I wish I could write. You know the writing. They type that truly, sincerely tells stories. That moves humans. Like making music, just with a keyboard. I wish I could use my keyboard the way Dollar Brand uses his piano. To tell a story. I started watching Treme tonight. I was led to it, rather accidentally, by David Simon the legend himself. I find Simon's twitter presence disturbing, bordering on insufferable - the genius always seems to be at war with someone and something. Also, he shoots, with no ceremony and even less care, at almost everyone who says The Wire is the best TV ever. He [did it today again](https://twitter.com/AoDespair/status/1450448099172831235?s=20) and pointed to Treme, which I found on flixtor.to. Which reminds me, as an aside - part of the very many things I don't understand is the business model of flixtor. The VIP subs might make it sustainable, but how do they dodge the legal might that inevitably is brought to bear on pirate operations? (I just found it on showmax too! So I can watch it completely legally and fund the good work of the good people of Treme). Further, I wonder about the "rails" of streaming - the flixtor operation feels smooth and tightly put together, unusual (at least in my admittedly limited experience) for a pirate operation, and I wonder now if there's streaming tech (aka streaming "rails") that's available off the shelf now. I'm a fan of infrastructure, the pipes and wires, so this appeals to me on that "enabling" dimension that infrastructure has. @vgr has also been playing around with the [rails idea](https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1448728984242442243), albeit in the brief passing. "Rails" to me is infrastructure, that other progress is built on top of. The great "enabling" characteristic of infras. Which reminds me, and this is now a detour on a detour, of the work I have in the pipeline on a non-profit IPP. With everything in the open, a financial model, a PPA agreement etc., a set of procedures and guidelines - it almost amounts to power infrastructure on rails. And I use infrastructure here both in the traditional sense - literal physical copper cables - and my "enabling" sense. What could be built on the philosophy and pieces of a non-profit IPP? I'm excited about this non-profit IPP idea as "rails" So storytelling and Treme. So far, the Treme has just the most sumptuous setting for "telling the story of human condition" (my cliched description of the overarching theme here and across story telling) - the skill that David Simon was endowed with in bucket loads. It's New Orleans (the great, soulful home of Jazz in the great US of A) in the months following hurricane Katrina. It's an ingenious selection of setting for storytelling. Music, food, people, and particularly for me, the consistent sub-theme of climate change. While Katrina itself was probably made only slightly worse my climate change, and was a pretty nasty storm all by itself (unaided by the carbon in the atmosphere) it's still a story of failing infrastructure under the pressures of transition (societal and climatic). The design, building and operating of flood infrastructure talks straight to the deepest corners of my curiosity. New Orleans is a black place, a black and broken city, and lies forgotten by the federal government in the USA, and provides the perfect storm (pun not originally intended but I'll embrace it now) of racial dynamics, music, food, human struggle, and infrastructure is simply marvelous. There is a scene in S1E4 (or thereabouts) where a chef is struggling with her gas supply - it seems that water keeps getting into the line and utility (Entergy) is always on the receiving end of her vocal frustration. Each time it cuts out, she's unable to run her already shaky business. It's a super metaphor for so many things. And this is where my current focus on storytelling is rooted - in my longstanding interest (borderline obsession) with the "social-technical." I've written alot about this idea (well, at least as a percentage of my writing, which as an absolute number is abysmal) and it seems now that the idea is too deeply rooted in my brain to be dislodged. The questions evoked by the gas scene run along the lines of "how might engineers design better gas infrastructure to withstand flooding?" and I wonder how story telling might be a tool in the process of answering that question. (back to my other obsessions of tools!). Could a short documentary type film help engineers understand, or perhaps emphasize (oops there's that overly employed corporate jargon word again) more with the "end-user?" Of the many tools and approaches that need to be build out at the interface of the "social" and the "technical," I feel like "story telling" is a whole category on its own. And that, I think, is a nice note to leave my very first "note" post. My note posts are quick, barely baked (never mind half baked), poorly written reflections and thoughts that I'll publish as part of my more general approach to keeping fit as a "knowledge worker."