much sense. Anyway, it has mindblowing stunts, jokes that stand up, and a protagonist who (unlike Chaplin's Tramp) is a hard-working competent guy. It makes me so happy to remember the look on his face the moment after something wacky happens -- sort of a scientist's resignation. Recommended. # 17 Apr 2013, 07:32AM: Early Morning Soundscape:
Rain on the air conditioning unit.
The susurration of pills inside vials -- the few slow clicks of big gel capsules versus the quiet tumble of small solid tabs.
Birdsong, far away.
The laptop fan, and the rhythms of my fingers tapping at the keyboard.
My joints cracking as I roll my neck in a tight circle.
Inhaling, exhaling, then yawning as I turn to work. Filed under: Apartment Life
# 16 Apr 2013, 10:51PM: Speak 'n' Spell:
A sign that my brother-in-law is truly part of the family: he can easily spell "Harihareswara" on the phone to customer service representatives.
Aparna Nancherla (@aparnapkin): "Success is people saying your name right".
My last name isn't the easiest handle for others to grasp (as discussed previously on Cogito, Ergo Sumana). But my sister Nandini is very much on her way towards getting movers, shakers, and journalists to learn how to say our name. She recently co-presented "the implications of survey results from 11 African nations that shed light on payment and money transfer behavior in African households" (video).
She's turned her MBA and international affairs expertise towards solving the new last mile problem. I am a sucker for tales of local expertise and whiz-bang technology joining forces, especially in reducing the costs of information transfer or easing financial transactions (Indian example, Russian example). And she's become one of those experts and innovators! Both of us are into pretty rockin', worldchanging fields, and we've actually made it to the points in our careers where we have interesting conversations about work (in between sharing travel plans, going over our mom's health, and complaining about Aaron Sorkin's sudden inability to write interesting women).
(Side note: I am not on Facebook, but every two years or so I check on a few of my high school acquaintances -- specifically on what they've accomplished in their careers. We've gotten to the point where some of them are high school principals, or HIV policy experts, or sociology researchers. Always a bit of a brainbend. Of course, then there are the ones for whom the most recent mention Bing can find is an arrest record.)
Anyway. They got over Deukmejian, they'll deal with Harihareswara. # 14 Apr 2013, 10:32AM: Link Roundup:
Ex Urbe's wonderful series on Machiavelli.
Lore Sjöberg on digital music.
"Concerning the nature of a woman of computer science".
Wikimedia technical volunteer outreach problems, diagrammed.
Mako is speaking at the Students for Free Culture (Conference FCX2013) in NYC next weekend. # 06 Apr 2013, 11:19AM: Griping:
I get sick more often than I'd like. Part of this is because of travel, no doubt -- the stress of travel and my inevitable sleep deprivation lower my immune system's defenses, and new exciting people pass me germs, thus achieving their marketing departments' dreams of virality. But I think some of it is stress and lack of exercise. I feel overwhelmed a lot, and the defensive reaction is to huddle on my couch with my laptop and dither. This is not helpful. Also, I live where I have to do a bunch of planning to get anywhere really nature-y, which makes it harder. And I travel often enough that I don't want to sign up for a regular group activity and then miss it a lot and burden my groupmates.
I want to come to solutions eventually but right now I just want to sulk a bit. Filed under: Apartment Life
# (1) 05 Apr 2013, 02:05PM: Feed:
Last night I informed Leonard that there exists a TV show called "Say Yes To The Dress." He conceived of a reality/game show where mothers from various stereotypically-moms-overfeed-guests-and-children cultures make food and try to feed each other's children, and whoever gets the kids to eat the most wins. So, an Indian mom feeds Jewish kids, the Jewish mom feeds Italian kids, etc., etc. "Say Yes To The Food" was his original title but I reminded him that reality shows these days need "Wars" in the title (e.g., "Storage Wars"). This to him explained the success of The History Channel and its hit show "War Wars."
Infomania told me about "The Deadliest Warrior" -- surely "Deadliest War" could get greenlit? The research would be reasonably easy. # (3) 31 Mar 2013, 10:58PM: The Kind Of Feminist I Am:
I don't use makeup. I put lotion on my skin and balm on my lips if they feel uncomfortably dry, if you want to call that cosmetic. If someone wants to film me then they'll have to find some powders or whatever that suit my skin tone, because I don't have any. I don't shave my legs. I don't own "heels." I think a few of my shoes may have, like, a quarter-inch rise in the heel compared to the toe. I usually keep my hair so short that combs barely affect anything; if bangs start existing, an old headband keeps them out of my eyes. A barber shears my head every few months.
Also: I'm still not on Facebook. That's right, I'm an online community manager, have been for two years, and I can get along fine without Facebook. I don't eat red meat, and rarely have sustainable fish or organic free-range poultry. "Vegetarian" is basically right. I don't imbibe massmedia about the visual appearance of famous people. I didn't watch most of the Matrix or Lord of the Rings movies, and I don't read TechCrunch or Gawker or that ycombinator news site.
I post this as part of the project to normalize diversity. If you think "everyone" is on Facebook, well, no, because I'm not. If you think every woman shaves her legs, no, I don't. I am a successful person who has given influential speeches and mentored others, and I don't have to do any of these things, so you don't either. It's all of a piece.
Caitlin Moran recently wrote a very good feminist book, How To Be a Woman. She discusses some sexist expectations (that women should wear uncomfortable shoes and epilate ourselves all over and so on). It's unpaid labor and it's nonsense and I say to hell with it. Some sexist expectations still get in my way. For instance, men interrupt me more often than they interrupt other men. And if I run a meeting efficiently, I'm less likely (compared to a man) to get thought of as a "strong leader," and more likely to get thought of as a "bitch." It's annoying enough to have to spend any thought on avoiding that crap, so I skip all the other, more optional crap as much as possible.
It saves big chunks of time and money to omit "oh but everyone does it" junk. It's pretty easy for me to just go with my own inertia -- I never started wearing makeup, wearing pointy heels, or using Facebook, or smoking pot. I tried out leg-shaving and longish hair and earring-wearing and tens-of-thousands-of-people conferences, and they just don't deliver ROI for me, so I stopped.
I know not everyone can just say "screw it" and walk away from this crap with no consequences. Intersectionality exists. Thank all goodness that I can dismiss as much of the crap as I can.
Mobility's one part of that privilege. I move around a lot and have had a bunch of jobs, and sometimes that's annoying, but a cool thing about it is that I'm not as stuck with one small consistent group of authority figures who might be jerks about my choices or reinventions. I can be blithe about other people disapproving of my choices, because I have a great job, certifications of a good education, a sensible spouse, a lucrative career, reasonably good health, and various convenient privileges. It also helps to be a bit socially oblivious, and specifically to have a tough time making out soft voices in crowds; if anyone's gossiping about me in whispers, I won't hear it! It's great!
So this is one reason why I'm in favor of good government-sponsored education and healthcare that levels the playing field for everyone, and reproductive rights, and easy border-crossings, and public transit. I love mobility. I love the means by which people can get away from their old selves and the people who thought they knew them. I love the fact that I get to choose whether I care about my high school classmates. (Make your own Facebook-related joke here!)
Exit, voice, and loyalty. Forking. For adults, the most fundamental freedom is the freedom to leave, to vote with your feet.
But right near that is the freedom to walk around in public without having to slather paint or a smile on your face. If you want to, cool! Performing femininity, like playing the guitar, ought to be a choice.
Crossposted to Geek Feminism where I got an earful of critique you may want to read. # 31 Mar 2013, 10:30PM: Perspective Catharsis:
When I was visiting my friends Zack and Pam we watched the "Accession" episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and two bits moved me: a poet discovering that his work is still read, two hundred years later, and a boss telling his employee that no, she's wrong, it will be hard to replace her. So I'm still insecure and need validation that my work is and will be appreciated by others -- got it!
Today I rewatched "Emissary" and read an Onion piece about coping with the foreknowledge of death and loss (along with random other comfort TV while trying to get over this consarnèd cold).
Isn't it just befuddling how absolutely disconnected one's external and internal situations can be? In the past several days I gave a good talk, I had fun and edifying conversations, I had a wonderful visit with Pam and Zack, I found out that our anthology a few years back practically launched a prominent speculative fiction author's career when he'd given up hope, and friends of mine at Strange Horizons got nominated for a Hugo, and so on and so on -- I have lovely good things in my life. But then little things get me down, especially little things that I'd feel undiplomatic or churlish or embarrassed to complain about, and I lose my resilience.
I hate being sick. # (3) 31 Mar 2013, 09:17AM: Open Tech New York City:
Yesterday I delivered a reasonably well-received talk at Open Tech NYC in which I introduced the crowd to their New York open tech neighbors. That is, I explained the four freedoms that define what make software truly free and open, and I gave examples of NYC people and institutions who make or use open culture and open knowledge, open data, open source software, open formats and open hardware.
Here are a bunch of links!
I mentioned consumers and users of open source among our neighbors. Drupal and WordPress are pretty useful to consulting shops like Behavior. Google makes some open source software but also uses a bunch; for instance, their servers run on a slight variant of Ubuntu Linux. And an art installation in the New York Times lobby uses the Beautiful Soup screen-scraping library that my spouse wrote.
I hope the people listening understood that I was just offering a sample of the organizations in the five boroughs that work on or use open stuff! I opened and ended my speech with some thoughts about love and sharing (and how being a free software person is like or unlike being a vegan), which I reused from "A Slightly Disjointed (Due To A Five-Day Cold) Musing On Open Source, Fear, Motivation, And Witnessing", where I discuss my experience with the open source GNOME desktop environment.
During the coffee breaks and lunch, I also spread the word about Outreach Program for Women and Google Summer of Code internships available this summer; application deadlines are around May 1st.
Thanks to the sponsors and organizers of Open Tech NYC 2013. I enjoyed it despite getting over a cold, and appreciated the chance to learn from and chat with a variety of people interested in open stuff. Filed under: WorkWork:Wikimedia
# 24 Mar 2013, 08:26AM: In Pittsburgh This Week: I can't recall ever visiting Pittsburgh before. I'll be there Monday through Wednesday to visit a friend; if you are there and would like to grab a beverage, let me know! # 20 Mar 2013, 11:00AM: Blessings:
I am irritable today because of a bunch of little things so it's a good time to remember good things.
Beautiful photographs, like this thoughtful, funny shot of a Bollywood movie set in 1948, and this wacky, mathematical kiss.
The efforts of Hacker School to be friendly and nurturing across various axes of diversity.
It's a sunny day outside.
The Debian Project Leader is in town!
Dinners with Leonard, brown rice, dark green vegetables, and Columbo.
Encouraging new people and helping them see what they can do.
The music that helps me get to sleep: Robyn Miller's soundtrack to Riven, Zoe Keating, Ray Lynch.
Jasmine green tea. # 14 Mar 2013, 07:00PM: Off:
I am trying to take today off.
I spent two weeks in California, working all day and then often doing work-related socializing in the evenings, and came back on Saturday morning, after which I did a rather good impression of a cryogenically preserved extropian until Monday, when I got back to work(ing from home).
This morning I did a tiny bit of email for work until my partner reminded me that today is supposed to be your day off, and then read some scifi and had a late breakfast with my partner, and chatted with a stranger at the restaurant, then came home, had a work call that I'd forgotten to reschedule out of my day off, and did some urgent work-related communication. Then I read a bit and had a badly timed nap that left me groggy, then woke up in time for a volunteering-related call, which has just finished.
I know what real time off is like. It's waking up in a tiny town in England and walking several miles east to the next town on the Coast-to-Coast, without digital connectivity. It restores me. Today I did not succeed in getting that. If I had it to do over again, I think I would have taken Leonard's advice and left the house to read in a park instead of taking a nap. That would have been more restorative.
I tried to take today off. Turns out that's a harder goal to take on than I'd anticipated. # 16 Feb 2013, 07:01PM: Navel-gazing:
There are so many things I ought to be doing, and instead I spent several hours today editing Wikipedia and Wikivoyage, reviewing new articles, and uploading photos or improving captions on Wikimedia Commons.
It makes me think of that panel I was on, a million years ago, about guilty pleasures, back when I had the spare energy to go to non-work conferences. One thing I wish I'd thought of to say then: If it weren't possible to run away from "obligations" then they wouldn't be obligations, the kinds of responsibilities we encourage with norms and shaming and praise. They'd be facts like mitosis. The discourse around guilty pleasures is part of how we manage the pressure to fulfill our responsibilities to each other, a loophole that helps us avoid talking about unfair burdens.
You've heard that frontier thesis, that it's an important release valve to be able to go someplace no one knows you so you can reinvent yourself, the idea that right now is a significant historical aberration because your old identity will follow you wherever you go unless you engage in a coverup, that the defaults have flipped. The productivity frontier is somewhere in this danger zone as well, and I can see the temptation to Taylorize myself and those around me, and perhaps my workaholic ethic is so strong that even my guilty pleasure is reducing New Pages Feed backlog. # (1) 09 Feb 2013, 02:07PM: Recent Books:
I know I'm missing some, but here are some books I've read in the last few months.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. SO GOOD. READ THIS. Ta-Nehisi Coates agrees with me. Want to understand the US in the twentieth century? Want to think in real terms about exit, voice, and loyalty? Read Wilkerson's narrative history of black people who decided to stop putting up with Jim Crow and escaped from the US South (sometimes in the face of local sheriffs ripping up train tickets). Riveting, thought-provoking, and disquieting in the best way. My only nit to pick: I think if her editor had cut repetitions of things she's already told the reader, she coulda cut about 15 of the 500+ pages. But that's really minor, and as a scifi reader I'm accustomed to absorbing world-building at perhaps a higher clip than expected.
By the way, "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty" is a trilemma based on the work of social scientist Albert Hirschmann. I've never read the book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty but I basically think of it this way: if you're in a situation you don't like, you have 3 choices:
But if one or two of those avenues is blocked off, because it's unsafe for you to speak up and you're prevented from leaving, then the only way you can survive is "loyalty," even if that means twisting or losing yourself entirely and maybe even hurting other people. And some people don't survive, because the situation is so overconstrained and unlivable that it obliterates them.
(The middle option, "voice," is scary to the people in charge of the situation you don't like. They might say "love it or leave it" and gloss over the lever.)
OK, now a bunch of other books that are less I will stand over you and press this into your hands rockin'.
Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land by John Crowley. It took me a while to get into this (I just don't think the fake novel by Byron is that interesting) but the middle was pretty interesting. And of course it's a nod-worthy thing to have made, given the constraints of the form.
I reread some Asimov, Caves of Steel and Naked Sun and some Tales from the Black Widowers. I am officially no longer twelve and non-Susan-Calvin Asimov fiction may not work for me anymore as comfort reading. The ideas don't actually make sense and I get annoyed at the prejudice. But I suppose I should give him a chance to surprise me in stories of his I haven't already read.
"The Ancestors" by Brandon Massey, Tananarive Due, and L.A. Banks. I didn't realize when I got this that it's really a horror anthology, but I'm glad I read it, especially for Due's "Ghost Summer" which is, among other things, a story of the Great Migration. The Massey tale is also a reasonably good read, but the Banks was inexplicably sexist, so you can just skip that.
Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. It's as good as everyone says it is -- funny, eye-opening, heartbreaking, sweet. You may not have heard that there are fun cartoons in it. There are!
Gettysburg: The Graphic Novel by C. M. Butzer. I am not the target audience for this; maybe it's for preteens who are on the verge of becoming history buffs? It's pretty short.
Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce. I kind of wish I had read the Lioness Quartet when I was a teen and then read the Protector of the Small Quartet (the sequel) in my twenties. Instead, while I was working at Cody's Books, I devoured the Protector of the Small Quartet and liked it a lot ("I certainly wasn't expecting the phrase 'refugee camp,' I'll tell you that."), and now find the earlier work a little facile. But Alanna: The First Adventure is still fun and I'll still finish the quartet when I get around to it.
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I adored Fitzgerald when I was fifteen, and I still love The Great Gatsby and some of his short stories are still awesome, but the racism and sexism in Tender is the Night are really offputting. There's no Nick Carraway viewpoint character who partakes less in the rich-people-acting-like-dunderheaded-jerks parade, so I was basically spending a few hundred pages thinking "all these people should get real jobs." But every once in a while Fitzgerald describes a particular emotional reaction particularly well, or articulates a gorgeous experience such that I can actually empathize with people who like to party, and that keeps me reading.
Caitlin Moran's How to Be a Woman memoir/polemic is fantastic, if a teensy bit on the glib side. But feminism (as presented to non-feminists) sometimes needs a dose of glib! I especially loved the chapters about the choice of whether to have children. For a taste of her style, see the book trailer. Thanks to Camille for the recommendation!
Ungifted by Gordon Korman. A perfectly reasonable Korman entry; not as poignant as Pop, not as incisive about status play as The Twinkie Squad, not as Avi-esque interrogation of character as No More Dead Dogs, but more compelling than some of his recent elementary-school stuff. In Ungiftted and Schooled we're seeing a Korman trend I believe he started with Don't Care High (and arguably in Jake, Reinvented, his take on The Great Gatsby): slyly questioning standardized school structures (not just the cliques students form, but the buckets teachers, administrators, and politicians put them in). You see some of this in The Twinkie Squad as well. How do homeschoolers, remedial students, mediocre football players, and other people outside the spotlight critique the places they land? I wish the kids from Son of Interflux's wacky arts academy could hang out with the revolutionary high schoolers of Don't Care High for an afternoon and swap tales, and I think the kids of Ungifted, Schooled, The Twinkie Squad, and Jake, Reinvented might enjoy a similar meetup. And why don't I throw Aaron Swartz in there as well as long as I'm imagining.
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, recommended by my boss. Thanks, Rob. It's great! He basically takes one of the only inspiring approaches you can take in a Holocaust memoir: he realized that no matter what anyone else does to you, you always have some control of how you react in return, even if it's just how you feel about it. From nearly anyone else this would be glurge, but he has the cred to say it both descriptively and prescriptively, and has the harrowing details to back it up. When I think about this and about the idea of exit, voice, and loyalty, I see that Frankl's approach provides some more nuanced options. You can exit mentally by changing the focus of your consciousness; and you can pray or meditate, to exercise a kind of voice without endangering yourself.
The Man Who Wasn't There by Pat Barker. I didn't like this as much as I liked the Regeneration trilogy, partly because the interspersed fantasy life "screenplay" just wasn't my cup of tea -- too disorienting. And the nearly relentlessly depressing plot got me down. But I can't help but admire the closely observed details of lower-class English life, and I liked the boy's conversation with the spiritualist about her work.
The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It took a while for me to get used to Coates's lyricisim, but he achieves the alchemy of drawing the reader into his childhood lingo without ever providing anything as blunt as a glossary. If you like his blogging, go ahead and pick this up to better understand where he came from. I see Baratunde Thurston loved the same quote I loved.
Ha'Penny by Jo Walton is creepy, suspenseful and good, just as Farthing was before it and just as I expect Half a Crown to be after. I liked that we saw the main character's complicated relationship with her many sisters; I don't often see that in speculative fiction. If you want a taste of this universe, try the short story "Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction", which asks: if the Small Change books show you what's up in England, what's germinating on the other side of the Atlantic?
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. I am actually glad I waited so long to read this, so I could think about stuff I've read (especially, recently, The Unwritten) and plug it in. I usually read comics for story and dialogue and have not much cared for particularly eye-catching art techniques, but now I'll have a framework to appreciate what I'm looking at!
I reread bits of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird (soothing), Charles Stross's Glasshouse (popcorn), and most extensively, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hochschild. That last one, Hochschild specifically wrote to remind us that activists really can achieve what seems impossible. We've done it before and we will do it again. There will be setbacks and challenges and half-steps and repetitions over and over. I think about Aaron every day; something brings it up, whether it's The Muppet Movie or Thomas Clarkson or school reform or the importance of casual Wikipedia contribution or a song by The Police that I used to be able to sing along to but now I vividly notice the line about suicide. And books like Bury the Chains help me remember my context and reshoulder my pack and keep moving. Filed under: Reading
# 06 Feb 2013, 07:47PM: What Systems Administrators Do:
I hope you'll read two blog entries I just wrote, whether you consider yourself a "techie" or not. They're meant to explain why the recent Wikimedia data center migration was difficult and took a long time, and how our systems administration department has started being able to respond to problems faster, and prevent them. And I wrote them in the hope that non-programmers will be able to appreciate my colleagues' work.
From duct tape to puppets: How a new data center became an opportunity to do things right (using Puppet for configuration management).
How the Technical Operations team stops problems in their tracks (fixing crises and preventing them with Nagios, Graphite, & Ganglia for monitoring & profiling).
Sometimes non-sysadmins don't appreciate the work that sysadmins do, building and maintaining infrastructure so the rest of us can use websites without thinking about it. But it's important work and I hope these posts help Wikipedia and Wikimedia users recognize it. Filed under: WorkWork:Wikimedia
# 03 Feb 2013, 11:46PM: Roots:
As you saw if you follow me on Twitter or Identi.ca, I just finished watching Roots. It's phenomenal, of course, though it's disappointing that so much of it is fictionalized (for instance, the conscience-torn captain of a slave ship is fakeity-fake-fake).
When you're watching a variety of atrocities play out onscreen, your quirks and idiosyncrasies come out and you see what viscerally disturbs you. Evidently I absolutely detest:
On a lighter note, yes, there are moments in Roots when it would be entirely plausible for Kunta Kinte to say "I'll see ya next time!" or "You don't have to take my word for it!"
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