Notices by Furthering (furthering@convo.casa)

"Because international law limits governments from rendering people stateless, the proposals linking citizenship to terrorism have been largely applied to dual nationals, said Tanya Mehra, a senior research fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at The Hague. 'But then the question is, aren’t you making a distinction on the basis of whether someone has one or two nationalities, and thus creating different classes of citizens?'

"The law leaves dual nationals vulnerable to being punished twice for the same crime, if they serve prison time and then also face having their citizenship revoked, she said. 'It’s great media optics to say that you’re taking a strong stance against crime by depriving them of their nationality,' said Mehra. 'But you have to really look more carefully at whether or not you’re violating their human rights.'”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/26/how-idea-of-stripping-citizenship-for-crimes-spread-across-europe

#HumanRights #Citizenship #Crime #Law

The most rose looking rose -- of the aptly named "Boticelli" variety.

#Rose #Flower #Bloomscrolling

I read in a book about an experiment during which people were given a square of their favorite chocolate and had to rate whether they wanted more after the last piece or if they didn't want any more. The more chocolate they had after a certain point, the less they wanted.

They were either eating the wrong chocolate (probably! milk chocolate is sugar) or were not real chocolate fans.

When I am eating my favorite dark chocolates (90% Lindt or 87% Laima, a Latvian chocolate), I have to hold myself back from eating ever more of it. Both of these chocolates are low in sugar, sugar being further on the list of ingredients compared to other chocolates. So it's more chocolate than anything else, though it isn't bitter like some of those chalky high-percentage chocolates that really don't understand the potential of chocolate at all.

So I guess if I were in that experiment, I would skew the results, and happily.

I say as I eat some dark chocolate accompanied by a mug of chocolate-and-orange rooibos.

#Chocolate #Food #Experiment

I’ve been here a while, but I’m just now posting an #Introduction. Why? I’ve been a bit shy to, and as an observer by nature, I wanted to understand what this space can offer and what I can offer in return.

I believe in kindness, curiosity, and the types of communication that can arise when people hold those two values close.

I’m looking to connect with people who want to have these types of conversations and prefer going below the surface, sharing personal experience, and practicing empathy.

I also appreciate those discussions, ideas, and facts in my feed that scratch my intellectual itch as well as the beautiful moments that people share. I moderately boost.

I’m interested in topics such as better communication, belonging and connection, art history, sociology, culture, and the preservation of our collective and individual humanity.

I have many causes that I care deeply about, such as women’s issues and intersectional feminism, human rights, and information about covid/public health, and media literacy. Books and Eastern Europe are also high on my list.

While I believe in staying aware, I rarely post about straight politics.

I’ve already connected with some thoughtful, insightful, caring, curious people – would love to meet more.

#Introduction #Empathy #Kindness #Communication #ArtHistory #Books #Sociology #Connection #CovidInformed #Curiosity #Belonging

@Badgardener Yes. 💪 🐔

And you reminded me (because letting the chickens out presumably means going outside) that I have to take out the trash. So I'll check another thing off my list.

I'm reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and this quote is too beautiful not to share.

"We are showered every day with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come back."

#Books #Reading #Gifts #Community #Joy #Reciprocity

When the algorithms aren’t at play, what marvels we can enjoy. I love encountering homegrown knowledge, personal passions developed over years, quirky hobbies, and the sense of discovery and appreciation that happens over such sharing.

Chayka says, “I found that the way to fight the generic is to seek the specific, whatever you are drawn toward. You don’t need to be a credentialed or professionalized expert to be a connoisseur. You don’t need to monetize your opinion as an influencer for it to be legitimate. The algorithm promises to supplant your taste and outsource it for you, like a robotic limb, but all it takes to form your own taste is thought, intention, and care.”

🧵

Before the year was out, I finished the book Filterworld by Kyle Chayka, which is about the flattening of culture at the hands of (the people who develop) algorithms.

And now that I've read the book, I can't unsee this process -- the dull sameness with which much of what we (are expected to) consume falls into -- and that wasn't always the case. Of course, some of that is due to (Western) cultural colonialism, but Chayka would probably agree that algorithms are a type of cultural colonialism, too.

Chayka isn't the only one who's noticed. A couple of weeks ago, I read an article that lamented Baryshnikov as one of the last adherents to "high art."

Chayka cites an essay by Scorsese, talking about his own influences [I have no opinion on Scorsese here, just being illustrative]: "The paranoia that I hear in Scorsese’s essay is that the art of the twenty-first century no longer holds up to such scrutiny. Instead, it’s cheap and ephemeral, wafting through your life without leaving any discernible mark. (The passion of his writing shows just how much Scorsese was marked by Fellini, an impact that he was still processing six decades later.) That may be because to fit into digital feeds, in order to attract those pernicious likes and further promote itself as much as possible, culture has to be content first and art second—if at all. "

🧵

#Books #Reading #Algorithm #Culture #Art #Content

I read the book on a visit to Lisbon and applied some of the ideas in the book to what I experienced. Most of the restaurants served the same five dishes. The same narrative about the 1755 earthquake was repeated time and again in information about the city. Tiles were for sale everywhere, some authentically produced, some facsimiles.

Chayka says, “a place’s uniqueness only attracts more tourists, which gradually grind it into dust with the increasing flow of travelers, who arrive to consume its character as a product and leave it ever more degraded. Difference just gets in the way; it creates friction in a world that is increasingly frictionless, whether in its cities or in its music.”

“Difference gets in the way.” What a shattering statement, which can be extrapolated further if you a person who seeks difference and celebrates it and who knows being exposed to differences makes us more openminded.

I also found his statement “Popularity alone often gets confused for meaning or significance” to be thought-provoking. He goes on to say, “The difference today is that in Filterworld, the metrics—the number of likes, the preexisting attention—tend to speak louder than the piece of culture itself. Not only do they act as a measure of success, but they create success, because they dictate what is recommended to and seen by audiences in the first place.”

🧵

His antidote is curation and archiving – and an easy form of curation, recommendation. Because these are human acts – they respect the work and create networks of connection, either one-on-one or within a community.

“Someone had to care enough to tell me what they liked, and I had to care enough to trust them and give it a fair try. Such cultural recommendations—communicating approval—are social and moral acts. We tell each other that we like things the same way that bees perform dances to pass on the location of a particularly fruitful flower. The very act brings us together.”

He emphasizes the responsibility of curation – that it’s not just what you like, but it’s also about an audience and how their reactions or perceptions may affect how they receive the information. I realized I do this when I recommend a book to someone – I take into account who they are, what they like reading, what I know about them, and how they may be affected by the book.

But the person receiving the recommendation should also be openminded about it and trust the recommender enough to give it a chance.

“Recommendations between people are a two-way exchange: the curator must consider the value of what they are passing on, and the consumer must remain open-minded, giving up the option of skipping the track if it’s not immediately appealing.”

🧵

I'm now reading The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer. A quote early in the book reads:

"In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away. In fact, status is determined not y how much one accumulates, but by how much one gives away. The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles of reciprocity. A gift economy nurtures the community bonds that enhance mutual well-being; the economic unit is 'we' rather than 'I,' as all flourishing is mutual."

All flourishing is mutual.

#Reading #Books #Economics #Gift #Wealth #Community #Gratitude