Tag: community (page 1 of 1)

A wide, sunlit Los Angeles scene with a tall palm tree on the left and a leafy tree on the right, framing a concrete wall tagged with large graffiti reading “DESTROY ICE”; dry grass and a low fence sit in the foreground beneath a clear blue sky.

January 16, 2026 / 0 Comments

Intentionally Offline

View on Threads

Ironically, my intention to spend more of my life away from screens crystallized around a social media post. I’ve known Zadi Diaz since the heyday of blogging, the rise of YouTube, and those few years when SXSWi cared more about the culture and creativity of the web than about monetizing enthusiasm at scale. She has always placed a grounded, human lens on our shared digital experience.

Throughout 2025, I’d already been noticing how much more joy I got from leaving the house than from scrolling. Friends. Family. Music. Sports. Art. The world. In the fall, I saw Little Simz live and had to check my growing inner middle-aged crank. I visited Memphis for the first time, wrapped another WNBA season courtside with the Sparks, and started trekking to SoFi Stadium for Chargers home games thanks to a friend’s largesse.

And yet, those excursions didn’t feel especially intentional. Too much of my time was still swallowed by doomscrolling or playing a dumb mobile game. Worse, when I was out, I often felt a pull back toward the screen. I’d sit in the car after arriving somewhere that wasn’t time-sensitive, staring at my phone instead of going about my day. I could easily convince myself to skip or cancel activities, return to a comfortable seat, and indulge in the dopamine rush of the algorithms.

The problem was that the high wasn’t even that satisfying. It hasn’t been for a long time.

I don’t know if we, as a culture, have reached a tipping point with algorithmically curated experiences and hyper-niche virtual connectivity. I do know that I have. When every app leaves you feeling vaguely worse, rarely shows you people you actually know, and demands more effort to determine whether something is real, manipulated, or AI-generated than to enjoy it, it’s time to step away.

I no longer want social media giving me simulated or secondhand experiences that I know are more entertaining, more fulfilling, and more trustworthy in person.

Over the holiday break, I was animatedly telling Tiffany about my intention to trade digital experiences for IRL ones whenever possible.

“Isn’t it funny,” she said, “that we make this resolution every year?”

She wasn’t wrong. Since 2021, I’ve resolved to get back outside each year.

Just a year ago, around this time, I saved another Threads post to my journal:

View on Threads

So what’s different this time? Will I retreat to the endless scroll after another round of declarations?

I don’t think so.

Jenna Wortham has described the current impulse as being “performatively offline.” I don’t take that as a pejorative, but it doesn’t quite fit for me. As Zadi put it, the algorithmic artificiality of our digital spaces is pushing many of us toward the natural world. When you spend too much time trying to determine what’s real, the simplest response is to stop looking at the deception and walk out your door.

The hellscape you see in your feeds may exist in your neighborhood. For some of us, it absolutely does. But more likely, what you’ll find instead are friendly neighbors, pets, babies, and communities in need of your presence and patronage.

Here in Los Angeles, that means embracing friction, inconvenience, and uncertainty. Of course, you sit in traffic. Of course, there are odd smells and curious characters on public transportation. But, in exchange, you get opera in the park, free art in galleries and bars, and protest graffiti on the streets. You eat ten-dollar street tacos instead of thirty-dollar ones delivered by DoorDash. You stumble into hidden treasures, make new friends, and deepen bonds with nearly lifelong ones.

In return for putting your phone down and looking up, you see the world—your world—for what it actually is. That clarity can inspire small acts of care. It can also make visible how wonder and injustice coexist, as they always have. That is both infuriating and comforting. That’s the human condition.

Living this way doesn’t feel performative to me. It feels like a recognition that no matter what tech billionaires try to sell us next, no matter how sophisticated the algorithms become, they still can’t beat the desert of the real.

It’s not all bad online. I enjoy reaction videos to popular media. I look forward to conversations with others about the things I’m passionate about, especially when I’m confident they won’t descend into the caustic debate tactics common on the worst parts of the internet. There are still those serendipitous moments of genuine connection that I appreciate.

But joy is offline. So is epistemic clarity. If I leave my house and keep that supercomputer in my pocket, I don’t have to question my senses. Seeing is still believing when my life isn’t primarily experienced through funhouse mirrors.

Surprisingly, this has made me better at social media. My Threads posts have been on fire lately. When I’m feeding my soul with the physical world, I show up more honestly in digital spaces.

I perform here. Out there, though, I just am.

View on Threads

Links & Things

Joan Westenberg on the case for blogging in the ruins.

Sasha Frere-Jones collected some outstanding writing about 2025.

Kai Cenat is learning in public.

Pam Ward retired from ESPN’s women’s basketball coverage, but she’s not done yet.

For Your Ears: You Can’t Kill God With Bullets by Conway the Machine.

For Your Noggin: Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer.

For Your Free Time: Celebrity Traitors UK.

a black man sitting on a couch surrounded by christmas decorations holding a fancy holiday themed pen as he prepares to write in a greeting card.

December 16, 2025 / 0 Comments

Season’s Greetings

Every year, when I check my unused holiday card inventory, I open up the old Apple MacBook box I use to store the best cards I’ve received and read through a few of the lovely notes people have sent. I admire the artwork of those cards—some beautiful, some witty, some handmade with care.

I don’t have a similar keepsake spot on my phone for the emoji-filled texts I receive on our shared holidays. I appreciate them, but in my personal etiquette handbook, the text replaces the phone calls we used to make all day on Christmas (or your winter holiday of choice). They don’t replace the mail.

I still send physical holiday cards.

I also try to keep up with birthday cards, anniversaries, and the occasional “just because” letter or postcard. I like the process of taking the time to find the right words to tell someone I was thinking of them, not merely because I got a notification on my phone or opened a social media app. I thought about them in advance. I went to a gift shop or paper store and saw something that made me think of you. I bought stamps. I sat down at a table or desk with a pen in hand and stopped to come up with something meaningful to say to you. I licked an envelope and sealed it. I used my address stamp. I walked to a mailbox and dropped it in.

We live in a time when we are the center of everything. Put your headphones on, pull that pocket-sized supercomputer up a few inches away from your face, and let it bring your algorithmically personalized world directly to you.

In the moments when I stop to send out a letter, I am not the center of my universe. The recipient is.

We had a lovely team holiday party today, including a White Elephant gift exchange and a poem-based game that a colleague wrote herself—no ChatGPT. It was delightful. Phones were face down. Eyes were on each other. Gratitude for our time together and our shared accomplishments wasn’t in Slack emotes or GIF boards; it was in the room where we shared reality for about 90 minutes.

It made me nostalgic for the pre-pandemic office card ritual. I miss taking two minutes out of a workday to write a Happy Birthday greeting to a co-worker and then passing it along to the next person who hadn’t signed. There’s friction and intention in these small acts, and that effort is meaningful to both the writer and the person being honored.

Maybe I’m a dinosaur, but with rare exception, I’d prefer that to something typed out in the brief moment when a notification pulled you away from doomscrolling.

Thank you, but I receive those messages as: I was too caught up in my own shit to do anything ahead of time, so here, have some emojis.

That’s how I feel when I send a DM instead of putting pen to paper as well.

A card says, You were alive in my mind, and I didn’t need a device to put you there.

This was handled with care.

No AI involved.

An ofrenda from the 2025 Grand Park Dia de los Muertos exhibit featuring a skeleton wearing LA Dodgers gear and an open seat reserved for those kidnapped in ICE raids.

November 1, 2025 / 0 Comments

Halloween 2025 and the Spirits of Los Angeles

As we got closer to Halloween, social media was filled with creators, influencers, and regular folks dressed to surprise, scare, or delight. The holiday has become a showcase for imagination, titillation, and referential humor, with little connection to the pagan or Christian rituals at its roots.

I sometimes lament not feeling as compelled to dress up as I once was. That won’t change, though. As I get older, I’m less interested in wearing a costume to amuse colleagues and friends. There’s nothing wrong with that. I love a good Halloween meme. Someone came to the office party dressed as a Labubu, and it was terrific.

But these days, I’m drawn to something else: remembrance. Why ignore, mock, or ward off the spirit world when the evils of our time don’t come from beyond? They are right here in human form, adorned in the clothing of authorities.

This Halloween, Tiffany and I took the Metro downtown for a night at the Mark Taper Forum to see Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. The show was her idea—a last-minute addition to our social calendar—but it turned out to be precisely what I needed. We arrived early and wandered through Grand Park, where the annual Día de los Muertos installation had transformed the plaza into a celebration of color, reverence, and resistance.

After my dad’s passing last year, I began reading about Día de los Muertos and the significance of the ofrenda, the altars families build to honor and invite departed loved ones back into their lives.

One of the exhibits invited visitors to write a message to someone who had passed. On a small index card, I wrote:

Dad (KT),

Dominique is getting married soon. Your presence is requested!

You are missed and loved.

—JT

It was the first time I’d written directly to him rather than about him. Usually, when I write or speak for the dead, it’s for myself or others. A way for us to process loss. But this felt like a conversation, a hope he might hear, and that with open invitation, he might make his presence known, especially at such a momentous occasion. This spirituality is so unlike me, but I meant every word. I hope he joins us.

The Grand Park installation also honored the living, especially those in Los Angeles whose lives are made precarious by our country’s immigration enforcement policies. With City Hall glowing behind it, the exhibit called out the trauma caused by ICE raids and border policies that tear families apart. Surrounded by marigolds and the righteous indignation of our Chicano brethren and sistren, I was reminded why I love this city. Los Angeles isn’t perfect, but it shows up. We fight for one another. We build community from loss and struggle.

And that spirit carried into the theater.

Los Angeles is the final stop for Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’s initial touring company and likely the last time so many members of the original ensemble will perform together. To do so here feels right. As playwright Jocelyn Bioh said, “to culminate in such a special city that understands the power of community and coming together, that doesn’t feel like an accident.”

Set in a Harlem salon where a group of West African women—many working under tenuous visa conditions—build a makeshift family, the show is sharp, funny, and profoundly human. It captures what it means to chase the American Dream while being told you don’t belong.

By the time the curtain fell, I felt grateful. For the play, for this city, for the way art challenges me to stay open and engaged in my community: to remember, to listen, to love.

To fight.

I love L.A.

A black and white image of the jumbotron in the Michelob Ultra Arena highlighting an older Las Vegas Aces fan

October 3, 2025 / 0 Comments

The WNBA is for EVERYBODY

After the epic Game Five between the Aces and the Fever, I stopped for dinner and a drink at a gastropub inside Mandalay Bay. Vegas fans were still buzzing in the casino walkway. Inside, I was chatting with the bartender about how packed the Michelob Ultra Arena had been.

That’s when the woman sitting next to me chimed in:

“That’s all because of Caitlin Clark.”

I couldn’t let that pass.

“Well, no, the Aces were selling out long before Caitlin.”

She went quiet for a beat. Then she opened up.

“You know this was my first sporting event ever, and we came here just for this. I used to make fun of the boys for loving sports, but now I get it.”

From there, the script melted away. The Indiana Fever fan lit up about Vegas’s Chelsea Gray and A’ja Wilson. She loved watching the coaches prowl the sidelines, their passion and bluster on full display. She and her husband told me they were from near Fresno and were thinking about attending games in the state. The Valkyries were closer, obviously, but they had Southern California roots and might want to spend more time with my beloved Sparks.

“I’m 70 years old and I’m having so much fun,” she said.

Of course, she was having a great time. Despite her opening salvo, she respected the players, the atmosphere, and the community. That Fox-News-crafted passive-aggressive comment was a line that could have ended the conversation before it began if I’d let it.

The reality? You don’t spend time and money on the WNBA because of one player. You stay because the league is joyful, inclusive, and impossible not to love once you’re inside it.

So I offered a light corrective, not an attack. Just enough space for this new fan to reveal those true feelings. And once she did, we kept talking until the restaurant lights came on—about basketball, about California, even about AI.

I began this season worried that the newcomers were barbarians at the gate, eager to transform the vibes and culture of this league into something I wouldn’t recognize. By the end of my last game of the year, I’d found common ground with folks who, on the surface, embodied exactly what I feared.

Instead of us playing to type, though, we found shared joy because if you love this game, you love this game. You might be able to connect with your tribe online by celebrating Caitlin Clark and no one else, but after cheering in person with thousands of other fans, you’ll come to realize that this is your real community, and it’s better over here.

And if we get into conversation, I’ll politely remind you that the WNBA is for everybody.

Ruby Ibarra sits on the NPR Tiny Desk Concert stage with her left fist raised and wearing an "I *heart* Pinays" t-shirt

July 2, 2025 / 0 Comments

Freedom is a Joyful Noise

I’m at The Regent Theater in Downtown LA to see Ruby Ibarra, the 2025 Tiny Desk Contest winner from the Bay Area, perform. Local public media stations, including LAist and KVCR, are in the building, handing out fans and making the case for public media. The Regent is packed with a classically multicultural Los Angeles crowd—this time, with a strong showing from the Filipino community. People came out to see the diminutive Pinay rapper with a big voice and even bigger presence.

Initially scheduled for June 11, the show was postponed when the mayor instituted a curfew in downtown during protests against ICE raids that are still tearing through our communities.

Ruby doesn’t mention the delay until her final song, but when she does, she doesn’t mince words. She’s a first-generation immigrant, and her music centers the Filipino immigrant experience. Before launching into “7,000 Miles,” she reminds us: “No one is illegal on stolen land!”

Everything is political.

Earlier that day, I’d been listening to We Insist 2025!—the new album from Terri Lyne Carrington and Christie Dashiell, a reimagining of Max Roach’s We Insist! One song in particular, “Joyful Noise,” features a spoken word piece that stayed with me:

And when we struggle, when times are tough, we draw strength from our ancestors.
We put away our differences and we come together.
When folks try to take away our freedoms, we don’t just let them.
We fight back!
We don’t become despondent or complacent, and we don’t drown ourselves in escapism or give up on what we know is right.
No!
Instead, we say, “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
Emmett G. Price III

That’s the spirit that got me out of the house on a Tuesday. That’s what I felt in the room.

Shoulder to shoulder with my neighbors—many of them immigrants or their American-born children—we smiled, sang, and bobbed our heads as one. During Ruby’s homage to Bay Area hip-hop, we even got a little hyphy.

When opener Tish Hyman performed her song “Lucky,” that’s exactly how I felt, too.

There’s not a lot going right in my life—or in the headlines—but after a night of making joyful noise, I can at least envision a better tomorrow.

Freedom is smiling in the face of adversity because you know in the depth of your soul, just like your grandma told you, everything is going to be alright.

Two hands making the shape of a heart with the city of Los Angeles in the background.

June 13, 2025 / 0 Comments

Intentional Listening in a City in Crisis

I feel like, as an artist, the whole point of the platform, other than making music, is to inform. However we do that, right? The music that I create, the art that I create, is mirroring what’s happening in my head and then in my bedroom, in my house, on my kitchen counter, on my street, in my city, in my country. So, it’s really important to me that I’m going to be up there talking about ‘I got a new haircut’; I also have to talk about what I’m seeing. And right now, there are a lot of little people suffering.

—Lalah Hathaway

What I see on my street is beautiful, as Los Angeles often is. Birds chirp. The sun shines. The jacarandas are in bloom, littering the sidewalks with purple petals. Neighbors walk their dogs and babies. I could be deceived into believing that life is normal.

But my city is in crisis.

A senator was handcuffed for asking a question yesterday. The National Guard has been deployed, despite objections from our elected officials. At a basketball game earlier this week, a child in the stands proudly held a sign that read, “Melt ICE!” Friends are in at-risk neighborhoods trying to protect their communities. Others are marching downtown, expressing outrage at the latest policy decisions and public actions.

And I’m sitting here, unsure whether I want to scream, cry, or fight.

At least for now, I’ll take inspiration from Ms. Hathaway—and write.

VANTABLACK, Hathaway’s 2024 full-length, has been on repeat in my headphones. Since watching Nubya Garcia’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert in early April, I’ve been falling down YouTube rabbit holes—first jazz, then soul, then Lalah. Go deep enough, and you land on Hathaway’s own Tiny Desk performance from six years ago. Twelve minutes long. Not nearly enough.

I’d enjoyed VANTABLACK when it first came out, but hadn’t gone deep. Now, with my ears primed for purpose, the album has a firm grip on my attention, and I’m desperate for a deeper connection with the work.

In a different era, these connections—the musicians, collaborators, and producers—would have been revealed through liner notes. You’d read them front to back while listening to the album, then again after the fiftieth spin when a note or riff hit different. Now, those same discoveries happen across platforms: a podcast like One Song, a Wikipedia entry, an Instagram reel, a Discogs post.

For this album, I’m scrolling Instagram, listening to podcasts, and returning to YouTube. Hathaway’s posts—especially her conversations with collaborator Phil Beaudreau—offer insight into how the music came together. But it was her appearance on Robert Glasper’s Black Radio Backstage podcast that truly struck me. That’s where I first heard the quote that opens this piece, and where she reminded me that creating art and bearing witness should be inseparable.

If an artist of Hathaway’s caliber is willing to bare her soul to make music that stirs mine, the least I can do is return the favor in my way.

I can learn the names of the musicians, producers, and engineers who helped bring her vision to life.

I can listen with intention.

I can appreciate the art and the people behind it.

I can write what’s going on in my head and heart.

I can give voice to the very real human, communal, and societal battles happening all around me.

And in whatever way is yours,
you can, too.

February 5, 2018 / 0 Comments

Breathe

““Wait for me, Destiny. I said I’ll try. Just give me one more chance to prove, mountains I will move.” ”

— Alfa Mist featuring Kaya Thomas-Dyke

It started with several rapid strong slaps on my back. My headphones were on. As I slid the headphones off and stood, I caught her mid-sentence:

“…hear the screaming?”

“What?! No,” I replied.

“Jason, there’s a man in our backyard! He busted through the bushes!”

I took a breath. I tuned my ears as I followed Tiffany into the family room. I didn’t hear screaming, but I noticed the moans of someone coming from the side of the house. They were disturbing.

We got to our sliding doors, and I didn’t see anyone. Tiffany pointed at bushes that line our back wall at the place he broke through, but I didn’t see anything (I would later). She realized the door jamb wasn’t in and rushed to lock him out.

I took a breath.

I grabbed my phone and went back to the front of the house. As I dialed 911, I heard grunts. From our office windows, I saw the head of a man hurling himself over our front gate. He stumbled a bit, and I moved to the kitchen to watch what he would do next.

“9–1–1. An operator will be with you shortly.”

He hustled across the street. Tiffany is beside me now. I tell her he jumped over the fence and at the same time I’m answering the operator’s questions. I’m not sure how I held both conversations at once.

“Please hold.”

I took a breath.

He’s trying to climb into our neighbor’s yard. Our friendly neighbors who have lived there for 45 years. The neighbors with our favorite local dog, Pearl, who escaped their backyard and visited us last year. Sweet Pearl scared the daylights of our intruder, and so he leaped into our other neighbor’s yard. The home of the old lady who lives alone that we’re regularly worried has died if we don’t see activity at her house for awhile.

I’ve been updating the operator the whole time. A white Lexus has stopped in the middle of the street. The driver appears to have been tracking the guy from whatever trouble he had been causing on the block behind ours.

“Officers will be there shortly.”

“Thank you,” I replied.

My shoes are on, and we’re outside now talking with our neighbors about everything that’s happened. The man is not in our view anymore, and we’re all talking animatedly but calming down. The threat — at least to me — feels over.

An LAPD chopper flies overhead and begins circling the neighborhood. We point to where we believe he’s gone. We trade jokes and anecdotes to ease the tension and calm nerves.

I note how quickly and frequently people ask about the race of the perpetrator. I realize we are all trying to create a narrative of the incident so that it makes sense. I’m doing it too.

He must have been going from backyard to backyard and got caught…all this construction has brought squatters…someone said they’d seen him around before…blah blah blah…

I ask Tiffany to take a breath. I inhale too. We examine the backyard damage. We go around the corner to visit the folks at the house behind ours and see a police car and an ambulance, but things seem calm. The chopper has done its final fly-by. Our neighbors appear rattled but okay. We exchange pleasantries, but the officers tell us to go back to our house to meet another patrol car that’s been dispatched. They never show.

I checked my watch. It read 11 AM, and I could use a drink. Tiffany says she needs one, too.

I took a breath instead and turned on last night’s Saturday Night Live.

And I’m grateful.

Cross-posted on Medium.

December 18, 2012 / 0 Comments

The Story of Yay (or why I’ve stuck with Flickr)

“My heart will never feel, will never see, will never know.” – Grimes, Genesis

One of the things that I’m most proud of from the last 5 years is that, for a time, I was the #3 result for the word “yay” in google image search. I’m down around #8 now but it’s still my own little piece of recent internet ephemeral fame. The story of that picture is one thing but the story of how it became so highly ranked is pretty straightforward. Flickr makes images easy to find. Someone that I don’t know was looking for a “yay” picture to go with an article and found it (either through flickr or their own googling) and…magic.

They had every right to use my photo. I use a Creative Commons license on Flickr that allows for non-commercial usage with attribution. I suppose I could quibble if the site is ad supported but I was able to make these decisions about my pictures. I can make it on an individual basis. I can share my photos as widely as I choose. Be that one other person or the world. I pay for the privilege. I’ve done so for many years now.

The conversation around Instagram and their Privacy Policy/Terms of Use changes the past few days ties nicely in with Anil Dash’s post from last week about the web we lost. I remember when the Flickr community participated actively in helping to form and re-form the policies around the service that still persist today. I remember the many heady conversations and points of view and how it felt, even if it wasn’t necessarily the case, that the whole community was engaged and invested in the outcome. That the instagram community has reacted similarly seems like a throwback to that time.

That may just be what’s in my field of vision, though. Unlike on Flickr, I struggle to make sense of the broader community on Instagram (probably because there isn’t a meaningful web experience) so who knows if the masses actually care. It was a reminder, though, that Flickr does care.

And pretty much all of the moments of the last decade that I care about that were lucky enough to be captured in an image (still or moving) are on that old photo service.

Like nerdwedding11.

And SXSW.

And the Yay Flag Opening Ceremony.

See you around the old neighborhood.