Clowns Without Borders
clownswithoutborders.org
clownswithoutborders.org
After hearing some of their stories I got a deep appreciation for the work they do, it might sound silly or borderline stupid to some people but to me it's such a beautiful social experience, to go into conflict areas, extremely poor regions of the world afflicted by disease and bring something that is pure joy to an audience that doesn't have access to that. There are some extremely beautiful souls volunteering for CWB, knowing their work won't solve any parts of their audiences' social situation but trying to give them inspiration to keep dreaming, I definitely feel something deep inside my soul was touched after meeting some of them.
The people I know who worked in CWB have very different styles of clowning, they all work to adapt their acts to the local culture, it's really important for CWB volunteers to understand and cater to the local culture, they do research to avoid anything that could be remotely offensive, etc.
Just to source this a bit: my girlfriend is a circus artist here in Sweden so I have some insider view into it, it's actually a very fascinating part of the performing arts.
I know many musicians, and also Marketing folks that do demos.
This type of thing is a lot more commonplace than people think.
Interestingly enough (although not surprising) he is friends with a close friend of my girlfriend, an Australian aerial straps, swinging pole, and Chinese pole artist :)
> More work than software, I'd say.
Living around many of these performers really put that into perspective to me. Working in the arts is such a completely different game than whatever white-collar job we might have, more akin to scientists in STEM (in the sense of how much passion they have while not being well paid).
There's so much that goes into what looks like a simple show that really made me appreciate much more any form of entertainment or art the past years.
It's a surprisingly small community!
> There's so much that goes into what looks like a simple show that really made me appreciate much more any form of entertainment or art the past years.
I also grew an appreciation for much I was willing to pay to see good art being performed when I learned of the effort going into it. Sometimes if a musical or play doesn't quite hold my interest, I still find it highly enjoyable due to the sheer skill and work involved in just DELIVERING the content, regardless of the content itself.
IMHO there are few nobler acts than going into high-conflict areas to help people reconnect with the inherent humanity in shared experience and laughter. The work CWB is doing is beautiful.
1- https://moshecohen.net/about-2/
2- https://www.flickr.com/photos/dionh/226434543/in/photostream...
I once was drinking with our local EU humanitarian representative, a grizzled veteran of many missions. It's his job to oversee projects running on EU money, which is one of the largest chunks of any response. I really respected the guy, one of the smartest and capable people I met in the business.
He'd been in Haiti, which is famously one of the worst of the worst, and I asked him what the best piece of work he saw there was.
Without hesitation, he said it was these guys. Refugee camps can be bleak and miserable places, and he said that when CWB were doing their thing, the whole atmosphere lifted.
When we think about aid, we think about food and water and shelter, but we're dealing with normal people who've often been severely traumatised. It's hard to understate the value of work like this. Particularly when most of the aid-workers you encounter just wander around doing surveys asking the same questions the last lot did.
I wish them luck, this is probably a very difficult thing for volunteers to go and do
https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/204102508
That said, I do hope they get vetted soon, this is such a worthy cause and absolutely warms my heart.
Anyway, is there somewhere, something like IT without Borders? To donate time or effort, our hands to build infraestructure for places wothout it?
It can be argued that the same applied to doctors, and I agree with that, however MSF is such a massive organization, with such high recognition that they are able to perform a lot of good work despite the complexity of logistics and support needed.
Perhaps the immediate benefit of even rudimentary medical aid is still highly appreciated even if lacking compared to if there were systems in place to fully support the skill. I think the benefits of skilled engineers are not nearly as universal without support.
EDIT: I found this article called A-To-Z Guide of the World’s “without Borders” Groups[1], which included a Technology without Borders group[2]. And I see some of the areas they focus on include water, energy, and waste. I can actually see how rudimentary waste management infrastructure can be of great help for impoverished communities, so perhaps I was wrong to doubt it.
1: https://matadornetwork.com/change/a-to-z-guide-of-the-worlds...
Their website doesn’t seem to be doing well at the moment though.
I originally learned about it from https://seagl.org/archive/2017/open-source-from-standing-roc...
Conversely my mother had regular conversations with a woman who worked as a clown at a local restaurant, which caused her no displeasure.
Edit: she is not particularly religious or superstitious either. Her relation to this fear is similar to that of anyone who is extremely uncomfortable/scared of clowns, just a different elememt of the circus.
Also spreading joy can be just as important as material needs. It's an orthogonal dimension.
https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities <-- see Against Malaria Foundation
I mean many children are scared of Santa due to it being a stranger in their house but I see no adults say they are scared of Santa.
To me, clowns aren’t funny. In fact, they’re kind of scary. I’ve wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus, and a clown killed my dad.
I do recall flipping through the channels as a child and coming across one of the scarier scenes from It. That might have some bearing on this.
The incongruence between the acting and the person behind the acting wigs me out.
The way it makes me feel is a little like the response evoked by the movie Coraline, which used dolls with big black button eyes and no noses to evoke a queasy kind of horror-lite response.
It doesn't have to be large features though, it can be exaggerated small ones too. For example, Art the Clown has a small black dot on the tip of his otherwise white nose. It's unsettling.
If I see a clown in the midst of a performance, it's fine. It feels "right". You're kind of far away from where they are, and them wearing colorful clothes and strange makeup makes sense because it helps a large crowd see their movements a bit easier. It's the "home" of the clown.
If I see a clown doing anything mundane, or just not actively "on" performing in front of a crowd it feels repulsive and weird. Clown just walking down the street? Horrible. Taking pictures with a group of people? Gross. It feels unnatural. It's like the hairy child vomiting photo. [1]
The worst is if I see a clown eating or smoking. A clown is a mechanism of performance and entertainment. For them to be "merely human", to be doing something relaxing evokes a kind of juxtaposition that leads to a kind of horror and disgust I can't quite describe. It's like walking down the road and coming across a Silverback Gorilla casually sipping a cup of coffee, reading the newspaper - it's an incongruity.
Also, I'm pretty sure the initial spark for my weirdness with clowns started with The Simpsons. [2]
[1] https://www.trendzified.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/what-...
Edit- higher resolution pic: https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/344736546477294864/
I get the fear of crazy looking ones like Pennywise, but how is that different from the fear of any non-clown maniac with a crazy look on their face and intent to murder? You could put a guy in a Pluto (Goofy's dog) costume with a serial killer grin on his face wielding a machete and I'd be just as scared.
I will say thought that as an adult perhaps a dislike for clowns cause they're terribly unfunny is logical. Cause someone trying hard to make you laugh especially through slapstick humor rarely works out. But I'm sticking to the fear definition of phobia and not dislike definition.
But a fear of all clowns just cause .... I don't get it.
That's thing with irrational fears.
The distortion of the facial expressions can make it harder to read and that can cause anxiety in some.
Consider the other extreme - https://twitter.com/SchrebersSister/status/11872730519494082... and that the distortion or the lack of features can be anxiety provoking.
If the clown face is always happy, or always sad, even if the person shouldn't be. Are they looking at you, can you track where they are looking? Are their eyes open or closed?
The facial recognition wiring in the brain could be sending "I don't know what to do with this" signals to the rest of the consciousness and that's leading to the corresponding anxiety that then manifests as a fear of clowns.
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Tangent of tangent that I was reminded of: Using AI to Find Where Clowns End and Juggalos Begin - https://medium.com/@nhoral/using-ai-to-find-where-clowns-end...
ICP doesn't just stand for IBM Cloud Private.