Fun dinner with chief mentors, VCs, university observers, life coaches & family from the European @innovationacademy in Turin!! Photos by Radha! #eiamoments #eia2017italy#eia2017turin #accelerator #startups#entrepreneurship #Torino #Turin
Early supporter of TEDx events
The TEDx initiative was launched the years when I was attending TEDGlobal so I attended then first three TEDx gatherings in Istanbul.
Considering getting evicted due to Netflix's Original Series Sense8, TBT
What we mean when we say "Berkeley"
Much of what I and my Berkeley-native peers experienced growing up there was being duplicated in alternative communities everywhere, and also much of it was a product of the times. We didn't know that.
Berkeley is revealed in its "byzantine cultural complexity" by secular Jewish homegirl author of new book about going undercover in Jerry Falwell's evangelical church.
"If you’re from Berkeley...you know the muscle of the Berkeley Left is actually made up of a million fibers, often flexing at cross purposes — the Green Partiers, the Clintonites, the Obamaphiles, the Slow Foodists and Dumpster Divers, the Second and Third Wave feminists, the Marxists, anarchists, and Revolutionary Communists, the vaguely apathetic left-leaners, the merely apathetic."
"The first time I saw a bowl of table grapes I had a panic attack. ~ KOKO MULDER"
Connecting through social media with the diaspora of Berkeley kids, and comparing our upbringings. Read the New York Times article here.
Freedom of the Internet demonstration, TBT
Odd to see this Internet ban memory from my final days as an expat in Istanbul at a time when America is voting to save or kill Net Neutrality tomorrow.
A photo author, journalist & mid-east politics expert Hugh Pope took of me midway in the march from his Istiklal apartment.
What Hugh Pope wrote about that day:
Some pictures of demonstrators on Sunday 15 May 2011 calling for reform of Turkey's new conservative internet laws in Istanbul's Istiklal St today - the biggest, loudest and happiest protest I've seen in more than a decade of living in the city center. Some signs were funny too: "Dawkins is a scientist, not a pornographer, you retard!" "Your Internet is being cut according to Islamic regulations" (carried by the two gentlemen in chador-like garb, punning on signs in religious-minded meat shops) "EnSUCKlopedia" (well, roughly), "Censorship for Security is like Sex for Virginity" and "Hands off my porn".
Unless the government backtracks, a whole new system goes into force on 22 August. Internet providers will be obliged to offer every subscriber four filters of varying severity, and forcing Internet cafes to choose which sites can be accessed in advance. Any attempt to bypass such regulations will be criminal, and all Internet providers will be responsible for enforcement.
The liberal Radikal newspaper, for instance, compares this coming system to that of China, Iran or Cuba. This appears to be a new turn for Turkey, which has so far been ambivalent on Internet freedom - YouTube was banned for what seemed like years, but even the Prime Minister noted that it was easy to use a proxy server to reach it. But from 22 August even proxies will be banned ... and all this in a country negotiating to join the EU!
Not only Turks are concerned. Turkey's expat harem's Queen of Social Media, Anastasia Ashman, peeled off the crowds to visit and tweet from our windows overlooking the crowds of tens of thousands (see picture). At the same time, her Internet guru husband Burc managed to get my wi-fi system working properly for the first time in five years. So a big catch-up for me and I hope the demo will turn into a giant step forward for Turkey.
Noticing the conservative gaming of Google
Why are these the questions Google autocompletes when I was searching for the answer to how many people were about to lose their health insurance due to Congress' current action? Factcheck.org addressed this misleading Republican talking point back in 2014.
Hosting an Expat Litchat, TBT to when Twitter chats were just beginning
2009, pioneering with the twitter chats.
