016 Crisis Cycling: Meaningful Movies in Ridgefield Panel with Cindy Black and Craig Brown

I spoke with Cindy Black, Executive Director of Fix Democracy First and Craig Brown, Editor at The Columbian newspaper after we screened the film, 'Digital Disconnect,' Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019.

The film by the rabble rousing intellectual Robert McChesny is a dissection of the way corporate consolidation under capitalism is crushing American democracy, causing division, and generally f'ing us all over. 

Some links to stuff we talked about:

     The Columbian (link) & an example of excellent local news (link)

     Fix Democracy First (link)

     Digital Disconnect is available to screen for free on Kanopy.com (link)

     Yep, your phone is listening to you (link)

     Tech Dirt Podcast (link)

     League of Women Voters Clark County Washington (link)

     Kathy Winter's Ridgefield news site fyi98642 (link)

     Some info on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (link--you'll have to ecosia--too much, so tired)

     Youtube of Deadspin's Sinclair mashup (link)

Here's some info on the League of Women Voters' 2019 candidate forum for Ridgefield and surrounding:

Wed. October 16, 2019 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Dollars Corner Fire Station 26, 21609 NE 72nd Ave.,
Battle Ground, WA 98604

• Town of Yacolt
Council, Position No. 5: Rhonda Rowe-Tice, Marina Viray
Mayor: Katelyn (Katie) Listek, Vince Myers

• City of La Center
Council, Position No. 5: Elizabeth M. Cerveny, Linda Tracy
Mayor: Greg Thornton, Brittney Tracy

• City of Ridgefield
Council, Position No. 2: Matt Swindell, Dana Ziemer
Council, Position No. 5: Rob Aichele, Darren Wertz
Council, Position No. 7: Sandra Day, Ronald Rowan

• Port of Ridgefield
Commissioner, District No. 2: Scott Hughes, David D. Kelly

• City of Battle Ground
Council, Position No. 3: Neil Butler, Shauna Walters
Council, Position No. 7: Philip L. Johnson, Joshua VanGelder

I know I missed some info and links but it's past midnight and my night owl left years ago. So, comment and I'll find it, please!

015 Crisis Cycling Podcast: a broad overview of today's media

I discuss some of the issues we face as a lead up to our showing of the film 'Digital Discontent'.

This is the first time I've tried to do a podcast entirely by myself. I found out that they are a lot harder to produce than I was expecting. yeeesh. Anyway. I like the product, learned a lot, and will hopefully be getting better and better as I put these out. Let me know!




Deadspin's mashup of Sinclair Force Read HERE
The Drone Papers HERE
Kanopy HERE
United States of Distraction HERE
Epic Systems Corp vs Lewis HERE
My attempt to be civil on the Nextdoor app HERE (some comments were deleted by others)

014 Crisis Cycling Podcast: Kevin Ashworth, Northwest Anxiety Institute

Kevin Ashworth is the Clinical Director of the Northwest Anxiety Institute. We spoke after screening the film, 'Reject' at the Old Liberty Theater in Ridgefield, Washington.

Northwest Anxiety Institute https://www.nwanxiety.com/

Reject: http://rejectfilm.com/the-film/

Youtube: https://youtu.be/eyp8-8fgMN8

Podcast: https://archive.org/details/mmrkevinashworth

Apologies for not having video. I've been trying to use my iPhone XR as my primary camera, but it has so far been one problem after another. This time the app Filmic Pro immediately froze. It did capture audio, though.

Stay with me as I figure this tech stuff out. I'm considering moving these efforts to a podcast hosting site for ease of access.

Episode 13, Crisis Cycling Podcast: Marc Rappaport

I spoke with Marc Rappaport, designer of the hydrothermal geothermal energy production system that has the potential to decentralize and democratize power production. He's currently working on a gassification system that would have multiple benefits from energy production, to forest management, to carbon storage. https://youtu.be/Ty2tMpVooL8

Saying Thank You Sucks

If I give you an apple, and the apples are amazing up here in Washington State so the gift would be delicious, but if I gave you an apple I would not expect a 'thank you' back.

If my expectation from giving a gift is that I'll get a 'thank you' from the receiver of the gift, then it's not really a gift. It's a burden, isn't it? I want something back from you.

If I give you something and demand something in return then between us I have created a market exchange. In a way, I have monetized our friendship.

If I am upset until I get my 'thank you' from you, or if I don't get it, then our relationship has changed. I will remember that you did not say thank you. I won't think about how great that apple must have tasted, the joy it brought you, or the sustenance I gave you.

I've burdened myself and you with an expectation.

Of course, it's not much of a burden. It's easy enough to say thank you, right?

Not for children. We practically have to beat it out of them. For years we talk about the 'magic words' of 'please' and 'thank you'. Strangers feel justified in 'teaching' our children this rote exercise of relationship economics. It takes years before our children finally start volunteering the expected sentiment without prompting.

It's easier to teach your child the ABC's than to teach them to say 'thank you'.

And when they do start saying 'thank you' it's most often just a thoughtless soundbite, less meaningful and less honest than if they'd handed you money for the gift.

Why is it so difficult for a child to learn to say 'thank you'? Maybe it's because the child has to learn the much more difficult, disquieting oxymoron that gifts are not really gifts. The child has to teach their brain the building blocks of cognitive dissonance, that something freely given is not free at all, that it comes at a cost.

The child learning to say thank you is learning our cultural paradigm, that a lie is the truth, and the truth is a lie.

Demanding that our children say 'thank you' teaches them to not listen to their own, better selves.  It teaches them that friendship and family are defined by barter and not love.

What we're really doing is teaching our children the language of monetized humanity. We demand of our children the language of our oppressor, the mindless, dissonant culture of greed and destruction we are leaving them.

We teach them to not listen to themselves.

Why do I give a gift to my boy, then, if my first expectation is that he say 'thank you' immediately? Why can't I be satisfied that his giant smile, his jumping up and down, and that his obvious excitement are 'thank you' enough? Because the gift was never about him, right? It was about his acknowledging to me that I gave him something. If that last sentence is not true, then I won't even notice whether he says 'thank you' or not. I'll just enjoy his joy.

And, if I ever give you an apple, rest assured, it will be freely given.

012 Crisis Cycling Podcast

I've recently read the book, Being the Change. It's set me in a bit of a quandary as far as this podcast is concerned. Basically, the book very powerfully argues that the most effective way to mitigate the worst effects of climate change is to limit as much as possible our individual fossil fuel use.

I've been won over by this idea. It feels really good, philosophically, politically,  but the idea precludes driving my giant van to interview people. So, I'll either have to wait until someone happens to be coming this way on other business, or wait for a convenient time to be gone from my home and family for a few hours (with all of our meetings, Megan's work, and other goody-goody stuff, time at home with family, time that is not dedicated to scrubbing the house, is scarce).

Anyway. When I ran into this wall I made this short, somewhat silly tour of our suburban homestead in the making. https://youtu.be/KgvKgiW1Tqo

Driving to the Fossil Fuel Protest

At a recent public hearing in Longview, Washington construction workers, businessmen, and multinational corporations showed their allegiance to each other in the latest effort to further degrade the biosphere by all wearing white scarves.

I hope they keep their scarves. I hope they hand them down generation to generation. Those scarves will be an interesting artifact of our consumer civilization as desertification takes hold.

An assortment of environmentalists, gray hairs, and professionals were at the hearing to speak against yet another proposed chunk of fossil fuel infrastructure, this time a methanol plant. They wore red shirts.

White Scarfs vs Red Shirts in a battle for life on earth-- scene set.

Again and again, the white scarf bedecked Corporatocracy, mostly speaking through the mouths of union men, scolded 'the red shirts' for driving cars to the hearing, calling out the hypocrisy of using fossil fuels to protest fossil fuels.

Oh, it was righteous indignation, indeed.

'How could you?' again, and again, from the Corporatocracy's willing chorus.

It bugged me. It irked me. It pissed me off. Why? There is a niggling grain of truth in this call out.

In my case, it's more than a grain, maybe a rock, or let's just call it a boulder. My vehicle is as big as a boulder.

My Ford van was purchased before my cognitive dissonance imploded--life choices vs destruction of the biosphere. Considering costs to finances, embodied CO2, and CO2e, trading the van for a more environmentally friendly vehicle is not an option.

(I dream of putting a steam engine in it, growing the wood in my backyard and using a super efficient rocket stove to fire the boiler. Oh, I dream.)

I could have ridden my bicycle to the hearing. It would have taken me the better part of five hours in total, but I could have done it.

I wanted to respond during the public comment period, but the hearing closed before my number came up so I left just smarting over the facile logic of the Corporatocracy. There's always a justification, isn't there, to further degrade the atmosphere we depend on?

The best answer would have been to take public transportation to the hearing. But in the United States public transportation doesn't exist in any useful way.

That's because the Corporatocracy has done everything in its power to destroy public transportation and alternative sources of energy for over a hundred years.

Yes, it is hypocritical to use fossil fuels to protest fossil fuels. But, because of the power of the fossil fuel industry, there is no alternative.

Hypocrisy, rather like global warming, is inescapable. It is baked into the fossil fuel system. To wield accusations of hypocrisy to thwart our attempts to save a living planet, that's an irony on par with Union dudes championing multi-national corporate causes.

The all dominating Corporatocracy now tells me I can't use fossil fuels to protest the Corporatocracy built on fossil fuels. That's rich.

These are the same multi-national corporate interests which attack worker's rights, the very same multinational corporations the Unions reliably champion, all the while denigrating a patchwork of mostly old folks who have the time and inclination to show up at public meetings to try and literally save the f'n biosphere.