Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
December 31, 2025
December 3, 2019
2020 around the corner
In 2010 I posted an art-thought per day 365. Ten years later 2020 I'm thinking about doing this again.
https://twitter.com/Uva_Be/status/1201927260946612224
https://twitter.com/Uva_Be/status/1201927260946612224
March 4, 2018
Why am I posting this?
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| #drawfool #doodle for March 5, 2018. |
Some days less words are more. Bunnies don't talk much anyways.
The title explains my original intentions, I have reoccurring thoughts rattling around wearing groves in my brain, I hoped expulsion would expunge the stuff I am mostly powerless to do anything about, so I could be wise enough to focus on what I can get done.
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| #drawfool #doodle for March 4, 2018. |
The title explains my original intentions, I have reoccurring thoughts rattling around wearing groves in my brain, I hoped expulsion would expunge the stuff I am mostly powerless to do anything about, so I could be wise enough to focus on what I can get done.
Why not just write it down in my private 'tb' thought book journal? I believe that many people have the same thoughts as relates to how to make the world better.
Some of the more popular daydreams billions of people all wish for the same thing. Like for example clean air and water. The collective social digital consciousness on some topics is global.
My personal list is just one more voice, one more drop of text in the www ocean.
The action of writing this list is bringing to the surface both what I believe and my doubts. I believe, working together we, humanity can save the world. I doubt we can reduce suffering for all living things sharing our beautiful Earth if the human race doesn't collaborate and plan together. I believe this fear and sadness, observing life dying around us is the source of depression for most of the human race and also the reason why whales beach themselves. Therefore if I want to be happy I have to reduce suffering for all life surviving around me. I know I could just make art and write fiction. Entertain folks. But, while this would make some happiness the reduction of suffering is insufficient. Life is suffering, but escape is not the answer -- the answer is balance. Balance is constant work. So I work. I am posting expulsion of the fool, seeking mental balance. Expulsion of the food is a meditation and a work-in-progress. So, I continue.
Economists have been shouting numbers at anybody who will listen for over a century now, it hasn’t helped, we are bored by the numbers. The gist is -- money is broken. Increasing income inequality, economic indebtedness of most Nations with individuals holding more money than many countries entire fiscal budgets and GDPs combined, means that working people are broke and the extreme wealth of the oligarchy is so much money “they” can’t spend it.
The reason why I am interested in money at all is because -- money is the primary obstacle in the way of everyone working together to reduce suffering and save the world. TMI warning: I can’t do many of the ideas I dream about because I subsisted near zero in my 20s and then after college and the second home we put 20% down on in 2007 my family, like most of those struggling to stay afloat in the sinking middle-class, has been treading in debt as negative-thousandaires. Well over a hundred million families, over half of the US population (80% by some statistics) all in the same sinking boat. Debt slavery is not working. We can’t tread forever, how do we solve money?
In my daydreams where money is "no-problem", I imagine the global economic leveling we have been experiencing for a while now, spreading with digital communication and the internet since the 80s resulting in a multifaceted solution. Money-the-problem is a very ugly fractal when one attempts to chart it out. So I pull focus in on one knot, to break down that giant tangle of a tree chart, sector by sector.
1. Housing and buildings for small businesses (individual mortgages).
2. The arts, culture, and literature.
3. Postage, packages, and snail-mail.
4. Communication media.
5. Food.
6. Education.
7. Healthcare and medicine.
8. Transportation and shipping.
9. Industry and production for larger businesses.
10. And last Government (I break that one into three parts). A. Politics, B. the work of leadership and C. the military.
Note I didn’t add energy or fuel to the list because large electric power-plants and waste of energy pushing it long distances on ugly power-lines cutting up the air or spilling fuel to and from monster refineries spewing who knows what from blinking towers of smokestacks are all completely eliminated in this utopian daydream.
Daydream number 25 ‘Solve Money’ is divisible into more parts than I have ideas for. I will start at the top of my personal list.
Mortgages and earned equity as the middle-classes base for savings and retirement should never be liquidated by the gamblers in banking, Wall Street, and insurance. The wealthy should never kick people out of the life-protecting shelter of their home threatening their safety and happiness. Usurpation means taking someone's power or property by force. Primary residences claimed as home would not be allowed to be owned by anyone else. The building or land may be owned by the state or the county, but the home is private property. Home is the most vital ingredient of the American Dream serving as the foundation for upward social mobility. Regardless of the home being nomadic or inherited for generations, people will always need a space to survive. Reinventing home-as-a-right would have a stabilizing impact on all sectors of the economy.
To achieve this goal of a home as a right for everyone we have to invent a new kind of mortgage system isolated completely from all other types of banking. The despotism of the housing market's "burst-bubbles" would be leveled as a guard so that no one would be able to flip and gamble on investment housing or be a slumlord over rental properties. The wealthy would still be free to do whatever they want with vacation rentals, luxury condos or second homes etc…
Primary residences would be similar to a rent-to-own contract or a 100-year lease to protect small businesses. Every payment you are able to make counts towards saved equity. If you are unable to make a payment or damage your home it’s sort of like reverse equity, except because home is a right, not a privilege, the amount deducted can never go below zero. Meaning you own your home, you and your family never have to worry about being kicked out onto the street, you simply have zero equity.
On the plus side, every payment made is saved equity. This savings can be used to start a business, for a downpayment on a nicer home, for retirement etc… If you improve the value of your home it’s the same as buying a fixer-upper now. Your payments can be small while you invest in construction, you improve the quality of your family’s life by staying in your improved home or because your house gets a better selling price so you can afford a cross-country move for work or other life events like a birth in the family.
After the bailouts of over 700 billion to banks too-big-to-fail, who then turned around and made "profits" paying themselves ten of billions in bonuses for several years in a row, never refunding the losses to middle-class American's pensions, retirement savings and FDIC insured mortgages. To mitigate future loss to main-street caused by bailouts of the big banks, American's should not bank with these MultiNational Conglomerate Corporate Banks, instead, all primary residence holdings should be kept in small local and State-owned Credit Unions. Interest rates are only for construction loans and green home improvements and those loans have to be managed like mortgages now so that people don't borrow more than they can make payments for, but these loans should never balloon, with interest kept fixed as low as possible. Also making payments should result in interest jubilees on any loan longer than seven years. Historically the king would forgive all the debt, but in modern life, people move and change jobs so it would be more realistic to keep a record of all the interest paid, and then reduce the amount owed on the loan by the interest paid over time or if the loan is paid off then add this amount to the equity savings of the homeowner.
Home as a right, not an investment would be an economic paradigm shift that would reduce suffering by eliminating homelessness and positively change the quality of life for everyone we share the sidewalk with.
If you read the post above from yesterday, you may notice some old words stuck in the mix. This is because I had been searching for any possible basis for home-as-a-right, in the Bill of Rights/Amendments to the US Constitution. Home is protected from seizure and searches without just-cause and due process of the court of law, but home as a protected right for everyone is mentioned less than the pursuit of happiness or public safety. Trying to resolve the conflict of how deregulated banking adversely effects the housing market is disappointing and has resulted in more tangles and knots than segments I can extract from daydream 25, solve money.
Onwards to the next economic segment in my list to solve money. -- The arts, culture, and literature.
After the robots are installed to do menial labor I believe there is plenty of work only humans should do, in the arts. Many creative people would be happy to be excused from the workforce if their 'day-job' was doing what they love. For many artists, writers, dancers, musicians, actors etc.. regardless of the creative endeavor, the obstacle is the same - money.
I have an economic stimulus idea for social capital plus a bit-coin type fee-free currency.
Imagine every voting US citizen has a dollar a day of social currency to spend on the arts, culture, and literature. People "click" on any art or literature they "like" and vote with a digital-coin (like a tip-jar) in a comment box.
$365 dollars a day doesn't seem like much. It wouldn't fund the arts completely, but it would be a way to stimulate the economy. The arts make up about 2% of the US Gross National Product. Unemployment or under-employment in dead-end jobs is debated between 5 to 7% depending on the demographics of the region in question. Why not increase the arts to over 4% of the GNP? (Yes I know technically it's GDP, Gross Domestic Product, I so much prefer GNH Gross National Happiness, 😀 GNP is a compromise).
The voting age population of the US in 2016 was just over 250 million people. 250 million dollars per day times 365 = $91,250,000,000 ninety-one-billion-two-hundred-fifty-million dollars per year (plus an additional 250 million on leap years).
Okay, that's nothing to sneeze at, but divided into $100,000 yearly salaries that's only 912,500 people.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 6,680,000 million people are unemployed and 1.7 million people are marginally attached to the labor force.
All this digital money would be in a corporation owned by everyone in a completely transparent social capital pool. This is not money to spend but money to tip in comment boxes for artists, performers, crafts people and writers of all types (fiction, cookbooks, poetry, prose, journalist, comedy etc…).
The shares are digital-coins processed with a fee-free system to the artist's accounts where they accumulate. It's important that there is a limit to how much anyone can tip per month and also people can change their minds. If they vote or tip by accident or decide they don’t like something a couple days later they can move their vote or tip to another account for 30 days after the original tip comment was placed.
I woke up today the manic downswing that caused me to delete my first attempt to share this daydream, yelling at me. "There are so many ways this idea can go horribly wrong!"
Negative me: People could tip artists they know and follow them to the post office to collect their money order, then follow them to the grocery store or local credit union. Or worse, they could plan a long-con.
Me: Yeah, a few bad people will do that kind of stuff, mostly in the non-paraniod world of 75-80% good people, the majority of people do not.
Negative me: People will start pyramid schemes and trick other people.
Me: The entire point is people voting for whatever they like. Actually having a vote in the arts and culture, not just wealthy people who can afford to buy fine art. Every vote and every payment is public and transparent, pyramid schemes are easy to recognize. They would not be allowed to cash any of that money and it would return to the pool.
Negative me: What if they didn't do an easy to recognize pyramid pattern. Why if they start a meme where they take a photo of their pet's butt and then call that art and have their friend pay them? This spreads as memes do and thousands of people cash $30 checks for photos of dog and cat butts?
Me: Well, it's still public, if that what people want to do with their vote for the arts, culture and literature, then that's what will happen. Also, these people are on public record as an artist whose art is photos of butts. Not very many people would be proud of that. I think it's more realistic that people will cash in a Halloween costume for the month of October or a tip a Grandma for a lovely Thanksgiving dinner in November. Or best of all, thank a friend for a hand-knit scarf. If people want to support any type of craft art, costume making or cooking I think that's great.
Negative me: So you are fine if it turns out, the art people mostly like in America is cat videos? 91 billion on cat videos!
Me: It's most important that people define culture for themselves. Their dollar a day vote is just that. I am very aware that people in cafes rarely talk about alive fine artists. Of the top-grossing fine artists, only two of them are alive and all 15 are men. No one dead can cash a check. This daydream is about social capital and people who are creating now. I'd love it if fashion and dance and mediums very difficult to break into or make a living at benefited so they became more a part of our culture and everyday lives.
Negative me: Fine. More handcrafted pot holders everywhere. I have nothing against flower arranging and baskets or anything type of arts and crafts. But, people are busy. What if people don't have time for voting on art? Or what if people don't like arts and crafts at all?
Me: I'm starting to repeat myself. They can vote to support their local library. They can read the newspaper and vote on articles they like. I think buying subscriptions to online news is a great way to vote with your social capital. If they don't like to read or listen to music or podcasts, eat, watch TV. If they don't like anything at all and don't want to waste their time they can opt out.
Negative me: Last doubt. How is this massive social capital funded?
Me: Just like stock brokers use computer algorithms to pull millions out of the air in a few seconds, or programmers "mine" digital coins or the Federal Bank prints money all based on a Fiat = by decree of arbitrary authority. The people will decree their vote is real, and the digital coin it stands for is real.
Negative me: So the tough part is getting the United States Postal Service permission to print the money orders? What? Why would the USPS ever do that?
Me: It a big chunk of change. It's enough to completely revitalize the entire USPS, they have been operating in the red, in debt for a while now.
Negative me: The Federal Bank and the US Government would never support this.
Me: The tax revenue both State and Federal would also be substantial. This is income. The middle class pays most of the taxes. People in middle-class tax brackets, pushed-up even just a little bit, is a lot of revenue. It would be great economic stimulus, it would create a lot of jobs. The market would be helped because people would buy stuff. It's a really good idea.
Attempts in recent years to remove money from politics starting at the top with lobbyist and campaign finance reform has failed and is pathetic as relates to corporate payoffs of our elected government.
Politicians who take payouts for issues that contradict the majority of voters should be replaced with new blood, who will actually do the work they were elected to do. Should, but it isn't happening, yet. Instead, in recent elections we are actually moving backward, not making progress in upholding voters rights, nor making every person's vote count equally.
With our current broken system, we need to start at the foundation of democracy, with the people -- make every vote count. There are so many examples besides the popular vote for president where broken politics damages our country. Even on a local level, the people vote for one thing and the government does the opposite. Take Seattle, we voted down a sports stadium and we voted for several mass transit proposals. Seattle built a couple sports stadiums and has the worst mass transit system of any large city in America. The obstacle on every level small town to the White House is the same -- money counts more in politics than votes.
There is no question that an overhaul of our voting system is needed for national elections. Tho, it is interesting and even hopeful to note some states are having more success at processing votes than others.
The Supreme Court and Congress should protect all American's rights to vote and a resolution to end Gerrymandering forever should be passed into law.
All antiquated voting machines should be recycled for parts. The voting method proven to be both the most accessible by everyone and least able to be tampered with is mail-in paper ballots. At this point in the information age, why are people having to leave work and wait in lines to vote ever? Web and paper ballot systems should have been implemented years ago for the best of both security and efficiency of voting results. Mail-in ballots combined with a digital system able to be tallied instantly and checked by the voters themselves while still maintaining each individual's votes as private, we have the technology, we have a very good postal service. Why are we losing vital elections because of punch card chads in Florida? Lost or stolen voting machines in several states? Spending tons of money on inefficient recounts in too many states to list? etc....
All political advertising should be illegal. News outlets or social media announce events and schedules, but no paid political ads ever. Instead of mailers and attack ads on TV and radio, there should be a politics channel and official state, county and national websites that only broadcast politics. All town halls and rally events are televised there and all candidates get equal airtime, the airtime divided up by National and Local elections and issues -- by importance to the people. Conversely, no advertising for other non-political products, services or commercial stuff allowed on the political channels/websites etc...
It may seem I'm reinventing the potato chip if you watch C-SPAN (Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network) or live in a state that has a well-organized website. But, you are missing my point. Money shouldn't be the determining or limiting factor for any issue or political campaign.
From brainwashing to voter suppression the US fails everyone when money is valued more than the people.
Currently, voters’ pamphlets are publicly posted on the web and printed available at the post office in most states in the US, but not all. I never knew who or what issues were on the ballot during the years I voted in Atlanta, Georgia. There were sites were groups actually charged a fee for their opinion of what was being voted on. I would search the internet for hours, make a list and my list never had the correct issues and I didn't even know the names of more than a couple people, much less what the other faceless names stood for. Of course, these states then vote in the incumbent, again and again, for years. Living most of my adult life in Washington State and Oregon, and reading the hilarious blurbs written by some of the people who got themselves on the ballot, made it so much harder for me to then vote on these faceless names with zero info. I have never owned a TV, was that the problem? Was there an accurate list of issues and candidates listed on the TV shows I never watched? Information as vital as what or whom is on the ballot should always be free.
Waiting in line with next to zero information about who and what is on the ballot, is another angle of voter suppression.
P.s. Thanks for listening. I don’t know why I don’t get any comments here, but I recognize a lot of the stuff I write is borderline Asperger’s Syndrome/manic. I figure no comments is the equivalent to the blank stares and shrugs I get out and about in the world. Still, if you want to say hello, I do check-in on twitter and G+ almost every day. Tho, I don’t DM. I am only interested in public social conversations.
Anyways, have a nice day.
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| Doodle for March 6, 2018. |
Daydream 25/50. Solve money. How do we reach that Star Trek utopia where money isn’t?
Economists have been shouting numbers at anybody who will listen for over a century now, it hasn’t helped, we are bored by the numbers. The gist is -- money is broken. Increasing income inequality, economic indebtedness of most Nations with individuals holding more money than many countries entire fiscal budgets and GDPs combined, means that working people are broke and the extreme wealth of the oligarchy is so much money “they” can’t spend it.
The reason why I am interested in money at all is because -- money is the primary obstacle in the way of everyone working together to reduce suffering and save the world. TMI warning: I can’t do many of the ideas I dream about because I subsisted near zero in my 20s and then after college and the second home we put 20% down on in 2007 my family, like most of those struggling to stay afloat in the sinking middle-class, has been treading in debt as negative-thousandaires. Well over a hundred million families, over half of the US population (80% by some statistics) all in the same sinking boat. Debt slavery is not working. We can’t tread forever, how do we solve money?
In my daydreams where money is "no-problem", I imagine the global economic leveling we have been experiencing for a while now, spreading with digital communication and the internet since the 80s resulting in a multifaceted solution. Money-the-problem is a very ugly fractal when one attempts to chart it out. So I pull focus in on one knot, to break down that giant tangle of a tree chart, sector by sector.
1. Housing and buildings for small businesses (individual mortgages).
2. The arts, culture, and literature.
3. Postage, packages, and snail-mail.
4. Communication media.
5. Food.
6. Education.
7. Healthcare and medicine.
8. Transportation and shipping.
9. Industry and production for larger businesses.
10. And last Government (I break that one into three parts). A. Politics, B. the work of leadership and C. the military.
Note I didn’t add energy or fuel to the list because large electric power-plants and waste of energy pushing it long distances on ugly power-lines cutting up the air or spilling fuel to and from monster refineries spewing who knows what from blinking towers of smokestacks are all completely eliminated in this utopian daydream.
Daydream number 25 ‘Solve Money’ is divisible into more parts than I have ideas for. I will start at the top of my personal list.
Housing.
Mortgages and earned equity as the middle-classes base for savings and retirement should never be liquidated by the gamblers in banking, Wall Street, and insurance. The wealthy should never kick people out of the life-protecting shelter of their home threatening their safety and happiness. Usurpation means taking someone's power or property by force. Primary residences claimed as home would not be allowed to be owned by anyone else. The building or land may be owned by the state or the county, but the home is private property. Home is the most vital ingredient of the American Dream serving as the foundation for upward social mobility. Regardless of the home being nomadic or inherited for generations, people will always need a space to survive. Reinventing home-as-a-right would have a stabilizing impact on all sectors of the economy.
To achieve this goal of a home as a right for everyone we have to invent a new kind of mortgage system isolated completely from all other types of banking. The despotism of the housing market's "burst-bubbles" would be leveled as a guard so that no one would be able to flip and gamble on investment housing or be a slumlord over rental properties. The wealthy would still be free to do whatever they want with vacation rentals, luxury condos or second homes etc…
Primary residences would be similar to a rent-to-own contract or a 100-year lease to protect small businesses. Every payment you are able to make counts towards saved equity. If you are unable to make a payment or damage your home it’s sort of like reverse equity, except because home is a right, not a privilege, the amount deducted can never go below zero. Meaning you own your home, you and your family never have to worry about being kicked out onto the street, you simply have zero equity.
On the plus side, every payment made is saved equity. This savings can be used to start a business, for a downpayment on a nicer home, for retirement etc… If you improve the value of your home it’s the same as buying a fixer-upper now. Your payments can be small while you invest in construction, you improve the quality of your family’s life by staying in your improved home or because your house gets a better selling price so you can afford a cross-country move for work or other life events like a birth in the family.
After the bailouts of over 700 billion to banks too-big-to-fail, who then turned around and made "profits" paying themselves ten of billions in bonuses for several years in a row, never refunding the losses to middle-class American's pensions, retirement savings and FDIC insured mortgages. To mitigate future loss to main-street caused by bailouts of the big banks, American's should not bank with these MultiNational Conglomerate Corporate Banks, instead, all primary residence holdings should be kept in small local and State-owned Credit Unions. Interest rates are only for construction loans and green home improvements and those loans have to be managed like mortgages now so that people don't borrow more than they can make payments for, but these loans should never balloon, with interest kept fixed as low as possible. Also making payments should result in interest jubilees on any loan longer than seven years. Historically the king would forgive all the debt, but in modern life, people move and change jobs so it would be more realistic to keep a record of all the interest paid, and then reduce the amount owed on the loan by the interest paid over time or if the loan is paid off then add this amount to the equity savings of the homeowner.
Home as a right, not an investment would be an economic paradigm shift that would reduce suffering by eliminating homelessness and positively change the quality of life for everyone we share the sidewalk with.
 |
| #drawfool doodle for March 7, 2018. |
Onwards to the next economic segment in my list to solve money. -- The arts, culture, and literature.
After the robots are installed to do menial labor I believe there is plenty of work only humans should do, in the arts. Many creative people would be happy to be excused from the workforce if their 'day-job' was doing what they love. For many artists, writers, dancers, musicians, actors etc.. regardless of the creative endeavor, the obstacle is the same - money.
I have an economic stimulus idea for social capital plus a bit-coin type fee-free currency.
Imagine every voting US citizen has a dollar a day of social currency to spend on the arts, culture, and literature. People "click" on any art or literature they "like" and vote with a digital-coin (like a tip-jar) in a comment box.
$365 dollars a day doesn't seem like much. It wouldn't fund the arts completely, but it would be a way to stimulate the economy. The arts make up about 2% of the US Gross National Product. Unemployment or under-employment in dead-end jobs is debated between 5 to 7% depending on the demographics of the region in question. Why not increase the arts to over 4% of the GNP? (Yes I know technically it's GDP, Gross Domestic Product, I so much prefer GNH Gross National Happiness, 😀 GNP is a compromise).
The voting age population of the US in 2016 was just over 250 million people. 250 million dollars per day times 365 = $91,250,000,000 ninety-one-billion-two-hundred-fifty-million dollars per year (plus an additional 250 million on leap years).
Okay, that's nothing to sneeze at, but divided into $100,000 yearly salaries that's only 912,500 people.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 6,680,000 million people are unemployed and 1.7 million people are marginally attached to the labor force.
All this digital money would be in a corporation owned by everyone in a completely transparent social capital pool. This is not money to spend but money to tip in comment boxes for artists, performers, crafts people and writers of all types (fiction, cookbooks, poetry, prose, journalist, comedy etc…).
The shares are digital-coins processed with a fee-free system to the artist's accounts where they accumulate. It's important that there is a limit to how much anyone can tip per month and also people can change their minds. If they vote or tip by accident or decide they don’t like something a couple days later they can move their vote or tip to another account for 30 days after the original tip comment was placed.
If individuals choose not use technology or do not have access to the internet they may vote by paper ballots delivered by the USPS. They can write in up to 365 artists of their choice or support their local library, artists they know or local bands, or whatever they would like that is related to arts, crafts, performance, literature, etc....
Next is the payment to artists and creative individuals. This money is not about getting rich. It’s also not about replacing people buying tickets to shows, or paying for art, or buying books. It’s about stimulating the economy directly via arts and culture.
Small checks under $365 are cashed by the artist via USPS money order, larger amounts are direct-deposited into accounts created for the artists and writers in local credit unions and small local banks. This is to protect creative people from scam artists and big banks that charge fees to get their own cash out of ATMs.
Large masses of tips over the $9k per month limit are production budgets. Artists and writers are expected to create 10 jobs for every million in tips over their 9k per month survival limit. This means they don't ever cash large lump sums of money. It goes from the bank to the local contractor's via a construction budget to build an art studio, and hire carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc… The artists' design what their community needs. They build an art gallery and hire an art manager to run the gallery. They build apprentice quarters and a paid position to run the art studio, etc… on an on. If they are filmmakers 33 million is nothing. The production budget for one movie. But, they can easily hire 100 or more people. It takes an army of people to make movies, tv shows, documentaries, run a theater or a dance company, operate a game cafe’ for board games or create even small indie video games etc…
When a solo type artist starts making over 2 million. When they have already built their studio/home in previous years. They hire an accountant and a personal assistant to shop and schedule plan so they can focus on their art, now what? That’s only 2/10 of the jobs expected. The answer is, it’s not their money. If they don’t need more funding to make their art or to hire 8 more artists to work with them, then they designate a charity direction. They support the art critic and reviewers pool, -- yes I said critics’ and reviewers’ pool. They forward the money to another artist or other creative persons who inspired them. They fund the retirement pool. Yep, I said, retirement pool, like SAG(Screen Actor's Guild) only for artists(to keep future Monet's children from starving and future Mozart's out of the mass grave).
The catch is ‘it’s not their money’ all transactions are public because this is a publicly owned corporation. 100k to their music tutor is totally fine. 50k to their college. 100k to the local soup kitchen near their art studio also totally fine, because IMO cooking any type of food by hand is an art form. 150k to a children’s hospital or hurricane relief fund to pay back a chief who used their own money to feed people also totally great. Since this money is public if the chief gets too much money, they can forward the money to set up a filtered water system or build housing for the people they are feeding. The money is public and moved forward where it’s needed. No one hoards it, ever.
What is important is the people vote and everyone had an equal share in the conversation for the arts, literature and culture they want and by doing so, everyone becomes part of a digitally facilitated cultural renaissance.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Social currency for the arts, culture and literature is daydream 26/50.
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| #drawfool doodle for March 8, 2018. |
Negative me: People could tip artists they know and follow them to the post office to collect their money order, then follow them to the grocery store or local credit union. Or worse, they could plan a long-con.
Me: Yeah, a few bad people will do that kind of stuff, mostly in the non-paraniod world of 75-80% good people, the majority of people do not.
Negative me: People will start pyramid schemes and trick other people.
Me: The entire point is people voting for whatever they like. Actually having a vote in the arts and culture, not just wealthy people who can afford to buy fine art. Every vote and every payment is public and transparent, pyramid schemes are easy to recognize. They would not be allowed to cash any of that money and it would return to the pool.
Negative me: What if they didn't do an easy to recognize pyramid pattern. Why if they start a meme where they take a photo of their pet's butt and then call that art and have their friend pay them? This spreads as memes do and thousands of people cash $30 checks for photos of dog and cat butts?
Me: Well, it's still public, if that what people want to do with their vote for the arts, culture and literature, then that's what will happen. Also, these people are on public record as an artist whose art is photos of butts. Not very many people would be proud of that. I think it's more realistic that people will cash in a Halloween costume for the month of October or a tip a Grandma for a lovely Thanksgiving dinner in November. Or best of all, thank a friend for a hand-knit scarf. If people want to support any type of craft art, costume making or cooking I think that's great.
Negative me: So you are fine if it turns out, the art people mostly like in America is cat videos? 91 billion on cat videos!
Me: It's most important that people define culture for themselves. Their dollar a day vote is just that. I am very aware that people in cafes rarely talk about alive fine artists. Of the top-grossing fine artists, only two of them are alive and all 15 are men. No one dead can cash a check. This daydream is about social capital and people who are creating now. I'd love it if fashion and dance and mediums very difficult to break into or make a living at benefited so they became more a part of our culture and everyday lives.
Negative me: Fine. More handcrafted pot holders everywhere. I have nothing against flower arranging and baskets or anything type of arts and crafts. But, people are busy. What if people don't have time for voting on art? Or what if people don't like arts and crafts at all?
Me: I'm starting to repeat myself. They can vote to support their local library. They can read the newspaper and vote on articles they like. I think buying subscriptions to online news is a great way to vote with your social capital. If they don't like to read or listen to music or podcasts, eat, watch TV. If they don't like anything at all and don't want to waste their time they can opt out.
Negative me: Last doubt. How is this massive social capital funded?
Me: Just like stock brokers use computer algorithms to pull millions out of the air in a few seconds, or programmers "mine" digital coins or the Federal Bank prints money all based on a Fiat = by decree of arbitrary authority. The people will decree their vote is real, and the digital coin it stands for is real.
Negative me: So the tough part is getting the United States Postal Service permission to print the money orders? What? Why would the USPS ever do that?
Me: It a big chunk of change. It's enough to completely revitalize the entire USPS, they have been operating in the red, in debt for a while now.
Negative me: The Federal Bank and the US Government would never support this.
Me: The tax revenue both State and Federal would also be substantial. This is income. The middle class pays most of the taxes. People in middle-class tax brackets, pushed-up even just a little bit, is a lot of revenue. It would be great economic stimulus, it would create a lot of jobs. The market would be helped because people would buy stuff. It's a really good idea.
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| #drawfool doodle for March 9, 2018. |
Daydream number 27/50. Remove money from politics.
Politicians who take payouts for issues that contradict the majority of voters should be replaced with new blood, who will actually do the work they were elected to do. Should, but it isn't happening, yet. Instead, in recent elections we are actually moving backward, not making progress in upholding voters rights, nor making every person's vote count equally.
With our current broken system, we need to start at the foundation of democracy, with the people -- make every vote count. There are so many examples besides the popular vote for president where broken politics damages our country. Even on a local level, the people vote for one thing and the government does the opposite. Take Seattle, we voted down a sports stadium and we voted for several mass transit proposals. Seattle built a couple sports stadiums and has the worst mass transit system of any large city in America. The obstacle on every level small town to the White House is the same -- money counts more in politics than votes.
There is no question that an overhaul of our voting system is needed for national elections. Tho, it is interesting and even hopeful to note some states are having more success at processing votes than others.
The Supreme Court and Congress should protect all American's rights to vote and a resolution to end Gerrymandering forever should be passed into law.
All antiquated voting machines should be recycled for parts. The voting method proven to be both the most accessible by everyone and least able to be tampered with is mail-in paper ballots. At this point in the information age, why are people having to leave work and wait in lines to vote ever? Web and paper ballot systems should have been implemented years ago for the best of both security and efficiency of voting results. Mail-in ballots combined with a digital system able to be tallied instantly and checked by the voters themselves while still maintaining each individual's votes as private, we have the technology, we have a very good postal service. Why are we losing vital elections because of punch card chads in Florida? Lost or stolen voting machines in several states? Spending tons of money on inefficient recounts in too many states to list? etc....
All political advertising should be illegal. News outlets or social media announce events and schedules, but no paid political ads ever. Instead of mailers and attack ads on TV and radio, there should be a politics channel and official state, county and national websites that only broadcast politics. All town halls and rally events are televised there and all candidates get equal airtime, the airtime divided up by National and Local elections and issues -- by importance to the people. Conversely, no advertising for other non-political products, services or commercial stuff allowed on the political channels/websites etc...
It may seem I'm reinventing the potato chip if you watch C-SPAN (Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network) or live in a state that has a well-organized website. But, you are missing my point. Money shouldn't be the determining or limiting factor for any issue or political campaign.
From brainwashing to voter suppression the US fails everyone when money is valued more than the people.
Currently, voters’ pamphlets are publicly posted on the web and printed available at the post office in most states in the US, but not all. I never knew who or what issues were on the ballot during the years I voted in Atlanta, Georgia. There were sites were groups actually charged a fee for their opinion of what was being voted on. I would search the internet for hours, make a list and my list never had the correct issues and I didn't even know the names of more than a couple people, much less what the other faceless names stood for. Of course, these states then vote in the incumbent, again and again, for years. Living most of my adult life in Washington State and Oregon, and reading the hilarious blurbs written by some of the people who got themselves on the ballot, made it so much harder for me to then vote on these faceless names with zero info. I have never owned a TV, was that the problem? Was there an accurate list of issues and candidates listed on the TV shows I never watched? Information as vital as what or whom is on the ballot should always be free.
Waiting in line with next to zero information about who and what is on the ballot, is another angle of voter suppression.
I know it could be worse, and is worse in other countries, but knowing this doesn't make me less ashamed of politics happening right now, in the United States of America. If we truly believe in democracy, and that all people are created equal, prove it, please. Remove money from politics.
Sources are cited --- always! If you are going to make up a big steaming pile of “fake news” you are going to get credit where credit is due. If you break privacy and publicity laws, by hunting celebrities, minors or invading people’s homes or commit unlawful search of persons, wiretapping etc..., -- there will be a penalty. If you are guilty of defamation of character or treason. There will be a trial. If it’s treason it will be a military tribunal.
That’s it. No exceptions. No more buying local TV stations, newspapers and magazine blogs to force them to broadcast lies as news.
If you want to write a gossip rag, there is no such thing as victimizing others anonymously. On the flip side, whistleblowers and accusers have protections as victims,( as victims should have protections under the law now) but privacy payouts for cash or NDA for crimes are also not allowed. Also as relates to victims rights spam or public broadcast containing victims private information is protected. I.e. no news vans filming outside of schools after a shooting, or following students home etc…
I am aware that there are both laws and guidelines in place that upstanding news organizations have been following for a long time. This is about how bad it has gotten since Fox "jumped-the-shark" by calling the election for Bush before the results were in plus all the other crap over the years that we as a Nation let slide, wrong or even illegal defamation of character type lies that should never have been allowed that we are paying dearly for now.
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| #drawfool doodle for March 10, 2018. |
Daydream 28/50. Truth in journalism and news via peer and public review balanced with the rights to publicity and privacy.
Sources are cited --- always! If you are going to make up a big steaming pile of “fake news” you are going to get credit where credit is due. If you break privacy and publicity laws, by hunting celebrities, minors or invading people’s homes or commit unlawful search of persons, wiretapping etc..., -- there will be a penalty. If you are guilty of defamation of character or treason. There will be a trial. If it’s treason it will be a military tribunal.
That’s it. No exceptions. No more buying local TV stations, newspapers and magazine blogs to force them to broadcast lies as news.
If you want to write a gossip rag, there is no such thing as victimizing others anonymously. On the flip side, whistleblowers and accusers have protections as victims,( as victims should have protections under the law now) but privacy payouts for cash or NDA for crimes are also not allowed. Also as relates to victims rights spam or public broadcast containing victims private information is protected. I.e. no news vans filming outside of schools after a shooting, or following students home etc…
I am aware that there are both laws and guidelines in place that upstanding news organizations have been following for a long time. This is about how bad it has gotten since Fox "jumped-the-shark" by calling the election for Bush before the results were in plus all the other crap over the years that we as a Nation let slide, wrong or even illegal defamation of character type lies that should never have been allowed that we are paying dearly for now.
P.s. Thanks for listening. I don’t know why I don’t get any comments here, but I recognize a lot of the stuff I write is borderline Asperger’s Syndrome/manic. I figure no comments is the equivalent to the blank stares and shrugs I get out and about in the world. Still, if you want to say hello, I do check-in on twitter and G+ almost every day. Tho, I don’t DM. I am only interested in public social conversations.
Anyways, have a nice day.
☮+💚 Uva Be
February 23, 2018
nothing but scribbles
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| #drawfool #doodle for Feb. 23, 2018. |
20. Plug-in electric vehicles connected to smart microgrids that run on solar & wind power to replace our crude-oil dependant system.
Yep, and everybody who owns a plug-in vehicle right now knows how not close we are to that daydream. :(
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| Doodle for Feb. 24, 2018. |
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| tiny doodle Feb. 25, 2018. |
February 5, 2018
inside - out
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| Doodle Feb. 5, 2018. |
Might explain later... #drawfool
.... sometime later the next day. So? Fear. Looking out through the teeth of death from the inside. Perhaps this was an exaggeration? The red eyes are only tail lights. The dark rainy zero visibility stop and go traffic, cut into by oncoming headlights might form a jagged jawline. A crash could chew up our fragile human bodies like an ambivalent monster. Except, bumper to bumper at night in the rain, even for a couple tiring hours, isn't death. I did draw this after we got out the car. We had cut over from a stop-and-go highway to another parallel highway, and on that tree-lined road, we hydroplaned in complete pitch black. The water deep enough to not be able to see the asphalt, any lines, nor the edge. That slipping zig-zag lasted only a couple seconds at most. Probably less. We didn't cross over. We didn't hit a tree or slide into a ditch. It was just another commute.
Regardless, these long tiring commutes are why I daydream about number 9 from last week. No matter how many trillions it will cost, no matter how many decades full of engineering challenges would be required to finish that paradigm shift worthy transportation redesign. I escape the fear monster and daydream how things could be better.
Captions below read:
1. Me: When I like an idea, find it clever or funny even no one responds. Only to crap or in reply about themselves. Why?
2. Plant: Did you just ask some crap about yourself and ask me to reply? ... That's why.
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| drawfool doodle Feb. 6, 2018. |
Daydream number 12/50. Crowdsolving how-to-save-the-world with the collective intelligence.
As any Science-Fiction fan knows, from the Star Trek TV show abomination -- The Borg, the idea of crowdsourcing could go very badly. The Borg are extremists, relentlessly attempting to assimilate everyone with any brains into “The Collective”. But, data results like how people’s attention shifts from the characters in a movie or show, when a dog is in the scene, are consistent. We’d much rather pay attention to the dog.
I thought I’d write up an idea about how crowdsolving metadata could be used to solve climate change via the wisdom of the crowd. But, then some Trump supporter started tweet-yelling at me. True confession: I’ve had better conversations with plants. After that, I got distracted by reading some science blog articles as a logical antidote to our current social insanity.
Crowdsolve question: How are you? dear crowd to solve "everything".
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| Doodle in the corner of my thought book, 2/7/18. |
Sheeples are a thing, very relevant currently.
Daydream 13/50. Goats and sheep, lama, etc... in movable fences, to clear brush and trim landscaping near paths and roads, fertilize and aerate land - instead of herbicides, controlled burns, machines and chemical fertilizers.
This is happening. Tho it’s been my observation that people often get impatient with the pace of the animals. The goats don’t clear as fast and as sharply as the machines. The problem is the same. We live in a capital-first time-is-money “free-market” valued over life, economy. Our entire way of thinking about roads and yards, and grassy areas that are bigger than yards needs to slow-down for sheep trimmed grass to be a thing, that becomes part of our way of life. Perhaps we need to move backward in time on a few things. My grandfather lived on the family farm after everyone else had left. He very impressively tended to the farm neatly, almost by himself (he and the neighbor’s helped each other on jobs that required more than one person). Beyond the actual farming, and his giant garden and pantry full of home canned food. He had a small herd of sheep and cows. The sheep he moved from one area to the next closer to the house. The cows were in bigger areas out by the creek. I remember asking why the sheep were in the front yard. My Mom told me that sheep bite the grass, they don’t pull it up by the roots, so Grandpa will move the sheep when they are done trimming around the house. He also used to pasture the cows to clean up the apple orchard of fruit on the ground. But, cows are another story. He didn’t want them making a mess around the house, so they were always in larger fenced-in areas, farther away from the house, like the apple orchard.
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| Feb. 8, 2018. #drawfool #doodle |
What the heck is a “moderate”, anyways?
Seems easiest to start with what a moderate is not. A moderate is not an extremist.
If you have any view at all on a subject, then how do you know you are not an extremist? Because moderates annoy the hell out of extremists. For example, let’s take my most persistent and therefore strongest political view. I am pro-environment. Climate change is in my opinion worth fighting against. But, even my green ideals are moderate.
For example, Greenpeace (ironic name considering some of the unpeaceful things they have done over the years). I am not an owl-first people-second environmentalist. Yep, I said owl-first. Slash and burn clear cutting is without any question heartbreaking and in my opinion next to evil. We need to modernize past destroying the entire forest from the soil up. Then take an old battle, lumber versus endangered owls(and sadly more than a couple other species). I like wildlife but believe there are sustainable techniques to harvest trees and leave old-growth habitat. It does require hard work, surveys that require miles hiking, most of it without trails plus years of planning to best determine how much to cut where and when, but for the life of the planet, our forests are worth it. Some of the better plans for harvesting trees even help to prevent forest fires. Thusly I’m a people-first environmentalist-moderate.
Same goes for food. I’m not a vegan or even a vegetarian. I’m a flexitarian. I do eat vegan sometimes and vegetarian a lot of the time. But, I’m going to roast a turkey and enjoy it with my family, thankfully. I like a good elk burger and I think a bit of fancy bacon is a great flavoring for lentil soup. Thusly dietarily I’m also a moderate.
Food is easy, lets move to a much more touchy subject. Yoga pants/bike shorts on public transit. Someone I love yelled at me, about how women are not sex objects, we are people, and we should be able to wear whatever we want, whenever we want. We should even be able to go around naked if we want. …. Or? Something like that. Okay. My point of view is. People are mammals, therefore any human of reproductive age male, female or other, (like it or not), is actually a sex object. The sexual focus of the human animal, polite, unintentional or not, is the entire pelvic and butt-area. My thoughts about what we should wear on public transportation when we are crammed into trains, airplanes or buses. Is to look at someone who runs and jumps around a lot, and wants the focus to be on ‘the game’, professional basketball players. I think, if we are sticking our butts or pelvises in the faces of people sitting in seats, we should at least wear a garment that covers as much and as loosely as a basketball uniform. And I apologize for stating the obvious, ladies, no side-boob or camel-toe please. If it wasn’t obvious then the phrases ‘side-boob’, 'nip-slip' and ‘camel-toe’ would not be a thing. So, again, I’m not an extremist. For me, as a moderate it’s all about respect. I respect that I have no idea how repressed or not my fellow human beings are, and I want to be respected in turn as a fellow human, not as a sex object, when on public transit, i.e. when not at home or suntanning or swimming etc... I dress how I believe to be polite and respectful as much as I am able to do so. Also, if you look at it like, it's not about you, active or not, everybody of age is a sex-object and everybody wants to be respected, well it just simples things up a bit.
More than just negating anything, or passing endless useless laws and regulations, being moderate is about balance and understanding of the pros and cons of both the left and the right. Most folks tend to be conservative about some topics and liberal about other things. I believe most people want to be somewhat moderate. I know we want to respect each other rather than bicker and fight constantly. Respect requires understanding, and understanding results in common sense, and if any two words define a moderate, it’s ‘common sense’.
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| #doodle for Feb. 9, 2018 |
Daydream number 14/50. Organic food by default shoud be - stickerless and crude oil packaging free.
This one annoys me (and a few other millions of people). Organic food should be packaged free of plastic and stickers. A sign on the bin. A paper carton for small berries etc... or paper potato tomato bag for larger produce. The bag could read organic and maybe has a list of SKU numbers printed down one side or could be blank and there is a pen on a string. But, no stickers stuck on the organic vegetables or fruit please!
Contrarily all non-organic or GM (genetically modified) foods grown with chemical pesticides should be clearly marked. The type of genetic modification color-coded and printed on the label, the sticker is red if it’s a “Round-Up” or whatever brand of pesticide bred into the plant. Yellow if it simply has tougher skin or is a plant to plant hybrid. Orange if it’s grown in pesticides but not GM, etc… Yellow and green if it’s a hybrid grown with natural pesticide-free farming techniques etc.. Remember I’m a moderate. If they genetically modified food in a safe way to be easier to grow organically, for example, that’s okay to mark is as naturally farmed, as long as there isn’t any pesticides or crude oil fertilizer products used in that farming area.
Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are personal to me, not just a couple words. Do you recall my grandfather and his small farm? (a couple paragraphs up on this post). The family farm was part of a cancer cluster. My grandfather died years before old age in the radiation booth, being treated for a brain tumor. The friend on a neighboring farm who helped him on the farm, also died of cancer. My grandmother also had various tumors. My family has a BRCA1 deletion/mutation. I got breast cancer in my 20s. I don’t just buy organic because it’s trendy. I buy it because I think of all the people growing and harvesting our food and vote with my dollar every time I shop for groceries. So, when I say it annoys me that organic food has a sticker glued on it or is sold in a plastic bag, it’s not even close to the ire I feel about pesticides and chemical fertilizers not being clearly marked.
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| Feb. 10, 2018 #doodle #drawfool |
Rat tale + daydream 15/50. Compost. -- Inspired by the giant rats I watched roam the streets in Portland in the 90s.
Once upon a time, there was a clever port city rat who knew the best alleys and gutters to scurry. It grew fat and large as a cat on slightly out-dated cream, aged meats, and crunchy bread. When it was too large for gutters it roamed the sidewalks, eventually lording over the alley behind a doughnut shop. There it raised three rat families almost as fat and big as himself in holes under the edges of hedges. Until one day when a plague-infected flea hopped by and bloated them all to a morbid bursting vector of death. Plague-infected obese rats are terrifying regardless of if it's people who spread the plague to the rats or rats that spread the plague to the people.
All urban areas need to sort urban compost from urban garbage and recycling into smart bins that rotate and properly contain pestilence and if a bin is in a high traffic area like next to a dog park, send a signal for pick-up of a full bin tank.
Many urban areas and some suburban areas have composting bins in operation, right next to recycling. Some areas have been composting for years now. This is great, super, world-changing. Regularly collected bins rats can’t climb out of, need to be standard in all populated areas where garbage is collected.
Composting should be the norm. Food waste should never be mixed with other "garbage". All food waste should be composted as locally as is safely possible, never hauled long distances. Urban compost turned into power/energy is not a pie-in-the-sky daydream, nor limited just to household garbage. For example, meat & bone meal MBM contains 2/3rds the energy of coal. They are already using MBM in Europe to generate electricity. The electric generator next door to meat processing/slaughter warehouses. Tho to be clear it's not about the energy produced replacing current sources. The energy would realistically only supplement the current system, not replace it. The real benefit is the savings of not having to haul smelly garbage mixed with plastic, glass etc... as well as a reduction of pests, rats, cockroaches, flies etc...
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| #doodle #drawfool Feb. 11, 2018. |
January 22, 2018
spheres of influence
Friday the 26th, is at the end of this weekly post. Saturday the 27th is in the middle.
Thursday, January 25th, 2018.
Is a photo, (in this case a doodle) really worth 1,000 words? Okay, this is me daydreaming about a real person. My Dad was a home-health nurse when I was a teenager. He told me this story about an old person's house stacked full of years and years worth of junk mail and old newspapers.
There was a narrow path to the bed, another narrow path that went into the kitchen and the bathroom. The old person was so blind they couldn't tell the difference between the junk mail and the bills. They could no longer read the newspaper, tho sometimes another elderly person read to them, but obviously, these old people were not well enough to carry the paper junk out to the trash.
So in my daydream world, they are "reading" the newspaper, paying their bills and even clicking on "coupons" via computer and listen to a digital reader.
I have written a much longer version of this. I believe if Benjimen Franklin were alive today, he'd be aghast at the tons of junk mail we are plagued by. He was an innovative guy. He'd fight for a digital branch of the USPS and all shopping mailers and catalogs would pay for adds and listings in the USPS digital 'Yellow Pages' everyone could search via a Federal minimum required internet connection, with USPS local address pages for all current residents. And all utilities, government services, and businesses would be found easily on the official local digital map.
I even got a very nice email reply from the postmaster general. But, that was in 2010, when I still had hope that we could and would do something, change for the better. The ironic conclusion is, a lawsuit about junk mail has already gone to the supreme court.
Yep, in 1970 the United States Supreme Court ruled that an addressee of postal mail has unreviewable discretion to decide whether he wishes to receive further material from a particular sender, that vendor does not have a constitutional right to send unwanted material into someone’s home.
But, Rowan v. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728 (1970) only helped with "porn" or sexual junk mail. The rest continued for millions and millions of tons of paper because. "The freedom to communicate orally and by the written word and, indeed, in every manner whatsoever, is imperative to a free and sane society."Brief for Appellants 15.
Page 397 U. S. 736 Without doubt, the public postal system is an indispensable adjunct of every civilized society, and communication is imperative to a healthy social order. But the right of every person "to be let alone" must be placed in the scales with the right of others to communicate.
And that, ladies and gentlemen of plant Earth is why we continue to bury people with junk mail.
So, where is that fix to the digital divide already?! Yep, ... statistic v. reality continue to amuse me.
Wednesday, January 24, 2018.
Blurb III. (copy & pasted from 2017 NaNoWriMo)
I have a lot of ideas about how to make the world a better place. By, a lot, I mean at least one spell of megalomaniacal daydreaming most every day, with several ideas juggled mentally per mood episode. I write some of them down, most are negated as too costly. The ones I edit and draw out are all about reducing suffering. I am not really so crazy as to imagine that I alone can save-the-world, just, help out as one mind and body working together with a ton of other folks, to reduce suffering and make the world a little bit more sustainable for future generations.
Saturday. I don't know what today's doodle/draw-fool is. I am not being creative, I am simply going down my list of 50 ideas to save the world.
This way to change the world, like organic food is happening and has been happening, one person at a time for decades.
I am bragging here. My Mom has been bringing her own bags to the grocery store since the 80s. (possibly since the late 70s but I don't remember). As a teenager, I remember standing there watching check-out baggers stuffing paper bags inside of her cloth bags. My Mom who is a very polite and succinct person, she would say things like. "I don't think that is really necessary. Save yourself some work and don't do that to the rest of the groceries." Sometimes the clerk would nod yes, and sometimes they actually talked back about being required to use the plastic bags the store used. Interestingly, this isn't happening much anymore. Tho I am surprised how may check out clerks in mall clothing stores in the 2000s are surprised when you reject their brand name plastic bags for your own well-used nylon/polyester ones. No, I don't use the heavy canvas ones. I used the colorful bags that fold up to pocket size. I've been using one bag that looks like it's made out of blue paisley windbreaker type plastic fabric since the 90s and this over 20-year-old shopping bag, comes out of the washer with the other newer cloth bags just fine.
Since plastic lasts forever, we should use it for well designed durable good that gets used "forever".
No more use once and throw away plastic bags. Not just grocery bags, all shopping bags from giant malls to tiny vendors who sell goods out of carts.
P.s. This is happening.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resources/plastic-bag-legislation.aspx
It's only Tuesday, but it feels more like Wednesday or possibly some sort of perpetual Thursday.
Wrinkled paper, no frame, bad lighting, crappy ink pens, one pen I tossed after it quit scribbling on this "thing" a second marker, I filled the cap with water and painted with it after it soaked. To be clear, this, what I'm doing here, isn't about art. I am sincerely attempting to expel waves of idiotic notions, swine to the swine. The worst part is I sort of like pigs, tho am honestly fearful of having one for a pet instead of a dog because many folks would love to eat the cute walking bacon. Life/diet. Off topic, I'm a flexitarian.
What am I attempting to achieve here with 'expulsion of the fool'?
Human's live in cycles of habits. Our thoughts, when not captured by what's happening or a TV screen, constantly flash with weighted layers of conscious and subconscious ruminations. Control is only possible with practice. Meditation. Prayer. Art. Writing. Whatever you call it. #drawfool forces me to not ignore the noise.
It's Monday, yet again, I find myself wondering 'who is this evangelical base as relates to US politics and how do they test to see if their approval has changed, or not? -- they often announce very quickly, as in within hours after the latest wave of "stuff" goes public. 'No change in Trump supporters... regardless of whatever the latest moral debacle is.
Who do they call? Is there a phone ring of pastors and small-town counsel folks who post 'supporter' option polls hourly or check-in with FOX news?
Seriously, if you know, how they know, please let me know. Thanks :)
Friday, January 26, 2018.
No one answered my question about the quick math about the steadfastness of the Trump base. So, I forgot about it until I was listening to a podcast and they kept saying 35% still support Trump. This number bothers me. Why? Only 58% of people registered to vote, voted, 26% for Donald and 27% for Hillary. 5% for other candidates. Then they*(Reuters and HuffPost) say support for Trump has dropped from 2/3rds after the inauguration to less than 1/3rd now, since August and November 2017. Now in January 2018. I read this number of supporters as 26% minus two thirds of those voters or 8.7% of voters. Not the entire US population but of voters. So by this math, why do people still state that 35% still support this man? You are welcome to explain statistics out of election results versus polls to me. I'd like that actually. ☮
They* (links to sources)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-poll/trumps-low-approval-rating-masks-his-support-among-likely-voters-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1D8380
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-poll-support-levels_us_5993411fe4b0091416407ace
Sunday, January 28, 2018
Complaint to myself, posted here, who knows why.
Sunday, today is intended as a day of rest, but while resting I'm pondering survival. The sweet ideal where your work is something that matters. To love your life's work, the ultimate achievement. The stigma and stereotype of artist (starving to multi-million art star) legitimacy is always the debate. Tho, I guess it's the same for all humans regardless of career. The plethora of marginalized unprocessed writers. What are the mainstream publishing odds now in 2018? I'm too bitter to do the work to calculate the math. In 2010 after quite a shit-ton of research the ratio I came up with was 30,000:1. As in 30-k book manuscripts slush piled on the sagging roofs of the industry, for every one published and marketed novel. I'm truly not something else. This narrative artist/whatever I am, but I wish my mind worked another way. I try and fail to be logical. I attempt over and over again to think of ideas that make sense in this world. But, I need both the cents and the sense to make a survival. Lately, I am painfully aware of not making either.
Not giving up and just playing video games, watching TV and compulsively posting to social media. I do those things, but I am also slogging along on mass scribbled storyboards for another project. Depression, especially when it manifests itself as grumpy complaining is hellishly boring in my opinion. Just in case anyone wondered or got this far, reading? Some days I think the clicks on this blog are all me, checking for typoes then reloading because I never get them all.
Thursday, January 25th, 2018.
Daydream number 4. to-save-world -- end junk mail via the internet.
I've written quite a few posts about this one over the years. The last time I walked into our local post office, the mail person said. "If the recycling barrel is full please leave your junk mail on the counter." By the way, the counter high blue container was in fact, completely, jammed tight to the top, stuffed full.Is a photo, (in this case a doodle) really worth 1,000 words? Okay, this is me daydreaming about a real person. My Dad was a home-health nurse when I was a teenager. He told me this story about an old person's house stacked full of years and years worth of junk mail and old newspapers.
There was a narrow path to the bed, another narrow path that went into the kitchen and the bathroom. The old person was so blind they couldn't tell the difference between the junk mail and the bills. They could no longer read the newspaper, tho sometimes another elderly person read to them, but obviously, these old people were not well enough to carry the paper junk out to the trash.
So in my daydream world, they are "reading" the newspaper, paying their bills and even clicking on "coupons" via computer and listen to a digital reader.
I have written a much longer version of this. I believe if Benjimen Franklin were alive today, he'd be aghast at the tons of junk mail we are plagued by. He was an innovative guy. He'd fight for a digital branch of the USPS and all shopping mailers and catalogs would pay for adds and listings in the USPS digital 'Yellow Pages' everyone could search via a Federal minimum required internet connection, with USPS local address pages for all current residents. And all utilities, government services, and businesses would be found easily on the official local digital map.
I even got a very nice email reply from the postmaster general. But, that was in 2010, when I still had hope that we could and would do something, change for the better. The ironic conclusion is, a lawsuit about junk mail has already gone to the supreme court.
Yep, in 1970 the United States Supreme Court ruled that an addressee of postal mail has unreviewable discretion to decide whether he wishes to receive further material from a particular sender, that vendor does not have a constitutional right to send unwanted material into someone’s home.
But, Rowan v. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728 (1970) only helped with "porn" or sexual junk mail. The rest continued for millions and millions of tons of paper because. "The freedom to communicate orally and by the written word and, indeed, in every manner whatsoever, is imperative to a free and sane society."Brief for Appellants 15.
Page 397 U. S. 736 Without doubt, the public postal system is an indispensable adjunct of every civilized society, and communication is imperative to a healthy social order. But the right of every person "to be let alone" must be placed in the scales with the right of others to communicate.
And that, ladies and gentlemen of plant Earth is why we continue to bury people with junk mail.
So, where is that fix to the digital divide already?! Yep, ... statistic v. reality continue to amuse me.
Wednesday, January 24, 2018.
Blurb III. (copy & pasted from 2017 NaNoWriMo)
I have a lot of ideas about how to make the world a better place. By, a lot, I mean at least one spell of megalomaniacal daydreaming most every day, with several ideas juggled mentally per mood episode. I write some of them down, most are negated as too costly. The ones I edit and draw out are all about reducing suffering. I am not really so crazy as to imagine that I alone can save-the-world, just, help out as one mind and body working together with a ton of other folks, to reduce suffering and make the world a little bit more sustainable for future generations.
The 3rd idea to-save-the-world
3. Eliminate the digital divide and simultaneously save millions on the cost of education. (billions counting the savings resulting from adults being online). Library networked digital school textbooks, efficient on-demand publishing of workbooks, electronic grading of tests and papers, open source computers operating system (like the one laptop per child program NOT corporate brand-name computers). Open source computers children can learn to code on, in all US public schools, for every child regardless of economic status. |
| January 27, 2018 |
Saturday. I don't know what today's doodle/draw-fool is. I am not being creative, I am simply going down my list of 50 ideas to save the world.
This is idea number 5. Stop using use-once throw-away plastic bags.
We should always go reusable: shopping bags for most stuff and wide shallow baskets for delicate fresh produce and eggs (i.e items you don’t want on the bottom of the pile on your trip home), and returnable crates for heavy stuff.This way to change the world, like organic food is happening and has been happening, one person at a time for decades.
I am bragging here. My Mom has been bringing her own bags to the grocery store since the 80s. (possibly since the late 70s but I don't remember). As a teenager, I remember standing there watching check-out baggers stuffing paper bags inside of her cloth bags. My Mom who is a very polite and succinct person, she would say things like. "I don't think that is really necessary. Save yourself some work and don't do that to the rest of the groceries." Sometimes the clerk would nod yes, and sometimes they actually talked back about being required to use the plastic bags the store used. Interestingly, this isn't happening much anymore. Tho I am surprised how may check out clerks in mall clothing stores in the 2000s are surprised when you reject their brand name plastic bags for your own well-used nylon/polyester ones. No, I don't use the heavy canvas ones. I used the colorful bags that fold up to pocket size. I've been using one bag that looks like it's made out of blue paisley windbreaker type plastic fabric since the 90s and this over 20-year-old shopping bag, comes out of the washer with the other newer cloth bags just fine.
Since plastic lasts forever, we should use it for well designed durable good that gets used "forever".
No more use once and throw away plastic bags. Not just grocery bags, all shopping bags from giant malls to tiny vendors who sell goods out of carts.
P.s. This is happening.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resources/plastic-bag-legislation.aspx
It's only Tuesday, but it feels more like Wednesday or possibly some sort of perpetual Thursday.
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| doodle for 1-23-2018 |
What am I attempting to achieve here with 'expulsion of the fool'?
Human's live in cycles of habits. Our thoughts, when not captured by what's happening or a TV screen, constantly flash with weighted layers of conscious and subconscious ruminations. Control is only possible with practice. Meditation. Prayer. Art. Writing. Whatever you call it. #drawfool forces me to not ignore the noise.
It's Monday, yet again, I find myself wondering 'who is this evangelical base as relates to US politics and how do they test to see if their approval has changed, or not? -- they often announce very quickly, as in within hours after the latest wave of "stuff" goes public. 'No change in Trump supporters... regardless of whatever the latest moral debacle is.
Who do they call? Is there a phone ring of pastors and small-town counsel folks who post 'supporter' option polls hourly or check-in with FOX news?
Seriously, if you know, how they know, please let me know. Thanks :)
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| Jan. 22, 2018. |
No one answered my question about the quick math about the steadfastness of the Trump base. So, I forgot about it until I was listening to a podcast and they kept saying 35% still support Trump. This number bothers me. Why? Only 58% of people registered to vote, voted, 26% for Donald and 27% for Hillary. 5% for other candidates. Then they*(Reuters and HuffPost) say support for Trump has dropped from 2/3rds after the inauguration to less than 1/3rd now, since August and November 2017. Now in January 2018. I read this number of supporters as 26% minus two thirds of those voters or 8.7% of voters. Not the entire US population but of voters. So by this math, why do people still state that 35% still support this man? You are welcome to explain statistics out of election results versus polls to me. I'd like that actually. ☮
They* (links to sources)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-poll/trumps-low-approval-rating-masks-his-support-among-likely-voters-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1D8380
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-poll-support-levels_us_5993411fe4b0091416407ace
Sunday, January 28, 2018
Complaint to myself, posted here, who knows why.
Sunday, today is intended as a day of rest, but while resting I'm pondering survival. The sweet ideal where your work is something that matters. To love your life's work, the ultimate achievement. The stigma and stereotype of artist (starving to multi-million art star) legitimacy is always the debate. Tho, I guess it's the same for all humans regardless of career. The plethora of marginalized unprocessed writers. What are the mainstream publishing odds now in 2018? I'm too bitter to do the work to calculate the math. In 2010 after quite a shit-ton of research the ratio I came up with was 30,000:1. As in 30-k book manuscripts slush piled on the sagging roofs of the industry, for every one published and marketed novel. I'm truly not something else. This narrative artist/whatever I am, but I wish my mind worked another way. I try and fail to be logical. I attempt over and over again to think of ideas that make sense in this world. But, I need both the cents and the sense to make a survival. Lately, I am painfully aware of not making either.
Not giving up and just playing video games, watching TV and compulsively posting to social media. I do those things, but I am also slogging along on mass scribbled storyboards for another project. Depression, especially when it manifests itself as grumpy complaining is hellishly boring in my opinion. Just in case anyone wondered or got this far, reading? Some days I think the clicks on this blog are all me, checking for typoes then reloading because I never get them all.
December 18, 2017
battle for my attention - ceramic art versus clean inside art and writing stuff
Folded in-between pages of other doodles, some from my doodle-a-day expulsion-of-the-fool goal, and other scribble drafts of the main project I am currently working on, I have been designing ceramic art again. These “plans” include how I’m going to fire this new series of pieces, how I want to texture the surfaces and colors for glazes I haven’t mixed up yet, much less tested. It’s sad because I’m so close to being able to start working in my first-ever very-own clay-studio and also so far away from being in there doing that.
The guilt monster is like. “If that’s what you really want to do with your time, you’d be out there in that cold damp vermin-infested rickety box doing it. Nothing would stop you if that’s really what you want/who you are, so don’t feel sad, just do the thing.”
The rational part of my brain just glares at the guilt monster with a cold dead hatred like the stare from the scuffed-dull plastic-eyes of an old stuffed-animal that has taken years of abuse. In a way this is actual, I’m in a giant fuzzy housecoat and fuzzy slipper boots with plush winter pj’s on, all black with my plastic glasses and matted curly hair that needs a wash, again. I am rather like a human stuffed in a furry costume. It’s 40 something and dropping what do I expect this far North in December, of course with climate change it’s not as cold as it should be, but dude has as it been raining. It leaks in there. I’m not budging from my fuzzy wrappings for clay today. This is the conclusion I draw, but then, I keep thinking about my layers of wool and fake-silk hiker’s underwear, In a pile under my icky-clay-sweater and work-jumper. I might go out there and drag a few 50 lb bags and boxes of clay around. Then I think about the wedging table I haven’t built yet. Damn-it, need so much heavy stuff to make ceramic art. (Just FYI, built my clay wedging table in March, 2018).
I could set up for tiles, but things are not ready to dry a kiln load of art. They would explode just like the several kiln loads of tiles did before I started fire drying them. I don’t have fuel and time enough to waste fighting the weather to get things dry enough to not explode. I take a deep breath, turn the page and shift my focus.
The guilt monster is like. “If that’s what you really want to do with your time, you’d be out there in that cold damp vermin-infested rickety box doing it. Nothing would stop you if that’s really what you want/who you are, so don’t feel sad, just do the thing.”
The rational part of my brain just glares at the guilt monster with a cold dead hatred like the stare from the scuffed-dull plastic-eyes of an old stuffed-animal that has taken years of abuse. In a way this is actual, I’m in a giant fuzzy housecoat and fuzzy slipper boots with plush winter pj’s on, all black with my plastic glasses and matted curly hair that needs a wash, again. I am rather like a human stuffed in a furry costume. It’s 40 something and dropping what do I expect this far North in December, of course with climate change it’s not as cold as it should be, but dude has as it been raining. It leaks in there. I’m not budging from my fuzzy wrappings for clay today. This is the conclusion I draw, but then, I keep thinking about my layers of wool and fake-silk hiker’s underwear, In a pile under my icky-clay-sweater and work-jumper. I might go out there and drag a few 50 lb bags and boxes of clay around. Then I think about the wedging table I haven’t built yet. Damn-it, need so much heavy stuff to make ceramic art. (Just FYI, built my clay wedging table in March, 2018).
I could set up for tiles, but things are not ready to dry a kiln load of art. They would explode just like the several kiln loads of tiles did before I started fire drying them. I don’t have fuel and time enough to waste fighting the weather to get things dry enough to not explode. I take a deep breath, turn the page and shift my focus.
December 17, 2017
new blue is green
I'm messing with the light, and not turning on any lights. I know better. The camera always tells what the mind chooses to ignore and it is so grey in the Pacific Northwest it's green-blue. If you have a mood disorder affected by light, don't move here. Common knowledge, but true.
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| a grey town near a bay under a mountain in the rain 12-17-2017 |
December 13, 2017
www the interwebs belong to me and you
When the automobile was invented four engineers spread thousands of miles apart without any connection to each other designed a vehicle at the same time.
The real reason why Net Neutrality was voted down, past the obvious "money" and "power" is because many, many people spread across the world are sharing ideas. We the people of the world, not just the "police" of the world, the USA, but, we billions together are unstoppable. Instead of war, this time, the revolution could be passive and this ideal of a Star Treck like global economy with copy-left environmental patent sharing. "They" could lose control and we, the meek could rule the world. I am praying to a force without limitations and definition for our thousand years of world peace "they" can never profit from. I am praying for global economic leveling and a digital renaissance. For the hands working creative jobs robots can never do. For an end to the "new" racism of physical characteristic discrimination. For a planet saved from worthless greed by a selfless environmental shift of global consciousness. A megalomaniacal daydream for good.
☮ + 💚 Be  |
| Thoughts in the air and why "they" voted down Net Neutrality. |
January 27, 2015
divided time
Been, "playing" with the idea of making graphics, in-between multiple other life distractions.
A couple other graphic projects are in progress. This one ? feels about 1/5th of the way towards version 1.
It's an odd size so that I can work on it and see what I'm doing. Currently, it needs in-between animation frames, sound and the logo text layer is missing.
Also, I haven't shrunk it down to a nice small logo size yet. The size posted on this blog, it courtesy of the Blogger up-loader.
December 5, 2014
Looking forward to 2015 goals.
The last few months, I’ve been roughing out an idea for my 2015 art goal. Since our last move, I’ve not had a studio to work in. Studio or not, I need to make art and the media I have at hand is digital art. I’ve resisted digital art in general because I consider myself to be stylistically nearly the opposite of a graphic artist. Posted 17 second doodle animation example below is the type of "stuff" that just happens with out a plan or honed graphic artist "skills".
But, lately I realize my standards for what digital art is has been based on graphic art from past decades. Also, digital art, and computer screens to view art on has come a long way since 1991. So? while I continue to write / revise my fiction, I’ve drafted up a 2015 computer art goal.
Learning by doing to better understand what digital art is and improve my skills. I'm posting today to hold myself publically accountable to this goal.
2015 computer art goal — 50/52
50 digital art projects, one per week, (-2 weeks vacation ) with a social networking publicity component.
P.s. don’t worry it’s not going to be a 365 post every day of the year art goal like 2010 or a page / post a day like 2011.
Also the strange even to me 2012 ‘M’ project, I’m not worried about it, I’m moving forward.
2013? — Was a year of clay for me. See: art blogs if you like Narrative Notes or portfolio page, www.uvabe.com . (also something for me to work on, consolidating all blogs into one blog with a time-line. We shall see how that goes :)
2014? Was a writing / revising year, and also why I know I miss art terribly and plan to both write fiction and make art in 2015.
May 3, 2014
derivative post 1.
Today's post here May 3, 2014, was a test for photographing art derivative slips.
—
M art derivative slip project.
This art project is thematically about dealing with large numbers. People will say "I've heard that a million times" or talk of millionaires and billionaires, but few people actually attempt to comprehend what a million of anything actually is.
By Jan. 19, 2014 I had stopped signing and numbering the art derivative slips, but painted and cut down most of the art, easily more than 10k worth of slips.
Later, in 2018 I picked up this project again, cut signed and photographed a few more hundred bundles as doodles.
As of 2021 I'm picking up this impossible project again as I prepare for the old shack that is our art studio to be torn down.
As of 2021 I'm picking up this impossible project again as I prepare for the old shack that is our art studio to be torn down.
I do not know why I decided to start numbering these at 600k, possibly because they are ugly?
table 6/400
table 6/400
numbered art derivative slips starting at 600,000.
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| stack 600,000 — 601,000. ( minus slip 600,002 ) |
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