Sloth and Manatee

At the Chapter 510 writing center in Oakland, we do story writing field trips. Before we get started, we talk about “compromise.”

The way we put it to the students is: if you want to go to Pizza Hut, but your friend wants to go to Taco Bell, well, maybe you compromise and go to one and then the other (or the coooooombination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell…)

Compromise being central to existing and working together. Everyone voicing their ideas or wants, and then allowing the space and the time for those to turn into something new, together. And wow, these kids come up with some wild things. One story was called “Clay Wars” and in it Bill Nye went back in time as a clay version of himself to stop a battle between I think clay dogs and cats? More recently they wrote a story with cheese, and cheese people, but then also cloud people, and also a dog that looked like a hot dog. I think the kids were hungry.

These days we carry around machines that give us more and more of what we supposedly already want or like. This is the opposite of compromise. It tells us we are the center of the internet. Which, we are. We are each looking at our own internet.

We’re hearing about AI-induced psychosis, where people, typing messages with a chatbot that literally can only give statistically-viable strings of characters and words back, become convinced that they have invented a new math, or that their wildest theories are true, or worse.

That psychosis has been happening, at a slower speed, for a long time, since way before the chatbot. That’s what rage radio is. That’s what a news feed is. More of what you already agreed with. No wrong turns, no unexpected weirdness, just more - you.

What to say to this? I guess, be wrong. And disagree. Write a story where there are BOTH cloud people and cheese people. And a dog that looks like a hot dog. Put it all in there. Make a mess, find out you were mistaken, stop and look. Make a clay pot that falls over. Apologize when you stomp on someone’s toe in the grocery line. Get in the grocery line, toes and all, instead of the self-checkout, and say hi to the checkout human. Make space for stuff you don’t understand and don’t look for. Create the circumstances for stuff to happen and be possible. Peace is a place where things are possible.

Sloth and Manatee Page

Brainwaves

Best of Brainwaves Volume One: The Fountain of Stuff

Best of Brainwaves Volume Two: Mom, Dad, I'm a Cat

License Cartoons from CartoonStock

Galactic Premiere Music Video!

For Sean’s song “Arizona” of the album of the same name, animated by me, yes yes, please enjoy

Here’s the full album on Bandcamp

And on Apple Music

Things Of The Week

A whole site for figuring out what glue to use to glue one thing to another thing

Jazz made by trains cruising around in real time

A game where you guess what noun comes after a word

Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.

May you do a bit of this, may you do a bit of that, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy