Art goals for 2022

 

I need to draw more.  2002 I drew almost every day.  

2021 Social media thoughts

 I have liked facebook on the whole, but it isn't always good for me. I spend time on it to procrastinate sometimes. I find myself getting upset and riled up about political or social media controversies that seem designed for my ADHD brain. It sucks me in.

I have spent some time trying to make this a better place for me. In part I have refrained on commenting on political things - except on Ann Wagner's dumb posts, but she is my representative so I guess I have just one venue for political trolling. The last few years years of the Trump presidency it was clear my political engagement online wasn't good for me or anyone else I also have not posted that much and decided to post from instagram and to put less of my life in the social media frame. I love the way John Green (vlogbrothers) has discussed framing with social media. This has been helpful, but it means there is stuff going on with my life that I haven't shared here. So please reach out and keep in touch. I have a bunch of social media accounts now. I have been posting my work/genetics thoughts on Twitter (@BrianGardunia) and have longer personal thoughts and writing still on my blog (Graduategrumblings.blogspot.com). Even though that is a public blog, I tend to write quite personal things there, but I have stopped using it for daily/weekly regular updates. For example, I have not written about leaving the church here on Facebook. LinkedIn tends to be a spam creator, but it was really useful for trying to recruit people for Bayer/Monsanto and looking for jobs. I don't make videos and tiktok is like cocaine for my ADD brain so I have avoided that platform. The question I have is still how I will continue to use facebook or instagram. Should I stop, when do I stop? Another area that is obvious with social media platforms is that they are commercial money making machines where we as users are part of the product they are selling. Ads are part of the experience and definitely part of what makes Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc money. The social media platform cares more about them than us. Users are really data mining opportunities for ads and sales. I don't love this about social media. To make it more bearable, I have been aggressive about manipulating the algorithm by clicking consistently on certain kinds of ads. Facebook is now full of three kinds of ads for me: 1. Language apps - especially Natakallam a nonprofit that leverages refugees to teach languages like Arabic. 2. Shoe ads - I like shoes. I started clicking on shoe ads now almost 10 years ago when I tried to get tickets to a sold out Brandi Carlile concert at a resort in Mexico that was part of a lesbian travel package. I started getting ads for gay and lesbian cruises and thought maybe clicking on shoe ads would make a very vanilla adscape I could ignore easily. 3. Native American news - I started on this rabbit hole last year at the end of the Trump administration as a way to still get news but from a different lens that didn't make my blood pressure boil. Highly recommend. There are a lot of interesting things I have learned by filling my feed with Native American news and art. This is certainly long enough that it shouldn't be on Facebook. I will copy to my blog and elaborate there, but I wanted to post here to see what the conversation could be about how you are managing what you keep in the frame for social media and how you consume and use social media. What do you do to better manage your time, your profile, and how social media affects your life? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZgkUUEf56s

Tick tick tick

Decision making in a commercial breeding program - BrIN Learning Series

If you ever thought - "man, I wished there was an hour long recording of Brian giving a powerpoint presentation about his job I could watch. . . " You are in luck.

I presented to a group at the international breeding and seedbank centers around the globe and they recorded the presentation.

I was staying at a friends cabin in Colorado and so it is early in the morning as I sat on the porch. I didn't realize they were recording the session until I started talking and I had modified an existing presentation, which I should have run past legal for approval, but didn't. So I was nervous and then my computer died right at the end so it is by no means a TED talk.

The Wizarding World, Muggles and Mormons

Becca and I finished the Harry Potter series in record time this last year due to you know - Covid19.  I am convinced that J.K. Rowling actually is magic.  Harry Potter is totally entrancing and each of my kids has totally fallen in love with reading because of it.  They also have confessed that they have waited on their birthdays for possibly, maybe, but seriously hoping they were getting a letter from Hogwarts.  Because they also want to be wizards. 

This time through the series, something struck me.  There is a dark substory.  The backstory to why Voldemort and the Deatheaters even come to power and that war is a disturbing one. It is Dumbledore's dark past too.  Harry is mixed up in this as he is destined to confront Voldemort and bring balance to the force - sorry wrong series - that is Anakin Skywalker. After a lifetime of abuse from his adopted parents and brother, he is thrilled to learn on his 11th birthday that he is not like them; he is a wizard.  This is thrilling because it not only gives him an escape from his life, but opens the door to a secret and magical world. He is a mix of savior and counter to Voldemort's dark aims - he befriends repeatedly halfbloods, but he is just as set apart from the muggle world.  But he offers a better way to be set apart and yet not be an enemy to the rest of the world. 

There is a dark side to this world though. Magical people internalize this separateness and see their secret knowledge and power make them different and better than their nonmagical neighbors.  They call the majority non-magical people muggles or mudbloods.  They want to restrict marriages between them to keep their race pure.  Their racist attitudes are built into the mythology and the history of their school.  It is the fight between Slytherin and the other founders.  This is the evil that is behind Voldemort.  He is just the face of that intolerance.  And unfortunately, it really didn't end with his death. 

I see some echoes of that in Evangelical and Mormon theology.  It may be behind our own racist past and led to the denial of the priesthood and temple ordinances to black members all the way to the 1970s. I am not saying it was an inevitable result, but it is the soil that these kind of dangerous ideologies grow in.  I see it in our political movements as well - polarization and separation of news sources, people having social and political bubbles, "America first", anti immigrant rhetoric, weaponizing patriotic language

1. Magical world view - expanded cosmology, nature, and apocalyptic world view, a rejection of science. Our religion was founded by this kind of thinking - Book of Mormon was translated with a rock and they used divining rods, etc. for trying to scry god's will.  Plus I worry that planning for a savior to come and solve the problems for us in a Millenial conflict keeps us from really addressing the problems we have.  
2. Secret knowledge and levels -  Temple, second endowment, but it also levels of priesthood and church callings.  The hierarchical thinking about knowledge and transparency.  I think this is one of the reasons the LDS church stopped revealing results of its audits.  It does them, but it isn't open to the whole body of the church.  It is need to know information. But this kind of culture makes it relatively easy to suppress and ignore past history that is negative.  Just shut that away because it will hurt people's faith and keep that knowledge to the people who are in higher levels and can handle it. 
3. Set apart - being a Chosen people means others are not chosen. In Harry Potter, you literally get a special invitation and come to a secret school in a secret location. But it means that the magical community is isolated even when surrounded by muggle towns and neighbors. It would have been such a different book if they had banded together with muggles to fight Voldemort. For us in the LDS church, it also means that we aren't fully in our communities.  Think about even the language we use to describe ourselves - a ward family, brother, sister, gentile, active, inactive, apostate, nonmember, investigator.  We are invested heavily in our church lives - activities, seminary, church, missions, church schools, social networks, business networks, etc.  And it enables us to be separate to be a holy and peculiar people, but it may mean we aren't truly invested in our communities.  It means we see the rest of the world as other. 
4. Power and authority reinforced through social control - In Harry Potter they have separate schools, a separate ministry, different shops, etc.  And Voldemort isn't the only enemy to Harry - it is the ministry itself that is trying to hold on to power and keep control and although they are against Voldemort - the worst of embodiment of the separatism that keeps Muggles out of their lives, they justify plenty of terrible actions to keep power and maintain their isolation.  And they do it out of love - out of trying to do their best to keep their culture and their people safe. 

Harry Potter shows a better alternative to Voldemort - embracing people that are diverse and different within his community - Hermione, Hagrid, Firenze, Lupin, Dobby, Kreacher, the goblin in the last book, Buckbeak, even the ghosts at the school and the captured dragon in Gringotts, and all of his friends that are kind of different and unique. He wins not because he is a better magician than Voldemort, but because he in the end has help from all the people on the fringes - even the Malfoys that are kind of apostate Death Eaters by the end.  But they are still all within the magical world.  I would love to see another series of books on what happens if they were exposed.  What if Hogwarts students went to a regular school - and say learned math and history instead of Muggle studies and Arithmancy.  What if they used technology and magic together.  

What does this mean for me?  As we have stepped back from our safe Mormon world during this year, it is a scary muggle world out there.  I loved feeling like I was part of a special, set apart generation, saved for these latter days. I went to BYU - the closest Mormon thing to Hogwarts and have been set apart for many callings since.  I have been embedded in this set apart community and it has been my culture, my history, and a safe place.  It gave me roles and heroes to build my life around. I see my kids chaffing against those expectations though.  And maybe it is time to start to build more connection with the rest of the world. 

References

American segregation https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/rappaports-law-en

https://boaporg.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/muggles-mormons-and-theology/

Bach memories

Link for Yascha Heiffitz playing my favorite Bach: Link

When I was in fifth grade I remember having a pen pal at school.  My teacher had another classroom from Brooklyn that wrote us letters.  We were each paired up with a student in that class.  I don't remember the name of the kid I wrote to.  I remember really clearly him asking me if I liked Run DMC and I am pretty sure I told him that I liked running and playing a lot but I didn't what what DMC was.  I asked him if he liked Bach. I had a tape collection of classical music - it wasn't very big, but I played the Bach and Beethoven tapes over and over again. He had no idea what I was talking about. It made me realize that I might be a wierd kid.  

I wish I could find those old letters.  It would be fun to track down the boy that I wrote to see what happened with his life 30 years later.  I wonder if he remembers that strange kid from Teton, ID. 

I am a poor letter correspondent I am afraid - even on my mission I was sporadic about writing, but that was when I have done the best.  I enjoy keeping in touch with people and it is important to me, but I don't always do what is needed to maintain those connections.  One of my oldest friends is a monk now and writes me occasionally and I know he would write more if I were better at writing back.  I really value connection and long term friendships, and keep trying to put down roots somewhere.  At the same time though I feel a need to move to go new places and do new things and sabotage myself.  Even now I feel this itch to get out of St Louis and move somewhere new.  

So if you haven't heard from me in a while, know that I mean well and look forward to the next time we see each other in person.  And if you want a good pen pal, you should totally write to Becca.  She sends letters out every week to her friends and anyone that writes to her.  

24 Hours of Reality: "Earthrise" by Amanda Gorman

Amanda Gorman really stood out to me at the inauguration. The three moments that made me cry were when Vice President Harris walked out with the capital police officer that helped protect senators, when Jennifer Lopez called out in Spanish, and during Amanda Gorman's poem. 

This video is another of her poems from a few years ago as a call to action to do something about climate change.  I want to do something about climate change.  I worry about it so much, like an unhealthy amount.  I see it in the change in diseases and pests, in our warmer winters, in dying trees. I bought an electric car a few years ago and since my accident have not replaced it, instead relying on public transportation and my bike, and in the last year mostly working from home.  I related so much to this reply all podcast. 

But, I want to do more.  I think we must do more.  

Yesterday, we had a seminar at work about climate change that left me for the first time hopeful.  The speaker at Bayer - a professor in agriculture and climate change made a pretty convincing case that agriculture can truly help reduce greenhouse gases.  Here were roughly his conclusions:

1. Carbon-negative farming techniques - banking organic matter in soil.  These include: cover crops, no-till, optimal nitrogen fertilizer applications, and bioenergy crops.  I am a little skeptical that bioenergy crops are the solution, and he didn't talk about coproduction of wind and solar energy as part of farming.  There are a lot of windmills going up throughout the Midwest and I think with better energy storage and local energy utilization methods they could be a key component of sustainable carbon-negative farming techniques. 
2. Agriculture will be a major player for good or for ill in climate change.  Think storing carbon while producing food vs chopping down rainforest for soybean fields.  Runoff of Nitrogen, phosphorous, and soil into rivers and the ocean vs efficiently converting that into organic matter - improved soils, feed, food for livestock and people. 
3. Technologies available now
• Nitrous oxide abatement - precision N application and management
• Carbon sequestration - Cover crops, no till
• Cellulosic bioenergy - He didn't count this but anytime we can use all the biomass for animal feed that has to be better than grain fed systems.
4. Areas for research
• Plant N use efficiency
• Increased carbon sequestration - more roots, stabilization, better capture of organic matter in the soil
5. References
• Syswerda et al. 2011
• Basso, Shuai, Zhang and Robertson 2019 Sci Reports
• Prin 2004
• Robertson 2012
• Tian et al. 2016
• Global Carbon Budget