Okay, so this is creepy. On her YouTube channel, Taylor Lorenz looks into the phenomenon of people taking AI to be God-like. It’s part influencer grift and part mental health breakdown.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ phenomenon
www.youtube.comKeeping cradle Quakers
February 8, 2019
Rhiannon Grant asks: what’s the opposite of a Rumspringa?
So my questions for Quakers are: How do you ensure that adults are trusted to be adults even if they are under 30? How do you make sure that people are given opportunities to take responsibility without feeling that they must perform especially well because they are representing a whole demographic?
Here in the U.S., the trick to getting on national committees while young (at least when I was trying it in my 20s) was having a well-known mom. As someone who kept knocking and kept getting turned away it blew me away when I heard Quaker-famous offspring complain how they were always being asked to serve on committees. But then I realized it was the same tokenizing phenomenon, just in reverse.
So our work isn’t just looking around a room and ticking off demographic boxes, but really digging deeper and seeing if we’re representative of multi-dimensional diversities. And if we’re not, the problem isn’t just that we aren’t diverse (diversity is a fine value in and of itself but ultimately just a crude tool) but that we have unexamined cultural practices and selection systems that are systematically turning away people from community participation and service.
Derecho Storm Damage in Mays Landing
June 30, 2012
Last night a huge thunderstorm front with a phenomenon called a derecho swept across South Jersey. Where I live in Hammonton the strangest part of it was a strobe-light effect caused by dozens of cloud-to-cloud lightning flashes per minute, punctuated by lightning strikes. Further east into Atlantic County winds took down incredible amounts of trees.
This morning traveled to Mays Landing, which was scheduled to host a street festival today. A few brave merchants like Brownies Squared opened without power and made the best of it, selling refrigerated goods at half-price. But most of the town was dealing with trees across downed power lines. According to NBC40 Weather 162,000 households are without power – considerably more than were out in last year’s hurricane.
Links:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derecho
* https://twitter.com/nbc40weather/status/219078662530678784
Convergent Friends: Content not designed for our market?
April 24, 2009
Henry Jenkins (right) mixes up the names but has good commentary on the Susan Boyle phenomenon in How Sarah [Susan] Spread and What it Means. I’ve been quoting lines over on my Tumblr blog but this is a good one for Quaker readers because I think it says something about the Convergent Friends culture:
When we talk about pop cosmopolitanism, we are most often talking
about American teens doing cosplay or listening to K‑Pop albums, not
church ladies gathering to pray for the success of a British reality
television contestant, but it is all part of the same process. We are
reaching across borders in search of content, zones which were used to
organize the distribution of content in the Broadcast era, but which
are much more fluid in an age of participatory culture and social
networks.We live in a world where content can be accessed quickly from any
part of the world assuming it somehow reaches our radar and where the
collective intelligence of the participatory culture can identify
content and spread the word rapidly when needed. Susan Boyle in that
sense is a sign of bigger things to come — content which wasn’t
designed for our market, content which wasn’t timed for such rapid
global circulation, gaining much greater visibility than ever before
and networks and production companies having trouble keeping up with
the rapidly escalating demand.
Susan Boyle’s video was produced for a U.K.-only show but social media has allowed us to share it across that border. In the Convergent Friends movement, we’re discovering “content which wasn’t designed for our market” – Friends of all different stripes having direct access to the work and thoughts of other types of Friends, which we are able to sort through and spread almost immediately. In this context, the “networks and productions companies” would be our yearly meetings and larger Friends bodies.
Plain Quaker Nurse-In
June 16, 2005
I recently read a New York Times article on the resurging phenomenon of nurse-ins, designed to highlight the lack of laws giving mothers the right to nurse in public. Little did I realize a plain dressing Quaker near Grand Rapids Michigan was at the center of its nurse-in! From the local (link-unfriendly) newspaper:
As a Quaker woman, Jennifer Seif lives a modest and simple life. Breastfeeding is natural to her, and she has nursed her children while in the grocery store, the doctor’s office and during Quaker meetings without a problem. So the Grand Rapids woman was shocked and embarrassed in April when Kent County Clerk Mary Beth Hollinrake approached her while she was breastfeeding her infant son, Micah…“It’s shocking to me that anyone would be offended.” The mother of three said she was wearing a cape dress — a garment designed for discreet nursing…
I learned about this through the blog of Jenn and her husband Scott. Here’s Jenn’s post on the incident. For those wondering about their local protection, the La Leche League has a fabulous state-by-state listing of the nursing laws.
I don’t have anything to say (either)
June 3, 2005
 Summer visitations got an early start last month when the Northeast US “Quaker blogroll”:http://www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/Quaker_places.php converged in my back yard with no agenda to follow and no epistle to write.Front row: “James”:http://curiouspenn.blogspot.com/, “Jeffrey”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000588.php and visitation ringleader “Amanda”:http://ofthebest.blogspot.com/. Back: “Ryan”:http://snorkelinglight.blogspot.com/, “Rob”:http://consider-the-lilies.blogspot.com/, “Me”:/martink, “Theo”:/theo and poor blogless Christina. |
Well since Kwakersaur is inaugurating the “I don’t have anything to post”:http://kwakersaur.blogspot.com/2005/06/i‑dont-have-anything-to-say.html meme, I’ll chime in that I don’t either. Actually I’ve written two and half essays but realized they’re both really for myself. This is how it happens sometimes. I’ve long noticed this phenomenon in fully-formed verbal ministry that I know I’m not supposed to deliver and it feels as if such restraint is sometimes healthy on the blog. The message will reappear in other forums I’m sure, most likely next month’s “Gathering workshop”:www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/strangers with Zachary Moon.
In the meantime, there’s been fresh talk about plain language and dress this week by “Johan Maurer”:http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/2005/06/plain-language.htm, “Claire Reddy”:http://Quakerspeak.blogspot.com/2005/06/simplicity-unfocused-thought-blurt.html and the “Livejournal Quakers”:http://www.livejournal.com/community/Quakers/105292.html. Russ Nelson’s started a “Planet Quaker”:http://planet.Quaker.org/ blog aggregator (which includes Quaker Ranter: thanks!). LizOpp talked about “field testing”:http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2005/05/after-annual-sessions.html her upcoming “Quaker identity Gathering workshop”:http://www.fgcquaker.org/gathering/workshops/work36.php at Northern Yearly Meeting sessions and Kiara’s talked about “being field tested by Liz at this year’s NYM sessions”:http://wordspinning.blogspot.com/2005/05/northern-yearly-meeting.html (how cool is that?!).
I’ve been geeking out on “Del.icio.us”:http://del.icio.us/martin_kelley, the “social bookmarking” system and on the esoteric concepts of “tags”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tags, the “semantic web”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_web and “folksonomies”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy. Two weeks ago I would have laughed at these neologisms but I’m beginning to see that there’s something in all this. The only outward form the regulars will see is a more accurate “Related Entries” selection at the bottom of posts (thanks to “Adam Kalsey”:http://kalsey.com/blog/2003/05/related_entries_revisited/) and better visibility in “selected Technorati entries”:http://www.technorati.com/tag/Quaker (which will get less me-centric as I finish tagging my own back posts).
And of course we’re tilling the field, planting a garden, putting up laundry lines and otherwise thoroughly enjoying the first Spring in our new house. It’s bedtime, off to read the radically folksonomic adventures of Sam and “My Car”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060560452 (it’s pure tags: “My name is Sam.” “This is my car.” “I love my car.” I’d worry that not-so-baby Theo is getting too excited by combusion engines if he weren’t even more excited by “dia-di-calschht” aka the “bicycle” Papa rides off to work on.)
Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point”
April 18, 2004
Just finished a quick read of Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.” I remember devouring some of the original pieces in _The New Yorker_ and was thrilled when a friend loaned me a copy of the book.