Tuesday Night Party Club #39

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Gallery – 2019 Daily Sketches 213-242

Here are another thirty of the sketches I posted on a daily basis last year.

Story Seed #58
The Screaming Memes

Mirriam-Websters site defines meme as:

1: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.
Memes (discrete units of knowledge, gossip, jokes and so on) are to culture what genes are to life. Just as biological evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest genes in the gene pool, cultural evolution may be driven by the most successful memes.— Richard Dawkins

2: an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media
Letitia Chan has figured out how to encode a meme inside a meme. She has figured out how to transmit instructions for thought and behaviorial change within a short video. The videos she creates are seemily simple amusements – kittens chasing butterflies, fat puppies rolling down stairs, baby goats hopping enthusiastically. Watching the video once implants a new behaviour or core belief into the viewer – a smoker quits, a previously sedantary person takes up exercise, a Christian gives up their faith.
Chan is not driven by ideology. She’s just experimenting and amusing herself. She wants to see what ripples she can create in society. She doesn’t intentionally create harmful metamemes. She avoids encoding violent ideas and prejudices.
But any technology, once available, gets used in unintended ways and Metamemetics is too dynamic too go unexploited. Chan’s coding is quickly reverse engineered. Advertisers, governments, con artists and scumbags of all kinds flood the internet with new and dangerous memes. Activists of all stripes fight back with alternative memes. Minds and behaviors change minute by minute.

Recommendation

This is a request. My friend Andy Syversen passed away last week. Folks have come together to support his wife and daughter in many ways including this one  –

A college savings account has been set up in support of Maggie’s future education dreams. We invite you to make a contribution to this account established in memory of Maggie’s wonderful dad, our amazing friend, Andy. Maggie’s full name is Wencke Margaret Syversen, named after Andy’s mom and grandmother.

A 529 plan is a tax-advantaged program that helps families save for future education expenses. There are no fees with the Ugift savings program; your entire gift will go to Maggie’s college savings account.

To make a gift contribution using Ugift:

1. Go to Ugift529.com.
2. Enter Maggie’s Ugift code: R0D-81Y
3. Enter your name and the amount of your gift.
4. Make your gift via electronic funds transfer.

Please share with other friends and family of Andy, Crissy and Maggie.

In gratitude. Dana and Autumn

I’m posting this here as much for myself as for others. I read the original request in our FB messenger group. That’s going to vanish quickly. By posting here I’ll hopefully increase the signal and make the link easier to relocate.

Local News

I’m writing this part of this post this (Tuesday) morning. I’ve had the last 11 days off from USPS. I’ve done a bunch of artwork, got rid of some furniture, rearranged some furniture, scanned and posted a bunch of old photos of friends to Facebook and watched a few more TV shows and movies than usual.

Last night I got confirmation of a book cover commission. This morning I’m reading parts of that book in order to get a sense of what I am illustrating. So I’m reading this morning rather than writing more detailed news.

Thank you for dropping by. I hope you are safe from whatever disaster is occuring in your part of the world. May things get better from here.