Grant Winner: Ioana Mischie, maths books for autistic children

I’ve awarded a grant (£500 - £1000) to help Ioana Mischie complete a set of maths books to help autistic children. She writes:

“It is a known fact that Maths is hard for a high percentage of the population, especially for primary school children. 

There is a myth going around that autistic children are Maths geniuses and have an amazing memory. This is true but only for a small number of them. Most autistic children are struggling with basic maths concepts due to its abstract nature. Having stated that, you would expect that mainstream school that accept these children will have some adapted resources in order to facilitate learning. However, even the highest-ranked schools are not prepared for full inclusion.

I have been an autism Tutor (1:1 - shadow), working in mainstream schools for over 5 years. During this time, I had to develop the skill of teaching tricky Maths to children that could hardly do basic addition. I had to come up with my own strategies of breaking down abstract concepts to very small and simple steps using various strategies such as errorless teaching, backward chaining and endless repetition. I did this for so long as it became second nature creating strategies on the spot. Over the years, I gathered all my strategies having in mind that this might help other children too. That's how I came up with the idea of publishing a workbook.

When it comes to word problems, I came across a strategy that fits the level of understanding of ASD children, called SCHEMA, which refers to the underlying structure of the problem. The workbook will be focusing on additive SCHEMA (combine, difference or change).

Having access to a workbook containing over 100 word problems gives autistic children the opportunity to systematically move through SCHEMA  word problems concepts and consolidate each level of difficulty.

Additionally, it facilitates teaching as the workbook is designed to be worked on independently, once the strategy has been fully explained. The workbook will be accessible to children as young as 7 years old as the emphasis is mainly on comprehension including basic addition and subtraction equations. It will be finalised within the next couple of months and with Ben's support for founding, published in the spring time, on Amazon.”

Congratulations to Ioana.

More on the £1K grants for people making positive impact here.

Maps, Streets vs Roads - dates the age of a city

I found this map of city streets / roads / lanes and naming fascinating. It turns out that the naming of “street” or “road” is tied back to the time of when roads were made….

How many roads do you think lie within the border encompassing the City of London? The answer is NONE. Because there are no “roads” in London.

There are however a lot of streets, alleys and lanes. The reason that there are no streets called 'road' in the City of London is because the use of the word 'road' to indicate a byway did not emerge until the late 16th Century - a long time after most of the roads in the City of London were established and named.

The historical emergence of the use of Road as a name for streets in the late 16th Century can be observed in the road maps of most English towns and cities. Streets which were established before the 16th century are very unlikely to be called Road. Conversely parts of towns and cities which were built after the 16th Century are likely called Road.

A map looking at this here, which zooms and looks around the UK.

"Fake Meat", origins with Chinese Monks

I was discussing with a new friend the origins of “fake meat” – it happens to be deeply rooted in ancient Chinese cuisine. Beyond meat is 1000 years behind chinese monks. Fuschia Dunlop (one of the great writers on Chinese food) comments below - but I first heard it from my Mum and I’ve eaten some of the food in Asia.

...Vegetarian cooking in China owes a lot to Chinese Buddhist monks, who have existed in the country since the late Han dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE), after Indian missionaries brought the religion to this part of Asia. One tenant of Buddhist ideology is vegetarianism. Not wanting to break tradition when outsiders came to visit their monastery, China’s Buddhist monks would copy classic meat-based dishes, replacing the meat or fish with vegetables, tofu, or gluten.

Dunlop: “The imitation meat dishes are particularly associated with Buddhist monasteries, although monks themselves live on very simple vegetarian foods, they also have to entertain people from the outside, like patrons, potential benefactors, and visiting pilgrims.”

“A lot of these people would have been normally eating meat but they would eat vegetarian food when they went to a monastery.”

“There are records from the Tang dynasty, which is 618 to 907, of an official hosting a banquet serving imitation pork and mutton dishes made from vegetables. In the 13th century, which is one of the great periods of Chinese gastronomy and culinary development, there were restaurants in the southern Song dynasty capital, which is today's Hangzhou, where you could eat Buddhist vegetarian dishes.”

Dunlop in a 2019 Podcast / Chinese meal with Tyler Cowen mentioned how Chinese can view being vegetarian a little more flexibly:

“…But vegetarians in China do have a bit of a problem, and that is because the Chinese approach to vegetarian eating is very different from the Western approach. So in China, people often make a distinction between Chinese Su Shi 素食, vegetarian eating, vegetarian food, and Su Shi Zhu Yi 素食主义, vegetarianism. Many Chinese people believe in Buddhism and will have vegetarian food when they go to visit a temple or on certain holy days, but they don’t abstain from meat all the time. I’ve even met an elderly monk who was a lifelong vegetarian who said that when he was sick or weak, he would eat a little meat to boost his strength.

So vegetarians traveling around China have this problem, that sometimes they ask for vegetarian food, and it has little bits of meat in it, or it’s cooked with lard or stock or dried shrimps. It’s quite hard. You have to really insist to restaurants that “I am a total vegetarian. I don’t . . .” You have to list the things you don’t want, to explain.

The only place that traditionally you would get pure vegetarian and even vegan food is in Buddhist monasteries, and sometimes Taoist monasteries. The larger ones have their own restaurants which cater for pilgrims and patrons and do extraordinary vegetarian cuisine. So partly it’s simple vegetarian cooking, and partly it’s Fang Hun Cai 仿荤菜, imitation meat dishes. Impossible Burger, they got there centuries before you! So you can go in Sichuan to a monastery, and you can feast on spare ribs and shark’s fin and sausages and gong bao chicken, and they’re all totally vegetarian.

One change in the last few years is that there are a small number of Chinese people, maybe cosmopolitan, intellectual types in cities, who are becoming vegetarians in that Western way. It is, actually, often connected with Buddhism, but they are abstaining totally from meat, and not only from meat, but also from Wu Hun 五荤, the pungent aromatics like garlic and all kinds of oniony vegetables, which is also part of the Buddhist diet.”

Link to podcast and transcript here.

Grant Winner: Marjorie Morgan, oral history in North of England

I’ve awarded a grant to Marjorie Morgan based on her work documenting unheard voices. Recent work has included the Wind Rush generation and this grant will enable further documentation of communities around Liverpool.

A blog about the project below, more information on grants here.

#WeTalk Podcast Project by Marjorie H Morgan

This #WeTalk Liverpool Podcast Project is a continuation of oral history work and recording stories that I have been doing for decades. 

I have been writing and recording personal stories from marginalised voices - especially in the Black community -  for a many years. I was a director and oral history researcher for the Northamptonshire Black History Association (NBHA) before I moved to Liverpool where I have continued this work as an individual community archivist since my relocation in 2014. During my time with the NBHA we arranged interviews and researched histories of the target group, BAME people of Northamptonshire, and recorded and deposited the interviews in the local record office, as well as producing an award winning book: Sharing The Past.

This ThenDoBetter Grant will enable me to dedicate time to the initial research, interviews, the editing and the purchase of additional storage for the video and audio recordings for the continuation of this project in the Liverpool 8 area. Since confirmation of this gift I have now secured a location for the regular recording sessions, and I will be confirming the schedule of the next interviewees by the end of January 2020. 

I have chosen to focus on the people of the Liverpool 8 area with the aim of forging greater connections with the marginalised communities in Liverpool, specifically the Black and Ethnic Minority communities in the Toxteth and Dingle areas of the city: people who live outside of these area will not be excluded if they express an interest in contributing to the archives of these community regions.

The podcast format is designed to give people the time and space to talk about subjects that interest and matter to them. This can be personal, social, or political. The contributor can decide who and what they talk about - e.g. A Letter to … (this can even be a letter that was never sent but one the contributor wishes they could share with their earlier selves or another person).

Once recorded and edited, each individual podcast will be made available online, and a community screening will also be arranged where an edited version of all the stories can be shared, and later accessed as required. It is my vision that these podcasts will be both enlightening and informative, and that listeners will thereby build valuable connections in their communities.

The screening of this phase of #WeTalk Liverpool Podcast Project will either take place at the John Archer Hall at 68 Upper Hill Street, Liverpool, L8 1YR or at Toxteth TV, 37-45 Windsor Street, Liverpool, L8 1XE as these venues are in the centre of the communities identified.

The digital records will also be deposited at the Liverpool Central Library in the Record Office with Helena Smart, Archivist, for use throughout the Liverpool City Region Library services, including Toxteth Library, Windsor Street, Liverpool, L8 1XF.In 2018 I worked with the elders from the Steve Biko Housing Association to record some of their stories relating to their individual Windrush histories. See more here: https://youtu.be/UfdDyqMsa9o

In 2019 I interviewed a then 103 year old, British man (Jamaican-born) who served in several theatres of war for the British armed forces and has lived the majority of his life in Liverpool, Merseyside : https://youtu.be/OnePR4bj_Ak

You can see this below:

To get involved with #WeTalk Liverpool Podcast Project, or to recommend someone for me to talk with, please contact via LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/marjoriemorgan/

Or via the contact form here, Ben will send on details.

For more details on my work: www.marjoriemorgan.com

Other links: 

http://www.northants-black-history.org.uk/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sharing-Past-Northamptonshire-Black-History/dp/0955713919

https://liverpool.gov.uk/libraries/archives-family-history/https://www.stevebikoha.org/

---

£1k grants for people looking to make a positive impact.

TS Eliot's love letters to Emily Hale unveiled

The love letters of TS Eliot to Emily Hale (likely inspiration for many of his famous poems) have been revealed (around Jan 2020), 50 years since Hale’s passing.

Eliot wrote a statement - more a letter - to accompany the letters, whenever they were to be unveiled.  The letter goes:

“It is painful for me to have to write the following lines. I cannot conceive of writing my autobiography. It seems to me that those who can do so are those who have led purely public and exterior lives, or those who can successfully conceal from themselves what they prefer not to know about themselves – there may be a few persons who can write about themselves because they are truly blameless and innocent. In my experience, there is much for which one cannot find words even in the confessional; much which springs from weakness, irresolution and timidity, from petty self-centredness rather than from inclination towards evil or cruelty, from error rather than ill-nature. I shall be as brief as I can.

During the course of my correspondence with Emily Hale, between 1932 and 1947, I liked to think that my letters to her would be preserved and made public after we were dead – fifty years after. I was however, disagreeably surprised when she informed me that she was handing the letters over to Princeton University during our lifetime – actually in the year 1956. She took this step, it is true, before she knew that I was going to get married. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that her disposing of the letters in that way at that time threw some light upon the kind of interest which she took, or had come to take, in these letters. The Aspern Papers in reverse.

I fell in love with Emily Hale in 1912, when I was in the Harvard Graduate School. Before I left for Germany and England in 1914 I told her that I was in love with her. I have no reason to believe, from the way in which this declaration was received, that my feelings were returned, in any degree whatever. We exchanged a few letters, on a purely friendly basis, while I was up at Oxford during 1914-15.

To explain my sudden marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood would require a good many words, and yet the explanation would probably remain unintelligible. I was still, as I came to believe a year later, in love with Miss Hale. I cannot however make even that assertion with any confidence: it may have been merely my reaction against my misery with Vivienne and desire to revert to an earlier situation. I was very immature for my age, very timid, very inexperienced. And I had a gnawing doubt, which I could not altogether conceal from myself, about my choice of a profession – that of a university teacher of philosophy. I had had three years in the Harvard Graduate School, at my father’s expense, preparing to take my Doctorate in Philosophy: after which I should have found a post somewhere in a college or university. Yet my heart was not in this study, nor had I any confidence in my ability to distinguish myself in this profession. I must still have yearned to write poetry. For three years I had written only one fragment, which was bad (it is, alas, preserved at Harvard). Then in 1914 Conrad Aiken showed Prufrock to Ezra Pound. My meeting with Pound changed my life. He was enthusiastic about my poems, and gave me such praise and encouragement as I had long since ceased to hope for. I was happier in England, even in wartime, than I had been in America: Pound urged me to stay in England and encouraged me to write verse again. I think that all I wanted of Vivienne was a flirtation or a mild affair: I was too shy and unpractised to achieve either with anybody. I believe that I came to persuade myself that I was in love with her simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also under the influence of Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England. To her, the marriage brought no happiness: the last seven years of her life were spent in a mental home. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land. And it saved me from marrying Emily Hale.

Emily Hale would have killed the poet in me; Vivienne nearly was the death of me, but she kept the poet alive. In retrospect, the nightmare agony of my seventeen years with Vivienne seems to me preferable to the dull misery of the mediocre teacher of philosophy which would have been the alternative.

For years I was a divided man (just as, in a different way, I had been a divided man in the years 1911-1915). In 1932 I was appointed Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard for one year; and even Vivienne’s mother agreed that it was out of the question for Vivienne to go to America with me. I saw Emily Hale in California (where she was teaching in a girls’ college) early in 1933, and I saw her from time to time every summer, I think from 1934 on, as she always joined her aunt and uncle who took a house every summer at Chipping Campden.

Upon the death of Vivienne in the winter of 1947, I suddenly realised that I was not in love with Emily Hale. Gradually I came to see that I had been in love only with a memory, with the memory of the experience of having been in love with her in my youth. Had I met any woman I could have fallen in love with, during the years when Vivienne and I were together, this would no doubt have become evident to me. From 1947 on, I realised more and more how little Emily Hale and I had in common. I had already observed that she was not a lover of poetry, certainly that she was not much interested in my poetry; I had already been worried by what seemed to me evidence of insensitiveness and bad taste. It may be too harsh, to think that what she liked was my reputation rather than my work. She may have loved me according to her capacity for love; yet I think that her uncle’s opinion’s (her uncle by marriage, a dear old man, but wooly-minded) meant more to her than mine. (She was fond of her uncle John but did not get on very well with her Aunt Edith). I could never make her understand that it was improper for her, a Unitarian, to communicate in an Anglican church: the fact that it shocked me that she should do so made no impression upon her. I cannot help thinking that if she had truly loved me she would have respected my feelings if not my theology. She adopted a similar attitude with regard to the Christian and Catholic view of divorce.

I might mention at this point that I never at any time had any sexual relations with Emily Hale.

So long as Vivienne was alive I was able to deceive myself. To face the truth fully, about my feelings towards Emily Hale, after Vivienne’s death, was a shock from which I recovered only slowly. But I came to see that my love for Emily was the love of a ghost for a ghost, and that the letters I had been writing to her were the letters of an hallucinated man, a man vainly trying to pretend to himself that he was the same man that he had been in 1914.

It would have been a still greater mistake to have married Emily than it was to marry Vivienne Haigh-Wood. I can imagine the sort of man each should have married – different from each other, but also very different from me. It is only within the last few years that I have known what it was to love a woman who truly, selflessly and whole-heartedly loves me. I find it hard to believe that the equal of Valerie ever has been or will be again; I cannot believe that there has ever been a woman with whom I could have felt so completely at one as with Valerie. The world with my beloved wife Valerie has been a good world such as I have never known before. At the age of 68 the world was transformed for me, and I was transformed by Valerie.

May we all rest in peace“ (Source TS Eliot Foundation)

Scholars think these lines in the Four Quartets may have been about Emily Hale:

“What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden. My words echo

Thus, in your mind.”

In his letters he wrote to Hale:

“You have made me perfectly happy: that is, happier than I have ever been in my life; the only kind of happiness now possible for the rest of my life is now with me; and though it is the kind of happiness which is identical with my deepest loss and sorrow, it is a kind of supernatural ecstasy.”

In the end, he didn’t marry Hale after his first wife died. He married Valerie.

And, no one exactly knows why. All Eliot wrote:

“Emily Hale would have killed the poet in me; Vivienne nearly was the death of me, but she kept the poet alive.”

Poetry as mysterious as poets as people as love as everyone else.

Theatre teaching business, teaming, trust and speaking up

-what theatre teaches me about elite teams and business 

-speaking up and empowering people 

I work in a high performing team within investing. This is a very competitive “sport”. There are many smart teams also competing and it’s a mix of skill and luck which is complex.  It’s very hard to beat the benchmark and competitors over time. There is a large amount of noise and bias.

In my view the best teams learn from other “sports” and industries. I’m fortunate that I’ve been part of elite teams within theatre. I happen to assess elite management teams within business and healthcare R&D, but that’s another story. 

The three concepts I’d like to discuss are:

Psychologist Safety or SpeakUp

Teaming, or when it’s not possible to do it all

Prosocial, or giving as a way to excel 

I’ve blogged previously on the Amy Edmondson work and the Google studies on the importance of psychological safety within teams. (Link end).   This is the idea that you need to be able to feel free to say anything to your team and when you can’t or don’t feel safe - then a team fails to perform at its best. 

The best theatre teams I’ve worked with always nurture this.  While it’s often led by a director, this doesn’t have to be the case. I’ve seen ensemble and collaborative work, not director led.

These teams encourage all members (including lighting, sound, costume, stage management and so on) to speak up if they have an idea or see something wrong. 

Part of this is the observation that much theatre has no “correct” answer. It’s an act of creation which may be finally somewhat completed or judged by an audience but has no answer.

I’m aware of some directors that lead by sheer force of ideas and personality. On occasion these create spectacular works but the dark side is that teams don’t or can’t speak up and feel safe. 

As I will reflect on giving and vulnerability this has allowed at times a culture of abuse where people didn’t speak up. (cf. MeToo)

I speculate as to how much greater their works might have been with an ensemble vision over a singular vision. As theatre like football is mostly a team endeavour unlike golf which is more singular.

Still there is something special about the rehearsal room. This is a space specifically designed to learn, experiment, practice and “fail”.  It’s accelerated and intense. 

Business teams would benefit from seeing elite theatre makers - directors, actors, backstage, design - in action. 

There is no failure in the best rehearsals because there’s only learning on what might work for this group at this time. Final completion can’t be until audience stage (and that may continue to develop too). There’s no fixed mindset. 

On top of this, theatre is not an activity where you can do it all yourself. Actors don’t work in a vacuum and even solo shows have lights, directors, maybe sound or movement, design or costumes and so on. There is a definitive understanding of this from the start. 

While most businesses today are in an hierarchy, they most often operate in teams and while CEOs might lead them, they rely on numerous sets of teams to keep their businesses running and they themselves - although they might not realise it - are part of a team. 

Rehearsals teach businesses and teams about continuous improvement. In terms of innovation or acts of creation, they teach about how to learn and how no learning occurs without “mistakes, dead ends or failures” - which seem to me be words with the wrong tone for innovation. 

The acts of theatre should remind business people that no one works alone and that we work best in teams. And in reality business people are already leading teams.  

Where do theatre teams go beyond the normal? It’s often in how much the players give.  Of themselves, to others. In theatre, there is (and was) the danger which we now see in MeToo but that is giving without safety - and psychological safety embedded by the whole team must come first.  

But where that is in place then the best theatre is very generous in what the players give. 

Turning to business this is embodied in the idea of servant-leaders.  Leaders who lead by giving back to the whole organisation and help try and raise up everyone else. 

Why does this giving behaviour seem to work? I don’t have solid evidence but my speculation is that what is happening is that the value of the social and relationship “asset” grows from this type of pro-social behaviour. Trust grows. Of course, it doesn’t always pay-off.  The world is complex. But typically giving is a form of investing in our relationships and our social value and humans after all are social creatures and we value that. 

There’s much more theatre can teach, which I may come back to another time, but I will leave it with those observations on the importance of psychological safety, of teaming and of how giving builds trust and that can lead to extraordinary performance.

More? Here’s my blog on what Google found on what makes great teams (Amy Edmondson work).

---

Check out my £10K micro-grants for people looking to make positive impact.

Dessa, rapper, writer; memoir

I listened to Dessa rap and sing with the BBC Wales orchestra, this month. Her sparkly character glittering about the stage. Her voice has a sensual, draw you in, complex timbre. Her lyrics are complex and playful. She’s written memoir essays about her time on the road, falling in and out of love and the like.

It’s a keen intellect that shines through. One peppered with a life hard and well lived. Touching lightly on mental health and the craziness of forging your own musical path:

She writes in her first essay:

“... Today’s conventional wisdom says that the best way to live a life is to keep all the components partitioned—love, money, friends. You’re not supposed to date your boss, or go bowling with your analyst, or borrow large sums of money from your drinking buddies. We think of ourselves as a store-bought cake with a sheet of wax paper separating all the slices so that they never touch: neat, single servings. But hanging out with Doomtree, it was all one thing—social, professional, romantic. I did all of it with the same people and often at the same time. There were no hobbies and no off-hours, no work-life balance; there was just writing songs and walking to SuperAmerica for cigarettes and drafting set lists and drinking with the guys and making album budgets and goofing off and collapsing into sleep tucked into the leopard print of my boyfriend’s left shoulder. None of it came apart from the rest….”

And on deciding to be an artist:

“...Like a meteor shower, a series of questions flashed through my consciousness at regular intervals: Q: How long should I do this before I give up? Part of the challenge in becoming an artist is that you have to place your bets before you’re fully dealt. You have to assess your talent, still half-formed, and decide what you are willing to stake on it. There’s no best-practice handbook for the pursuit of unlikely dreams. How much of your life should you spend trying to be an astronaut or a fashion model or a professional rapper before deciding it’s time to redirect your energies? A year? Two? Ten?

Some members of Doomtree are genuinely art-for-art’s-sake creative types. Cecil Otter is like that, I think. He’ll emerge from a thirteen-hour production session bleary-eyed and blissed-out by whatever he heard through the headphones. I’ve never been that kind of purist. For me the communication of an artistic idea is fundamental to the endeavor. If there wasn’t someone at both ends of the line, at some point, I’d just want to hang up.

Q: What are the opportunity costs here? I knew that I was capable of making a good living in another field—I had gotten good grades, could interview well, was willing to work hard. If music wasn’t going to be my life’s path, then the time I spent writing songs and bios and press releases might be better spent doing something else—going back to school, or applying for a full-time job, or maybe teaching English abroad, where at least it’d feel like I was contributing. I was a lousy waitress. I was a pretty good tech writer, but couldn’t envision it as a long-term gig. And I couldn’t butterfly forever.

Q: Am I delusional—like, fully out of my damn mind? I’d venture that there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of young women at this very moment who aspire to be the first female president. And one of them will be. The problem is it’s impossible to tell if you’re the one. When small children say they want to be quarterbacks or tap dancers, they’re applauded for their audacity. Aunts and uncles toss a ball around the backyard and buy a little fedora for Christmas. When you are a grown-up who says she wants to be a rapper, the blush is off the rose. The conversation at the Christmas table is more likely to include the words compound and interest than follow and dreams. And it is a little crazy to believe that you can navigate a career path that seems to pan out so rarely. The numbers say you’re almost certainly wrong.

Q: Could wanting it badly enough make it real? This question isn’t about hard work—that’s a prerequisite. It’s about taping blinders to your temples; categorically writing off the critics who don’t like what you do; categorically writing off the counsel of the people who love you and worry about how you’re doing, to insist, I am going to will this into reality. This is the Tinker Bell model. She’s only real because she is clapped into existence. The children refuse to entertain any alternative, and the force of their desire and their determination has metaphysical consequences. The Tinker Bell model is the nuclear option. It taps every reserve. It permits no Plan Bs. It’s bold, reckless, conceited, juvenile—right up until it works. And then, in hindsight, it’s brave, windblown, and scored with strings that sustain right into the commercial break. I’ve known artists who’ve tattooed their hands and faces to ensure they’d have no recourse, no desk-job escape chute…”

I’ve heard artists talk about no Plan B. I don’t know how many burn out - an exploding star.

But those that survive are forged into some alchemical metal.

The above passage is some of her least lyrical more business like writing. Mostly it’s cheeky and funny. Rhapsodic with Street smart lyrical-ness and amazing erudition that her rap-cleverness can’t hide. I’m somewhat in awe and a tiny bit in love. This must be what her audiences feel.

She paints faces (dressed as a butterfly) to make money before her music has taken off. The children ask her:

“...Most days, I fielded the same set of questions: Q: Can I get two? “Unlikely. This line is very long. But if there are no blank faces, come back and I’ll do your other side.”

Q: Are you a kid or an adult? The costume made it tough to tell if I was a giant child or just a parent in disguise. “I’m an in-between.”

Q: If your wings are real, then can you fly? “Kid, nobody can paint while flying.”

Q: Is this, like, what you do? Your job? Well, honey, that one’s complicated. Some days I paint faces. Yes, for money. And sometimes I write instructional manuals as an independent contractor. And sometimes I wait tables at a sports bar downtown. And sometimes I work as a temp for an agency like Dolphin Staffing—which is not as magical as it sounds—but at night, I am a rapper at a precarious point in her—

Q: I saaaaid, is this, like, what you do? Your job? “Well, I’m face painting and you’re waiting to get painted. So is that your job? Being second in line to get face painted? Are you a professional paintee?”

Q: Do you have a boyfriend? I do, but only for a little while longer. He’s becoming a famous person, I think, and there is no competing for first place in his heart because that position was already occupied by music-making when I met him. And maybe the best spot in my heart is reserved for the same thing. But all sorts of people want a piece of him now, including beautiful women who I don’t think he has the self-discipline to turn away. And I am a sizzling mess: angry and jealous and vengeful and sad. That’s the truth, but I can’t share it with you because you’re too young and this is supposed to be a party and I’m being paid by the hour.

Q: Do you have a boyfriend? “How come? Are you single? Are you asking me on a day-yate?”

And like the best heroine-quests she ends…

“...Now, years after that first NPR review and my last face-painting gig, I’ll sometimes stand at the edge of the stage during a Doomtree show. I’ll put my finger to my mouth to quiet the room. I’ll hold my mic off to the side, a gesture that will usually send a round of shhhs through the crowd. Unamplified, I’ll yell something like: “Hey, we’re Doomtree. I’m Dessa. That’s Sims, that’s P.O.S, that dapper gentleman is Cecil Otter, and my guy Mike Mictlan is the hero who thought to grab the case of waters from backstage. Here behind the tables, where the magic happens, is Lazerbeak and Paper Tiger. If it’s your first time seeing us: welcome. If you’ve been coming for ten years: thank you. The reason that seven musicians can play a two-hour show to a sold-out room—even though we don’t have a big song on the radio, even though we aren’t in Sprite ads, even though we write pop songs that are eight goddamn minutes long—is you. Our growth has been slow, and if you’ve been here from the beginning, you know that’s true. But because we make our money in ten-dollar increments at that merch table right there—wave, Ander! That’s Ander—we’ve been able to maintain total artistic control. We don’t have to ask a record executive if it’s a good idea to pick the song with a clarinet sample in 6/ 8 as the first single—of course that’s not a good idea—but it’s good art, dammit, so we’re doing it. Doomtree runs on word of mouth and pixie dust. We are real because you’ve said we are. We’re the Tinker Bell of this rap shit. So thank you….”

Read her memoir essays on Amazon here. So many interesting artists still to be discovered by me. Sign up to me monthly newsletter below.

---

Here’s a Dessa song

---

Fancy another blog? Zadie Smith Writing Tips here.

Dating, how we do it, how on-line is taking over

-how we date (most US couples now meet on line)

-what it means for friendships and discourse 

-what it means for female empowerment and visual signalling

The internet is the primary way couples meet today in the US and I suspect most of the connected rich economies. 

This is already having profound implications on several trends. 

I missed the era of dating apps although I did organise a few speed dating events as a tiny startup experiment.  It was a much less efficient precursor to what we can see in Tinder and the like today. 

Trends amongst many I observe are: 

• Increased power to women (het)

• Increased ease/safety to certain minority groups

• Increased value to “visual signalling”

• Decreasing power to weak friendships and potentially decreasing mixing of different viewpoints within friendships, non-romantic relationships. 

Het women in their 20s now have pretty much the entire age range of men as potential mates and very low cost to switching dates powered by apps and  the web.

The outcomes are many shorter relationships, as people discover red flags earlier and the cost to switching is low. 

Women don’t have to stay within the typical social and friendship hierarchies to find mates. 

The rise of “ghosting” is because the cost of switching away is so low.  Mostly in social cost.  Who cares if you ghost? It’s easier than the awkward (social cost) conversation of telling them you don’t want to see them again.

As initial contact is visual and initial signalling is also visual - mostly Instagram over FB but perhaps some of both, plus messaging - social visual signalling value is on the increase.  Think cosmetics, teeth alignment, rentable fashion perhaps; signalling of experience (selfie).

Also note this phenomenon is not so well understood - on average - by those over 40 who mostly haven’t experienced these phenomena as strongly. (Early Last decade people used to lie if they met online, now it’s the norm they don’t.)

The advantages to gay, same-sex, religious and other minority groups was obvious earlier - with same-sex online  meet-ups being overwhelmingly the main way of relationship formation from last decade. 

There’s initial evidence that potentially marriage stability is now increasing. It’s tentative but it might be that the online selection process is leading - at least for now - to more stable longer term relationships.

The second order downside is - I think - in friendship formation and the creative clashing on meeting people who think differently to you. 

I acknowledge this is costly. Going to friends or friends house parties or after-work drinks with a partial goal of finding potential dates is time, effort and socially effortful.

However it had the side-effect of real world meetings that lead to friendships, networks and increasing social capital. IMO. 

These gatherings enhance social cohesion and capital as different thinkers (classes, politics etc) tend to civility and understanding in real world interactions (over online). 

This social effect is somewhat hard to study but comes under the “contact or extended-contact hypothesis”. That’s typically seen in reducing discrimination and racism under the right circumstances.  Overall, I would see it as reducing “hatred” between, say, left-right or brexit-remain or other clashing groups. These groups continue to clash online and in the media, but my observations is that real world meetings are more benign.

As dating has been moved into a somewhat separate field of endeavour, the spillover for forming friendships or meeting different thinking people has - I think - decreased and won’t be helping civility, polarisation and empathy. Perhaps I extend this too far, but I seem to see a similar effect on some social media platforms. You connect like with like and you are shown things you like or cause you outrage; you are not shown naturally nuanced views which might be somewhat different to your in an engaging way, that you have to engage with - as you might in an after work drinks situation.

It could well be that the benefits particularly to women outweigh the negative trade-offs. But it might also account for why safe interesting mixed live event meet-ups continue or will continue to flourish on a local level. As we still need more of them too. And that’s partly the impulse behind the Mingle I host.

A chart on how women rate men (skewed) vs man rating women (normal-ish)

Source: Dataclysm, (Rudder)

---

Links: Next Mingle Details.

The time I went to visit one of the most people on earth the Wana Tribe.

Sign up to monthly newsletter below.

Cost of living in NYC

NYC.  Wow. It’s been a year but you remain such a concentrated blast of humanity.

I land in the wind. Some planes are cancelled so it’s lucky I make it. 

LaGuardia is under going construction. I ponder if they had any climate protesters.  The cars are jammed packed trying to drop in and out of the airport. It’s so crammed, that groups of us are bussed 5 or so minutes away to a taxi area. 

Yes.  A bus to catch a taxi. An Uber would have been a better idea. 

The taxi driver suggests airport staff don’t really care much about efficiently moving passengers as they are paid by the hour.  Unlike him. 

Later, another taxi driver and I discuss the prices of taxis. He has the unexpectedly wise assertion that everything has a value/price and why would you buy something at a high value/price   Expressing limited sympathy for those driver who bought taxi medallions are very high prices which have subsequently crashed. 

Drivers still have the pulse on certain aspects of a city. The traffic is bad. Speeds are slow and mobility is not great and fairly expensive by taxi or Uber. 

Subway still moves but looks dilapidated and a similar impression vs. Last year of under investment in this area

I ride the A train to JFK on a Friday evening.  The carriage is predominantly black, the dress seems “lower class”, no suits, no obvious wealth. The middle class seems absent presumably in their Ubers or simply not in the A train route. 

I like to walk and ride and bus to find the pulse of a city.  I don’t have the time in my few hours to do that here.  

The centre on Manhattan feels as crowded as ever. Gawping tourists, focused and exasperated locals.

The everyday cost of living seems to have increased again in a year. Milk is $8 in a random shop.

The buffet breakfast a notable expensive and Hotel Staple is over $30 with the tipping reaching 20% levels as a consistent nudge up.

I was in NYC over Sep 11. I’ve only fleetingly passed the world trade centre since but this time I’m deep in the bowels of Brookfield Place / Westfield / World Trade. 

The feel is man made almost space-sci-fi like. Lots of white. These arches and patterns and humans and humans and humans moving and moving and moving.

I sense we must look like ants to any higher beings.

We pass by some of our modern consumer temples occasionally stopping by to give an offering and to receive candles, tea or headphones - a human paraphernalia. 

I’m mostly in mobility or a hotel or an office-temple.

These corporate temples.  Very hard to describe to outsiders. But I invite a handful in to see Thinking Bigly. It goes well only mildly subversive. I joke… It is the closest I’m going to come to Broadway.  

Source: Numbeo / RHS = NYC , LHS = London. Milk turns out to be cheaper in NYC in this. But while there are some super markets eg Trader Joes and the like, there are seemingly more places like Tesco supplying cheap groceries in London than NYC. I sense Londoners might cook more too.

Chatting with my old friends, I’m surprised to find out how much more the cost of living in NYC has become.  Especially in terms of groceries. This was only anecdote about the price of milk and chicken and the like but I went to check it out on comparison websites. These show that NYC is almost 80% more expensive on groceries than London. The gap between restaurants and groceries is closer - perhaps one reason why there might be more takeout in NYC than cooking at home (many NYCers don’t cook much). 

It means for $7000 dollars cost in living standards  in NYC can be had for $5000 in London.

While average salaries are higher in NYC it must be a real squeeze for the  lower earning parts of NYC. 

Still it’s culture is super vibrant- even if you might have to pay for it.

---

Free speech, political truth and fake news

Free speech, political truth and fake news 

Mark Zuckerberg’s latest thinking

Aaron Sorkin open letter

Mark Zuckerberg gave a (long) speech setting out how he is drawing the line on FB in terms of policing what people say or not. (Link end) extract here and then Aaron Sorkin’s reply and then Zuck again. 

“...  Our idea of free expression has become much broader over even the last 100 years. Many Americans know about the Enlightenment history and how we enshrined the First Amendment in our constitution, but fewer know how dramatically our cultural norms and legal protections have expanded, even in recent history.

… We now have significantly broader power to call out things we feel are unjust and share our own personal experiences. Movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo went viral on Facebook -- the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was actually first used on Facebook -- and this just wouldn't have been possible in the same way before. 100 years back, many of the stories people have shared would have been against the law to even write down. And without the internet giving people the power to share them directly, they certainly wouldn't have reached as many people. With Facebook, more than 2 billion people now have a greater opportunity to express themselves and help others….

While it's easy to focus on major social movements, it's important to remember that most progress happens in our everyday lives. It's the Air Force moms who started a Facebook group so their children and other service members who can't get home for the holidays have a place to go. It's the church group that came together during a hurricane to provide food and volunteer to help with recovery. It's the small business on the corner that now has access to the same sophisticated tools only the big guys used to, and now they can get their voice out and reach more customers, create jobs and become a hub in their local community. Progress and social cohesion come from billions of stories like this around the world….

...People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world -- a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society. People no longer have to rely on traditional gatekeepers in politics or media to make their voices heard, and that has important consequences. I understand the concerns about how tech platforms have centralized power, but I actually believe the much bigger story is how much these platforms have decentralized power by putting it directly into people's hands. It's part of this amazing expansion of voice through law, culture and technology….

...So giving people a voice and broader inclusion go hand in hand, and the trend has been towards greater voice over time. But there's also a counter-trend. In times of social turmoil, our impulse is often to pull back on free expression. We want the progress that comes from free expression, but not the tension. ..”

In riposte -

Aaron Sorkin wrote an open letter in the NYT. 

“...Most people don’t have the resources to employ a battalion of fact checkers. Nonetheless, while you were testifying before a congressional committee two weeks ago, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked you the following: “Do you see a potential problem here with a complete lack of fact-checking on political advertisements?” Then, when she pushed you further, asking you if Facebook would or would not take down lies, you answered, “Congresswoman, in most cases, in a democracy, I believe people should be able to see for themselves what politicians they may or may not vote for are saying and judge their character for themselves.”

Now you tell me. If I’d known you felt that way, I’d have had the Winklevoss twins invent Facebook….”

And Zuck quotes Sorkin back at him:

This will be a pivotal debate of our times in terms of how internet platforms for content are regulated or not. 

Sorkin in NYT

Zuck on free speech (via FB). 

FWIW I don’t know enough to know who’s right, but I sense they both authentically think they are right.