Activity Report

Baron Ryan
Baron Ryan
@americanbaron
Followers: 1,379,930Posts: 587Following: 466
Austin, TX my book, playlists, and other writings:
View all posts from @americanbaron
I wrote a book :)

Link in bio to order the book (and if you’re outside the U.S. check your country’s Amazon for better prices). 

I’ll be writing about why I wrote this book and about my extremely dramatic and out-of-control personal life in my substack if you want to follow along.

#shortstory #book #writer #author
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I forgot what I missed out on, but I still fear missing it. This feels like a “feel good” video, and I guess too much is wrong with the world to make a feel good movie, but too much is wrong with the world to not watch one.

#adulthood #fomo #growingup #shortfilm #shotoniphone
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A nosy army postman secretly rewrites the letters between a soldier and his wife in an effort to save their crumbling marriage. This is @dont_shoot_the_messenger 💌

Starring @americanbaron @avilesmike @sydneyrachel @anne_patterson_ 

Writer & Director: @anthonytroli 
Production: @gooutsidefriends 🙃
Executive Producers: @nikkitran @craig_levites @mattjamesroe 
Cinematographer: @georgemullinix 
Assistant Director: @cire.capture 
1st AC: @tristgram 
Steadicam operator: @loren__hamilton 
2nd AC: @michel.alanis_ @gabbysalinardo 
Editor: @chrismckinley
Set Design: @thearvnk @4_of_spades 
Costume Designer: @aloufay 
Hair & Make Up: @gabrielavega.sfx @rebeccasophiemakeup 
HMU Assist: @giofaces
Sound Mixer: @jared_payzant @a.a.ron.kesler 
Gaffer: @ryan_breitenbach 
Key Grip: @matthew.freer.35 @stretch_cornflake 
Electric: @cruelsmusic @shred_dec 
Swing: @luisherrera
Audio Post-Production: @wav_enthusiast 
Colorist: @sgllng 
Utility: @justinwhittinghamfilm 
Key Production Assistant: @hijo.de.la.guayaba 
PA: @arc_type @linden_degurian @verreviolet @charlie.w.thomas 
Stills Photographer: @cassiefuertez 

Made possible with help from @thehusc 
Military Advisor/Historical Consultant: @armchair_historian1945 @adamlid1
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“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously near to wanting nothing.” - Sylvia Plath
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The burden of wanting.
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How to get rich.
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people watching.
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🧁 It is a distinctly human practice to tell stories. Penguins don’t waddle around blathering about who might get laid off from the fishing job next week. While animals have the capacity for memory, human animals have not only the capacity, but we can embellish them and even make them up. “Made up memories” it’s not a bad way to describe what stories are to an infant. 

Story is an instinctive feature of human beings. We tell them, listen to them, and notably we buy into them. Marriage, finding one’s life purpose, healing oneself through therapy, prayer, currency, muffins, these are all narratives we allow ourselves to buy into.

We eat pie for dessert and pancakes for breakfast and rarely vice versa. You eat a cupcake for breakfast, now you’re a degenerate. You bring muffins to a birthday party and now you’re boring. Muffins and cupcakes belong in the same family and in more ways than not, they are the same thing. but the narrative we agree on allows eating what is basically a cupcake for breakfast because we’ve agreed to call it a muffin. This is one of many collective narratives we buy into and it is a very human one. 🧁
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The Future of Wanting (in an age of A.I.)

The reason we want is not to get what we want, in the end, but to keep wanting them. Whether we knowingly admit it or not, arrival is death (and vice versa). The trouble is, the end is necessary for the beginning and all the other parts in between. The end is what makes anything special. That any good or beauty we experience in our lifetime is rented, is what makes them good and beautiful. It is a very human contradiction—we don’t want good things to end, and yet we can’t deeply want those things without them one day ending. 

The frightening part about A.I. is that it is partially an arrival. It destroys that mental illusion of meaning—the idea that we can get what we want or that we journey to reach a destination, is essential. Without it we journey aimlessly without destination and want without goal. The future lacks necessity. 

A.I. is not the enemy. It is the Eve-bitten apple that amplifies the question that was always there: What are we doing here?
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I just have one question for all these AI nerds. Have you seen Jurassic Park?
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To be so comfortable that it’s uncomfortable because you realize you’re where you wanted to go and now there’s nowhere to go.
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@americanbaron's personal journal ended up being the key to his entire film.
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