#pear text

[pearwaldorf]

Sinners is amazing. It is a movie that should be seen in theaters, although idk if the IMAX format is strictly necessary (Coogler recommends it). That premium technology experience is expensive!

I appreciate movies made by people who know exactly what kind of story they want to tell and how they want to do it. It's accessible to a non-Black audience if they want it to be, but it is very clear it is not for the dominant culture.

It was very smart to make Remmick, somebody of Irish descent, the villain. The movie makes clear the Irish had their own version of griots, the fili. And the loss of that connection is what motivates the central conflict of the story. (How it relates to things outside of the movie? Well.)

As somebody of Chinese ancestry, I'd heard the movie includes Chinese immigrants who did settle in Mississippi*, but I thought they'd have a bit part, not integrated into the story itself.

I was already all in on that beautiful scene in the juke, with Sammie piercing the borders between time and space and making those connections between music and heritage and resistance that are important for Black people but others too. And then I saw the opera dancer floating in amongst everybody else and cried even harder.

Like. This is first and foremost a Black story. But it doesn't mean other people weren't there. It means a great deal to me that Grace and Bo were included and had the same motivation and stakes as the Black characters, because they were part of the community too.

Historically, the fight for civil rights in the US has been explicitly intersectional. The Black civil rights movement is what helped galvanize so many others, and there was a great deal of intellectual exchange between members of all the movements.

It is good to have explicit reminders of that solidarity, especially in times where there are attempts to set some minorities above others like we don't all end up in the same boat eventually. I'm grateful to Coogler for including that, even though he didn't have to.

--

* C.O. Chinn was a Black man of Chinese ancestry. He and his family lived in Canton** and provided material support to the SNCC in may ways. He was a fucking badass and you should read about him.

** According to the locals, Canton's name has a foreign origin even if there's no actual documentation for it. (Canton is an older Anglicized name for Guangzhou Province.)

[pearwaldorf]

Networking for introverts, a webinar summary

So I am unemployed and have been for a while, and I attended a webinar Sharon Parris gave about networking for introverts. Here are my notes from the meeting, which I hope will be useful to you.

(I found Sharon through her participation in a job hunting thing hosted by Future Community. While I do not have specific need of her services, she might be helpful for those of you who have been thinking about career coaching or need assistance with strategic or logistical stuff for your nonprofit/small business.)

Broadly: introverts are individuals who do not generally feel energized by being around people. It is not necessarily the same as being shy or socially anxious, although they can certainly overlap.

Networking does not have to happen in person or at Those Types of events. It can happen anywhere you speak to somebody about your goals: catching up with a friend, at the hairdresser, in the line at the grocery store.

And networking is generally not the same as trying to get leads or potential clients. It is about building on a connection you make at one of these events.

Things you need to network

An elevator pitch/value proposition.

This is basically a short spiel (30 seconds to a minute is what I've heard) that gives a person:

A clear, strong sense of purpose for you/your org

Where you're going/what you need

What you're trying to accomplish

What you're trying to look for

Who you want to meet (a specific person, "someone who X")

A goal for a networking event

This can be as big or as small as you like. Examples:

Meet two to three (or just one!) people you'd like to follow up with

Practice your elevator pitch on someone (or multiple people)

Identify potential collaborators/partnerships

Find somebody/an org who can X (solve a problem you have, has expertise in an area you want to learn more about, etc)

A friend/accountability partner/cheerleader (optional but helpful)

Knowing somebody you know already will be there helps soooo much

Extroverts are extremely helpful here because they will drag you with them to meet new people

Sometimes we're not good at gassing ourselves up but our friends/colleagues will do that for us happily

Updated contact info/website/socials

You want people to be able to get ahold of you and see your best online self!

Business cards/business card app (HiHello was mentioned, I've never used it)

Spruced up LinkedIn (yes I know, I know; also more LinkedIn info below)

How to follow up after networking to build relationships

Lots of tiny touches build relationships

Have genuine interest in others, what they do, and what they care about

Connect on Linkedin

Message a note of thanks and next steps

Schedule a time to reconvene (possibly on a regular basis)

Share resources (or follow up on a resource/connection that was offered to you)

If something reminds you of someone definitely let them know. People love knowing other people are thinking about them

Let people help you. It makes them feel good towards you

Find tools that will help you do that

Your brain is not a container and should not be treated like one. Record that shit down somewhere you can access it later

Hubspot email templates/CRM system

Boomerang

Calendly

Task management software (set recurring reminders)

Administrative work (or somebody doing it instead of you) can be a form of care and regard.

LinkedIn tweaks

(idk anything about how to do this, it's just stuff I wrote down)

Do not use the #opentowork frame. Insights from Premium customers say recruiters will actually avoid clicking on pictures with it.

Have a nice up-to-date headshot/profile pic

Your headline follows you around the site so make it a good one. This is a good place for your elevator speech/value proposition

It's a free portfolio in a high-traffic place. Put things you want to feature! Also you can link to projects/white papers/wev in your experience sections

Get recommendations for skills and rec other people for theirs

Recruiters like consultants so make your page look a little consultant-y

[pearwaldorf]

We should all say thank you to Jordan Peele for rescuing Monkey Man from streaming because this movie deserves to be seen on a big screen. There was a lot of love and craft put into this movie and I'm glad it can be properly appreciated.

I am pleased to report it absolutely fucks and the soundtrack is banging. It owes a lot to John Wick, of course, but also Atomic Blonde and Hong Kong action movies. (They didn't even use all six shots in the revolver, which was a nice touch.) I would watch a whole John Wick-esque franchise with Dev Patel as an action hero.

If, like me, you are a fan of attractive men suffering and/or getting fucked up, this movie will feed you extremely well.

I'm extremely not familiar with Indian cinema, but it's real interesting watching this after RRR. (To be clear, this is a movie made by somebody of Indian descent, but it is not exactly an Indian movie.) Not just in political outlook (the evil politician and his party are clearly meant to evoke Modi and the BJP), but how they use Hindu religious imagery to frame the story.

[edit:] Netflix gave up the rights to the movie precisely because of the portrayal of the nationalist political party. Well then.

I am not culturally equipped to discuss the role of hijra in Indian society, but it is absolutely significant (and intentional) Patel's character is rescued and guided by a community of hijra. That speaks a great deal to where his social and political allegiances lie, and I'm glad to support that.

[pearwaldorf]

Thinking about the fatalism that has inevitably emerged after yesterday's events, and how angry it makes me. Nothing about Trump has changed a goddamn iota since somebody tried to kill him. He's still the same old shitstain who's intent on tearing down the rest of this country he didn't get to last time.

The best way to legally depress voter turnout is to make people feel like there's no point in voting. When people turn out in numbers, Democrats tend to win.

And there still is a fucking point. I know it doesn't really make as much news as it should, but a Biden administration has genuinely made people's lives better. None of it gets publicized well because it's not sexy, but not being able to report medical debt to credit bureaus? $35 insulin? Cracking down on robocalls? The climate stuff in the giant infrastructure bill? All of this is important quality of life shit.

Certainly nothing is at the level it should be, but some of us old farts have stories about how much worse it was before, and why we would absolutely not go back. And I'm real fucking sorry that change isn't happening at the rate any of us want, but it's not nothing.

In philosophy, there is a concept called Pascal's Wager, which says a rational person should believe in God because the rewards are amazing if God exists, and the losses are small if God doesnt.

Obviously voting still takes effort, but I think it's effort that won't be wasted regardless of the outcome. Now you know what to do for next time! You've learned a little about your local politicians! For the states where you have to vote in person, it's a little more inconvenient, but check if early voting is available in your area.

And if (god forbid) the worst happens, you still tried. You didn't take it as a given he would win. Brazil has mandatory voting, and despite having the button RIGHT FUCKING THERE between Bolsonaro and Lula, more people chose to opt out than do the thing that would have an actual effect. That's so fucked up.

I know that people get frustrated and vote for things that represent their feelings as opposed to actual rational consequences. And this literally kills people.

I don't think it's too much to expect people to put in a bit of time and effort into something that will yield such important results if it's successful. If you need help registering to vote or a ride to the polls, it is available.

[pearwaldorf]

I have to say, learning the phrase "Up and not crying" (it is a Norwegian idiom) has been helpful. It's a nice succinct way to describe my general state of mind these days.

It has not been great. Stress fucks with emotional regulation and there's lots to be stressed about right now. Limiting doomscrolling helps, but it's something that requires constant vigilance and discipline, which really fucking sucks for somebody with ADHD because it takes forever to make something a habit. But I keep plugging along because what the fuck else can I do?

ANYWAYS. I have been listening to Exandria Unlimited, which is where you send all the people who want to dip into Critical Role but have no knowledge of the setting and/or can't do a 100+ episode campaign. Tonally they're very different but real excellent actual play.

The Prime and Kymal minis contain some of the stupidest bisexuals I've ever encountered in a TTRPG setting, which is a real high bar. It is truly incredible and I commend Aabria for giving a bunch of numbnuts like these an actual Vestige.

Aabria is a much looser GM than Matt, which I appreciate. She's willing to handwave rules if they get in the way of something absolutely dope happening, and it's a perfect mesh with players like Aimee and Robbie who are so new they don't actually know what's (im)possible.

Also, they are so fucking stupid oh my god.

Calamity and Divergence are real interesting to listen to back to back, because they span the breadth of what you can do with high and low level characters. Calamity is all dope-ass level 14 nonsense wrapped in tragedy and hubris and Divergence is characters with NPC stats and a 1/8 (as in a fraction) challenge rating whose reward is to get to level 1.

And Brennan is the perfect GM for something like Divergence. There's a very deep empathy in how he constructs this world, which is genuinely brutal and fucked-up and merciless, but that makes the kindness and compassion extended to people that much more significant.

I ugly cried a lot listening to Divergence, because sometimes you need people to tell you a story about how all the things that are devalued and scorned (knowledge, competency, kindness, mercy, love) are actually what will save you and possibly the rest of the world.

[pearwaldorf]

I have heard of Hbomberguy and the "why Sherlock sucks" but had not actually watched any of his stuff until today. The recent plagiarism video is long and extremely good:

The main bulk of the video is about James Somerton, a video essayist who I was only vaguely familiar with. I watched the Our Flag Means Death video he made and thought it felt kind of flimsy, and moved on with my life.

Turns out he's been lifting words from other published sources, many of them queer writers who were paid freelance rates or possibly nothing at all. This is a screenshot of the transcription of the video he did on queer horror (ID in alt):

I have legit never seen this level of plagiarism before. I am honestly surprised these videos sound thematically coherent at all, given the variety of sources he's cribbed them from. (There's a lot you can say about queer horror, and not all of it is going to overlap.)

The thing I don't understand is that given how much work it must have been to compile these sources, he could have done all the fucking reading himself and synthesized it in his own words. He could have just thrown up a Pastebin of links he consulted and nobody would have noticed.

One of the reasons plagiarists steal is because they have no respect for the effort put into the work or people who do said work. A (presumably cis) white man stealing the words from other queer people, many of them economically marginalized and/or of color? I'm going to say that probably figured into it.

I don't know how much he made, but it was a significant fucking amount. That's money he took from the mouths of other queer people who are probably way worse off. That's discoveries of ideas and words people have been denied because they thought they were his.

(Hbomberguy is donating proceeds from this video to as many people who Somerton ripped off as he can track down. It's absolutely not his problem, and I imagine it's going to be a bitch and a half to identify and contact all these people. It is a mitzvah, in both the colloquial and religious sense, to do this.)

And as marginalized people, we know that context (historical, global, personal) is important, sometimes essential. Removal of that information greatly hampers comprehension and understanding in ways we are already limited or denied.

It feels like a deeply personal betrayal because we like to think we (as in people who have this particular trait or share a community) are all above cynical sociopathic bullshit. But [trait/thing] people are people, and sometimes people fucking suck. I regret to say that despite knowing this in my head, my emotions do not always remember.

[pearwaldorf]

Thinking about this meta and all the things that have happened this season with Izzy. It's not just that the writers and Jenkins have pushed back against all the nonsense, they've done it in a way that feels extremely targeted towards the, ah, less charitable interpretations. (I could be completely reading into it! I know some of the writers are familiar with fandom, although I do not know if they keep tabs on OFMD fandom.)

Stede's fantasy sequence in E1 is obviously a send-up of not just silly romance tropes, but predictions about what people thought would happen. Y'all, everybody involved in this show is extremely genre-aware. Do you think they'd play it straight like that?

Everything about the previous order has been upset, making room for new combinations of relationships (Izzy and both crews, Izzy and Blackbeard's crew, Izzy and Stede), or inversions of previous dynamics (Lucius).

And Darcy's observation that sometimes you extend grace to somebody who probably doesn't deserve it (because it isn't always about them) struck me. It's such a kind thing you rarely see in media, for people not just to look past harm that's been done to them by a specific person, but to extend the hand they wish they'd been given in the same situation. To the person who harmed them.

It's not apologism or excusing the behavior. It's looking past what was done and extending empathy and community to somebody who is obviously hurting.

And to me, all of this feels like the show tugging at your sleeve and going "Hey. Look at this. Isn't this way more interesting than what you thought was going to happen? Aren't you more entertained? Aren't you glad there's less hurt in the world? Isn't this better?"

[pearwaldorf]

I sent a friend this post and that's how they found out Dick Cheney died and I'm so happy 🥰