2025-06-01

• Read: [[The Case for Digital Degrowth]]

2025-05-31

• [[Capitalism creates and shapes desires]].

• [[Capitalism tends towards the commodification of everything]].

• Jammed: Pretty in Plums by Shida Shahabi

2025-05-30

• Read: [[Repairing Our Way out of Commodity Fetishism]]

  • [[The desire for new things is essential to the continuation of the capitalist system]].
  • [[Commodity fetishism disconnects us from where objects come from]].
  • [[Repair reconnects us to the materiality of objects]].
  • [[When we repair something, we think about its history and provenance]].
  • [[Repair undercuts commodity fetishism]].
  • [[Repair is anti-capitalist praxis]].

• Bookmarked:

  • Fixing as Repair – Fixing Futures
    • tags: [[Repair]].

• [[compost.party]] is fun.

  • A website running on solar power on an old phone.

2025-05-29

• [[Bookmarked]]:
  • Repairing Our Way out of Commodity Fetishism
    • h/t: [[Panda]].
    • tags: [[Repair]]. [[Marxism]]. [[Commodity fetishism]].
  • Global data empires: Analysing artificial intelligence data annotation in China and the USA
    • tags: [[AI]].
  • Our Mutual Friend: The BBC in the Digital Age | Briefing | Common Wealth
  • The Home Office’s new "ChatGPT-style" LLM tool is riddled with mistakes that could mean life or death for people seeking asylum - Foxglove
    • tags: [[AI]]. [[LLM]]s.
  • Why capitalism is fundamentally undemocratic
    • tags: [[Capitalism]]. [[Democracy]].
  • OpenAI explores platform to rival X, following $40B funding round
    • tags: [[Platform capitalism]].
    • See the point from Nick Srnicek about platforms all converging towards each other…
  • International Civil Society’s Tech Stack is in Extreme Danger
    • tags: [[Big Tech]]. [[Reclaim the stacks]].
  • Criminal Court: Microsoft’s email block a wake-up call for digital sovereignty
    • tags: [[Microsoft]]. [[Digital sovereignty]].
  • Negatechnology | POST GROWTH TOOLKIT
    • h/t [[Panda]].
  • We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard….
    • tags: [[AI]].
  • Livin’ on repair: The workshops, garages and cafes of Berlin’s thriving DIY s…
    • tags: [[Repair]]. [[Berlin]].
  • Apple launches Self Service Repair for iPad, expands repair programs - Apple
    • tags: [[Apple]]. [[Repair]].

2025-05-28

• In the latest episode of ‘Neil tries to update something related to Emacs’ (see [[2025-05-27]]):

  • I thought that I might be able to process org-roam.db on my laptop, as that is faster, and then sync it to my phone.
  • Two problems: firstly, it doesn’t work. Not sure why but it must be checking something else other than version to check whether it needs processing. Secondly: the DB contains links to file locations, which are different between devices. So, ultimately a no go anyway.
  • Ho hum. I’ll need to think of a way of doing a full update of org-roam.db on my phone somehow without it taking an eternity / bombing out.
  • At least I have an updated Emacs on my laptop!

• Later: I fixed it by moving the files out of the org-roam dir for the project, then moving them back in and processing then in batches of 1000 at a time.

  • Still took ages, but didn’t crash and I just let each batch run while getting on with something else.
  • I also learned that the slowness is probably down to me having the files on the shared storage rather than on termux’s home. See e.g. https://github.com/termux/termux-app/issues/2174

• Going to start moving some repos from Github and Gitlab to [[Codeberg]].

• [[Four in five Britons want the government to do more to support repair]].

2025-05-27

• Liking [[elfeed]] so far.

  • A bit more setup to do though. [[Setting up elfeed]].

• Found this rather excellent-looking site referencing some of my some of my info on how to publish your site with org-publish: https://drollery.org/build/

• As part of the above saga of updates, I will now endeavour to update org-roam to 2.3.0 on spacemacs on my laptop.

  • That will involve updating packages.

• Found this rather excellent-looking site referencing some of my some of my info on how to publish your site with org-publish: https://drollery.org/build/

  • That means I should probably also update spacemacs itself.
  • One or both of those will probably break something.
  • Yeah, already failing when trying to update packages. Sigh. Try to update spacemacs first then.
  • Now: error message that I need at least emacs 28.2. I’m on 28.1. Sigh.
  • Tried it from flatpak. That still doesn’t work.
  • I’m going to try building from source. That worked once before…
  • OK, it wasn’t that bad to be honest. The compilation, at least. Took about 10/15 minutes?
  • Now installing 305 packages… annoyingly you can’t just leave it unattended, as occassionally it asks to compile something.
  • Miraculously, that seems to have worked!

• I should find out if there’s a way of pinning packages to particular versions in both Doom and spacemacs, so that:

  • (a) I can make sure they don’t randomly update and break at a time when I don’t have time to do anything about it.
  • (b) I can make sure they’re always on the same version between mobile and laptop.

2025-05-26

• I am [[setting up elfeed]].

  • With it I can manage my feeds in an org file, view them in Emacs, and sync the status between devices with syncthing.
  • Now that some interesting people have moved from X to BlueSky, I can use the BlueSky RSS feeds to follow them.
  • elfeed-org makes it easy to add feeds and organise them. I’m trying Ton’s way of organising feeds to begin.

• All good. But, I had to upgrade Doom. Which upgraded org-roam. Which meant the org-roam DB needed upgrading. Which takes an eternity on my phone. So it’s effectively broken for me until I can solve that. Great.

2025-05-25

• Trying out [[using filetags for marking nodes in org-roam as Zettelkasten main notes]].

  • My org-roam garden is a bit of everything, not only what you’d call Zettelkasten notes.
  • Perhaps not good practice - I don’t know. But it is what it is.
  • It’s useful at times to search only for main notes. filetags will let me do that.

• Interesting to see some [[org-roam]]-likes keeping the idea alive (and making it faster): https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/rg-roam-minimal-org-roam-with-zero-config-no-sql-depends-only-on-ripgrep/3803/2

  • org-node, orgrr, and org-mem all look useful.
  • Yet, what’s this, I also see the first new release of org-roam in 3 years, too: https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam/releases/tag/v2.3.0
  • Interesting! Not sure when I’ll have time to do anything about any of this. Hopefully I’ll be able to update to 2.3.0 with minimal disruption.

2025-05-24

• Very excited to learn of the [[Digital Degrowth]] book by Michael Kwet (author of [[Digital Ecosocialism: Breaking the power of Big Tech]]).

• Also excited to learn that [[Kai Heron]] and [[Keir Milburn]] and [[Bertie Russell]] have co-authored a book: [[Radical Abundance]]: How to Win a Green Democratic Future.

• [[Listened]]: [[ACFM Trip 48: Political Commitment]]

2025-05-23

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • Review of The Commune Form: The Transformation of Everyday Life by Kristin Ross
    • tags: [[Paris Commune]]. [[Communes]].
  • Review of Josh Simons’ Book "Algorithms for the People – Democracy in the Age of AI"
    • tags: [[digital ecosocialism]]. [[AI]]. [[Algorithms]].
  • Beyond the New Municipalism: Towards Post‐Capitalist Territorial Sovereignty in the Case of Hernani Burujabe
    • tags: [[new municipalism]]. [[Post-capitalism]]. [[Territorial sovereignty]].
  • Techno-feudalism or Platform Capitalism? Conceptualising the Digital Society
    • tags: [[platform capitalism]]. [[technofeudalism]].

• Read: [[Another Now]]

  • Hmm, take back my original comment a bit (see [[2025-05-18]]).
  • It’s taken a turn into pretty dry dialogue as a vehicle for exposition of the ideas. Earlier on it felt a bit more… dynamic.
  • Still, the ideas are interesting nonetheless.

• Read: [[Techno-feudalism or Platform Capitalism? Conceptualising the Digital Society]]

  • Good look at various claims that current Big Tech platforms have ‘killed’ capitalism and turned it into something worse ([[technofeudalism]], [[vectoralism]], etc).
  • [[Jeremy Gilbert]]‘s opinion is no, it’s still capitalism, rather a new ‘[[regime of accumulation]]‘ - i.e. [[platform capitalism]].
  • Fine. But it all strikes me as a bit internal nitpicking. Does it actually help us do anything about it?
  • I think the argument would be, yes, you kind of need to understand precisely what it is in order to counter it.
  • Maybe.

• [[Fordism]]. [[Post-Fordism]].

2025-05-21

2025-05-18

• [[Read]]: [[Another Now]]
  • Fiction by [[Yanis Varoufakis]]. Really enjoying it so far. The plot is obviously a bit forced, a vehicle just to share his political ideas. But it’s a fun way to explore those ideas.
  • The 80s and [[Thatcherism]]. [[Miners’ strike]]. [[Wapping dispute]].
  • [[Anarcho-syndicalism]].

2025-05-17

• Finished [[Platform Capitalism]] (audiobook).

  • I’ll need to give it another listen, as not all of it went in - listening while distracted.
  • But seemed good. A lot more academic than [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]. The latter was more engaging, but (maybe?) less rigorous. I appreciate this book’s succinctness.
  • Some things that stuck out from this listen:
    • It has a good historical overview of where platforms came from and how they came to dominate.
    • It has a useful typology of platforms.
    • Platforms primarily gain their advantages from data.
    • Trying to force platform capitalists to respect privacy is impossible - it’s part of their DNA.
    • Over time platforms try to control the whole stack.
    • Over time, platforms slowly converge to offering the same services.
  • There’s a tiny bit at the end on possible ways to counter platform dominance. Very small, but worth noting.

• [[Public platforms]].

2025-05-14

• [[platform capitalism]].
  • It’s all about the [[data]].

2025-05-11

• [[Bookmarked]]:
  • Nature and other dangerous words: Marx, method and the proletarian standpoint in the web of life | Dialectical Anthropology
    • tags: [[Cheap Nature]]. [[Capitalocene]]. [[Ecosocialism]]. [[Jason W. Moore]].

2025-05-10

• Learned about [[chezmoi]] from [[Flancian]]‘s note about it yesterday.

  • Looks good and something that would be handy to me in principle.
  • I’m currently keeping my dotfiles just in a git repo.
  • However, it also looks like a new thing to learn and set up. So it’ll have to wait for now. But good to know about.
  • It looks like people are using it with Termux successfully, so that’s useful.
    • e.g. https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/issues/24304

• Learned of the existence of the native [[Linux Terminal app for Android]].

  • h/t: https://github.com/orgzly-revived/orgzly-android-revived/discussions/562
  • However, it don’t believe it will ever be available for my Pixel 5a.
  • So I’ll be sticking with [[Termux]].

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • Are we heading for another world war – or has it already started? | World news | The Guardian
    • tags: [[World War III]]

2025-05-09

• [[Bookmarked]]:
  • What will the new world order look like? Fractures Session 1
    • and https://nextcloud.tni.org/s/XkYotZHmzGXfd2m
    • [[geopolitics]]. [[Imperialism]]. [[China]]. [[United States]].
  • WEBINAR: Engineering the Cloud Commons: Tackling Monopoly Control of Critical Digital Infrastructure — Open Markets Institute
    • tags: [[Cloud computing]]. [[Cloud commons]].
  • Challenging corporate power | Ethical Consumer
    • tags: [[Corporate power]].
  • Where is our clothing made? | Ethical Consumer
    • tags: [[Clothing]]. [[supply chains]].

2025-05-06

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • The rise of ‘Frankenstein’ laptops in New Delhi’s repair markets | The Verge
    • tags: [[repair]]

• We’ve been watching [[Andor]].

  • It’s very good.

2025-05-04

• [[Tweaking Doom Emacs to use SPC SPC]].

  • Much nicer than SPC-: on a phone.
  • [[My Doom Emacs config]].

• We shouldn’t focus so heavily on recycling.

  • ‘We’ meaning society, and here specifically the UK. But probably other countries too.
  • [[The UK should not focus so heavily on recycling]].

• We should put more focus higher up the waste hierarchy.

  • [[The UK should put more focus higher up the waste hierarchy]].

2025-05-03

• A potted history of [[My usage of GNU/Linux over the years]].

2025-04-30

• As predicted, I couldn’t make the first teach-in of the [[Fractures: Internationalist teach-ins]] series.
  • The topic was "What will the new world order look like?"

2025-04-29

• I signed up for the [[Fractures: Internationalist teach-ins]] webinar series by [[Transnational Institute]].
  • It looks good.
  • Doubtful how many I’ll be able to watch live. But hopefully can catch them on catch up.
  • The [[Digital Capitalism online course]] by TNI was great. I like them.

2025-04-27

• [[Capitalism demands constant technological change]].

• [[Capitalism must take more from labour and nature than it gives back]].

2025-04-26

• [[Relentless growth is the ultimate logic of capitalism]].

• [[A good Zettelkasten is both horizontal and vertical]].

2025-04-25

• [[How to have device-specific values in .dir-locals.el]]

2025-04-21

• OK, finally sorted out that issue I’ve had for a while: [[File error: Getting attributes, Permission denied, /run/user/1001/emacs]]

  • It was because when I was logging in as the second user, I wasn’t using a full login shell.
  • i.e. su neil when I needed to use su - neil.

• Windows 10 reaching end of life after 10 years is fine. Windows 11 hardware requirements not supporting a whole raft of perfectly adequate machines is NOT acceptable.

• [[TPM 2.0]]. [[Secure Boot]].

2025-04-15

• [[Bookmarked]]:
  • On tech sovereignty – how to nail jelly to a tree – Structural Integrity
    • tags: [[technological sovereignty]]

• Mi [[mamá]] me contó de la vez en que mi papá le pegó, ella hizo la denuncia en la comisaría antes de escaparse a la casa de los padres y los hijos de puta de la comisería llamaron a mi papá y le avisaron para que la fuera a buscar.
  • Mi [[tío]] desapareció tres días después de que mi papá (que era de la derecha peronista) lo llevó a un embarcadero de Tigre a una reunión de montoneros.
    • -> [[7 de enero de 1977]].

• Good day at work!
  • Started cycling season by biking to work, which was great :)
  • Then good progress on some fronts, and a pleasant evening at home with Lady Burup and working a bit more.
  • Thinking about the future in a pleasant way.
• TIL about [[Mahasthamaprapta]], one of the two attendants of [[Amida Nyorai]]/[[Amitabha]] with [[Avalokiteshvara]]! Gemini told me about them, a.k.a. [[Dashizhi]] in feminine form.

2025-04-11

• [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]
  • Describes [[Bitcoin]]‘s initial promise and excitement around it, even from those on the left as a potentially [[liberatory technology]].
• But ultimate disappointment as it became another means of capital accumulation for the already powerful.

2025-04-10

• [[Listened]]: [[platform capitalism]]
  • Started it on [[libro.fm]].
  • Seems like a good thematic follow on from [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]] (PC came first of course).

2025-04-09

• [[Listened]]: [[Will Trump’s tariffs tip the world into recession?]]
  • Answer seems to be: possibly, yes.

• I must call the [[veterinary]] (for a checkup)
• Life goes on! I try to enjoy it.
• It was great catching up with friends more as of late, online and offline.
• Work is tough/intense but OK; I’ve been feeling productive and I’m looking forward to working more on some projects.
• -> [[next action]]

2025-04-08

• [[Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings]].

  • Some hope, courtesy of [[Ursula K. Le Guin]].

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]

  • Varoufakis has thought out a detailed approach for an alternative future.
  • Only touched on briefly here, but he has a whole other (fiction) book, Another Now, which explores it further.

2025-04-07

2025-04-06

• [[Read]]: [[A System for Writing]]

  • While (mostly?) tangential to the point of the book, Doto’s referencing of things like [[anarchist theory]] and [[rhizome]]s, and [[Doughnut Economics]] in examples, is further endearing me to it.

• [[Capitalism must end]]. [[Capitalism will end]]!

  • TBC: When? How?

2025-04-05

• [[Read]]: [[A System for Writing]]

  • Very useful.
  • It’s clarifying lots of things I’ve been doing a bit unguided.
  • I’m taking lots of reference notes from it.

• I find that statements that start with ‘[[I]]‘ such as ‘[[I am]]‘ or ‘[[I like]]‘ are good ways of starting on a path of making main notes. As you’ll start to make a train of notes to back up why you are or why you like something.

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • Ecosocialism: What Is It and Why Do We Need It? - New Green Horizons
    • tags: [[Ecosocialism]].

2025-04-04

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • Framework | Introducing a new RISC-V Mainboard from DeepComputing
    • tags: [[Framework Laptop]]. [[RISC-V]].
  • The Public Power Observatory | Social Text | Duke University Press
    • tags: [[Climate change]]. [[Ecosocialism]]. [[Mutual aid]]. [[Disaster communism]]. [[Community energy]].
  • (PDF) Deep Ecology, Ecosocialism and Original Institutional Economics in an Interdisciplinary Perspective: How Can They Collaborate for Building More Effective Sustainable Policies?
    • tags: [[Ecosocialism]]. [[deep ecology]].
  • An overview of Europe’s repair sector | European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform
    • tags: [[Repair]].

• [[There is no such thing as society]]

  • Yes, [[There is such a thing as society]].

2025-04-03

• The [[Drake equation]] is fun to think about.

  • Even if it’s contested as to whether the figures it produces have any real meaning.

• Enjoying a work collaboration we have going on at the moment.

  • Giving me an opportunity to dip my toe back into some technical nitty gritty.
  • It has been fun.

• [[We will defeat Moloch]]!
• [[work]]
• [[focus]]

• [[España 2025]]
• I attended an AI conference today in the morning, it was great! I met interesting people.
• I worked on AI, Partitioning, Rollouts.
• Then I did [[Flancia]]!
  • [[Agora Plan]]
  • [[bugs]]

2025-04-01

• Philip has put a great page together on your options at [[Windows 10 end-of-life]].

  • https://wiki.restarters.net/Windows_10_End_of_Life pull

• I occasionally have the deep misfortune of ending up on [[Amazon]]. Talk about [[enshittification]]. Endless random brand names, 50 random variations of the same crappy product. ‘Sponsored’ products. This is not a site that cares about its users.

• [[Las Jaras]]!
  • It was a great day all in all, I had enough bandwidth to do what I needed to do and start the week well; did also some planning for the upcoming months.
• Had lunch with [[Stapelberg]].
• Worked until 19 or until 21 depending on how you count, I count the latter.
• Threw [[476]] in the [[co2]] meter; it’s 17 * 28.
• [[Midi]]

2025-03-31

• [[Pathways that I’ve done on Kinnu]]

• I talked to my mum and it was great.
  • We are making travel plans :)
• I played [[Minecraft]] with [[Timur]], I appreciated it!
• Then I reviewed and cleaned up notes, iterated on projects, spent time with Burup. It felt healing.

2025-03-30

• [[Doughnut Economics]] has a nice, simple definition of what a [[system]] is.

  • "So what is a system? Simply a set of things that are interconnected in ways that produce distinct patterns of behaviour – be they cells in an organism, protestors in a crowd, birds in a flock, members of a family, or banks in a financial network. And it is the relationships between the individual parts – shaped by their [[stocks and flows]], [[feedbacks]], and [[delay]] – that give rise to their emergent behaviour"

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • Big Tech’s bid to rewrite the rules on net zero
    • tags: [[Big Tech]]. [[Net zero]].
  • In defense of digital commoning
    • tags: [[Digital commons]].
  • #2 – Symphonies of Imagination
    • In particular, the solarpunk-flavoured essay on Repair.
    • [[Solarpunk]]. [[Repair]].
  • Use Emacs in GUI mode on Android (using Termux and Termux X11)
    • tags: [[Emacs]]. [[Termux]].
  • Emacs + Termux on Android: Code, Org-mode and Agenda, Dired, Magit and more…
    • tags: [[Emacs]]. [[Termux]].

• [[Wasteland]] has a nice description of [[Oil]]:

  • "Most oil deposits are thought to have been laid down between 10 and 180 million years ago, when dead zooplankton and algae sank to the seafloor and were buried in layers of sediment, before being slowly transformed into hydrocarbons by heat and pressure and time"

• Via [[Chris Aldrich]] (| Chris Aldrich), this looks good: [[A System for Writing]].

• As usual, [[Poem]]:
  • May you be free
  • May you be kind
  • May you be happy
  • If you have to burn, burn kindly!
• [[Heather Marsh]]
• [[Maitreya]]
• [[Abstract Fairy]]
• [[Raspberry Pi 5]]
  • Downloading [[Raspberry Pi OS]] (based on Debian so it sounds fine to me…) as I write this :)

2025-03-29

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]

  • [[Apple]] started making the most money when they had the platform through which they sold apps made by others and took a percentage of all sales.
  • A form of [[Rent]].
  • [[Google]], [[Amazon]], others as well.
  • I guess this is where it’s quite similar to [[platform capitalism]].
    • I guess Varoufakis is saying it’s something qualitatively different, Srnicek is saying it’s a new evolution of capitalism.
    • Either way, seem to be in agreement that it’s big, new, and bad.

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • Ecosocialism: A Post-Capitalist Alternative and the Challenges of Transition - Common Alternatives
    • tags: [[Ecosocialism]]. [[Bolivia]]. [[Ecuador]]. [[buen vivir]].
  • Dark energy: mysterious cosmic force appears to be weakening, say scientists | Astronomy | The Guardian
    • tags: [[Astronomy]]. [[Dark energy]].
  • Don’t fork the ecosystem - by Gordon Brander
    • tags: [[software ecosystems]].
  • Is a New Economic System Necessary to Address Climate Change? - Stuart - 2025 - WIREs Climate Change - Wiley Online Library
    • tags: [[Post-capitalism]]. [[Climate change]]. [[system change]].

• [[Life]] wants to be; life doesn’t always want to be much; life goes extinct; life goes on.

  • I noted that down when listening to [[A Short History of Nearly Everything]], which says something like that - need to go back and find the exact quote.

• I’m returning to a bunch of fleeting notes I’ve logged in orgzly over recent months, that haven’t made it to the garden yet.

2025-03-28

• [[Bookmarked]]:
  • Google’s emissions climb nearly 50% in five years due to AI energy demand
    • tags: [[Google]]. [[AI]]. [[AI resource use]].
  • How much electricity do AI generators consume? | The Verge
    • tags: [[AI]]. [[AI resource use]].
  • Report | AI in the Public Interest: Confronting the Monopoly Threat — Open Markets Institute
    • tags: [[AI]]
  • Chip Production’s Ecological Footprint: Mapping Climate and Environmental Impact
    • tags: [[Chip production]].
  • What is the Future of Work in the Generative AI Era? A Marxist and Ricardian Analysis
    • tags: [[AI]]. [[The future of work]].

2025-03-27

• Windows 10 end of life is becoming a hot topic both at work and locally.

• [[Bookmarked]]

  • A Political Ecology of the Repair Manual
    • tags: [[Repair]]. [[repair manuals]].
  • Geographies of Digital Wasting
    • tags: [[Waste]]. [[supply chains]].
  • Thinking about 12 aspects of personal information/knowledge management
    • tags: [[personal knowledge management]].

• [[Geology]]. Parts of the crust, parts of the atmosphere

  • Inner core, outer core, mantle, crust?
  • Troposphere, …?

• Fuck me, [[snap]] is still taking up so much drive space.

  • I don’t have a lot to spare!
  • I had to install slack via it the other day. Probably that.
  • Maybe, but kf6-core24 is taking up the most space - 10.7 GB.
    • What’s caused that to be installed?
    • Dunno. It’s something KDE-related. But according to checking snap connections on various installed snaps, nothing is currently using it.
    • Removing with extreme prejudice!
  • Also /var/lib/snapd/ is gigs big.
    • Cleared /var/lib/snapd/cache/.
  • Copying some of the above into [[Clearing up drive space used by snap]] for reference for next time…

• [[How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century]]

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]

  • [[Feudalism]]. [[Rent]].

• Traveling to the US today!
  • As I write this I’m typing on my laptop on an American flight from [[Heathrow]] to [[Durham]].
  • I’ve been reading and listening to audiobooks:
    • I started [[Flowers for Algernon]] on the flight from Zürich, it’s already quite moving (as expected).
    • Then I continued [[Memories of Hadrian]].
    • Then I started an [[Introduction to Systems Thinking]] by [[Donella Meadows]] called [[Thinking in Systems]].
• Yesterday I thought again quite a bit about:
  • [[light]]
    • led me to read [[photon]] in Wikipedia, very nice article!
  • [[momentum]]
  • [[entropy]]
  • Quiz: what do momentum and entropy have in common?
• [[Waking up]]:
  • It turns out there’s going to be a community meetup in Zürich on [[2025-04-01]]!
  • Maybe I could check it out. For more, see the email from [[2025-03-22]].
• I need to do somthing to bring [[todo]], [[do]], [[next action]] and such under control :)
  • To begin with I think I just need to re-pick one as the ‘root’ and start going through it and try to keep my actual priorities at the top.
  • It’s going to be painful (because of the amount of stuff I’ve amassed! and the fact that even after all this I won’t be able to have all my todos there because I have a parallel life at work…) but probably worth it, so maybe I should just get right on with it.
  • -> done! I refactored [[todo]] a bit, and went through very old todos and actually found them even done. Maybe there’s a tune to the chaos I seem to operate in after all, at least some of the time ;)
• I think having an offline wikipedia could be nice. Or a language model that I can run locally, albeit slowly, but hey… that will come :)
• I enjoyed reading [[The discrete charm of the Turing machine]] by [[Greg Egan]]. This was in [[Instantiation]]; previously (in February) I read [[The Best of Greg Egan]], a selection of his short stories, and enjoyed them a lot!
  • He’s definitely one of my favorite living writers.
• Now I’m giving [[Binding Chaos]] a taste, after finding it on my [[Kobo]] and also mentioned in my long term todo mentioned above.
• Travel day!
  • As I write this I’m on the second plane today, about to tale off from Heathrow towards Raleigh.
• Ladu Burup’s day as I leave — I will miss her! She’s in good hands though.

2025-03-23

• [[Circular economy]].

• [[nostromo]] died today!
  • after almost dying many times.
  • I thank them for their service! beautiful computer.
  • [[paramita]] was ready to take its spot.
• [[bouncepaw]] told me about [[xremap]] today! it looks great, like it could fix several issues I had in the back of my mind with the input layer in wayland.
• New day but I’m working on my todos on [[2025-03-21]] :)
• I implemented [[chill]] today (late yesterday) to set the light levels at home to a nice late night/hacking level using [[home assistant]], that was somewhere on my todo list :)
• I read about [[router7]] by [[stapelberg]].

2025-03-22

• [[Astronomy]].

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]

  • I think his history and overview of how big tech firms got to where they are seems good. And like I said, very well written.
  • I take the technofeudalism stuff with a pinch of salt. Interesting, but, debatable, and probably doesn’t matter all that much whether it’s something other than capitalism or not. How do we stop it is the most important thing.
    • [[Blackrock]]. [[Vanguard]]. [[State Street]].

• [[todo]]:
  • I started packing for the [[us]]:
    • [[alfajores]]
    • [[passport]]
    • everything else :)
  • Things I want to do during the upcoming trip:
    • write in the [[zine]], I’ve been writing in my head for a while and it’s time to do some actual writing?
    • fix agora bot, hopefully earlier than the trip though?
      • I finally got to this on the flight to Durham on [[2025-03-23]] — untested, but at least I made two commits that I think should move the Agora mastodon bot in the right direction.
    • do some small FR for [[bull]]? which one?
    • fix [[betulagora]]
    • finish packing for the trip
    • check in

2025-03-21

• My script that pushes to the commonplace-agora repo has stopped pushing.

  • Turns out it’s because the SSH key has expired.
  • Since when did my SSH keys have expiry dates?
    • I guess it’s a gitlab setting.
  • I sshed to my server, created a new key, copied it to gitlab, all from my phone. God bless you [[Termux]] and [[fish]].

• Thinking about [[How to actively thwart enclosure and cooptation of the digital commons]].

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]

  • Cloud serfs, cloud proles, cloud fiefs, cloudalists.

• I met [[smurp]] today!
  • It was great!
  • I got a [[cal]] after seeing it at his smurp.com/cal and previously.
• [[zine]] -> [[us]]

2025-03-20

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]
  • [[Enclosure of the digital commons]].
  • [[Cloud capital]].
  • [[Modern Times]] and its similarity to working in an Amazon warehouse today.

• [[work]]
  • [[ai for sre]]!
  • good progress overall even though I was a bit tired as I slept one hour fewer than normal
• [[social.coop]]
• early [[fellowship of the link]] with [[aram]]!
• [[dibi58]]

2025-03-18

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]
  • What led to [[2008 financial crisis]]. Financialisation. Derivatives. Stock options.

• I opened a bug (maybe a feature request actually?) for [[wayvnc]]: https://github.com/any1/wayvnc/issues/371
• Chill day!
  • Played [[Minecraft]] with my nieces (who are in Argentina) :)
  • Played [[Minecraft]] with [[Timur]] :)
  • Was going to see [[VK]] and her boyfriend but we shifted the appointment to tomorrow.

2025-03-16

• Read: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]
  • I like the little detour into metallurgy and the [[Bronze Age]] and [[Iron Age]].
  • The history of capitalism and finance in the 20th century a bit more dry, though he does a good job at trying to make it more engaging.
  • [[Bretton Woods]]. [[US trade deficit]]. [[Nixon Shock]].

• I cleaned the house in the morning while I was logged onto [[Flancia meet]] (quiet instance, but that’s alright of course) and it felt good to start the weekend that way; I did kitchen and bathroom floors.
• We had a tough conversation with [[AG]] today, but I think it was the right thing.
• I wrote a script named [[Burup]] to disable the laptop’s keyboard and touchpad so Burup can sleep on it while I continue to use the external keyboard and mouse for browsing/coding :) [[Claude]] helped me find the best way to do this in a 2025 Linux + Wayland install, my first impulse was to reach for xinput but that doesn’t cut it nowadays :) [[libinput]] CLI is reasonable though.
  • I think I need to also disable the trackpoint (nipple/joystick that comes with Lenovo laptops) as somehow she still was able to move focus while I was typing this :) The situation is already much improved though.

2025-03-15

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • ‘All the birds returned’: How China led the way in water and soil conservation | Conservation | The Guardian
    • tags: [[China]]. [[Conservation]].
  • China’s Eco‐Civilisation, Climate Leviathan, and Hobbesian Energy Transition - Chen - Antipode - Wiley Online Library
    • tags: [[China]]. [[ecological civilization]]. [[Climate Leviathan]].

• [[Read]]: [[Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?]]

  • Really enjoying the intro and opening chapter. The personal style is engaging and liking the down to earth way of discussing [[historical materialism]].

• I found the card of a barista who once made a good coffee for me somewhere in Osaka: [[Kota Ikenaga]].

2025-03-14

• [[Listened]]: [[Technofeudalism w/ Yanis Varoufakis]]

• [[Sevilla 2025]]
• Hablé con [[Berni]]!
• [[Peter Murray]]
• I met [[Smurp]] for the first time this past Wednesday.

• Move the Incubator meeting to US-friendly
• Check PM AI chatroom
• go/detectr — hold it until US takes it, or Gavin?
  • done (later), then Hao plus maybe Abi?
• My new wireless router arrived and it’s already a great improvement in digital quality of life at home :) I hope it continues to work without fuss!

2025-03-12

• Listened: [[China Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction w/ Jason Hickel]]

• Loved the [[15 minutes]] flow
• Played [[The Reluctant Groom]], plus [[Lady Burup]]‘s song :)
• Back here something like 22 hours later, on the other side of the night and day and half there over :)
  • Work including oncall was occasionally heavy but still good, felt productive. Worked late and advanced some threads enough, but not as late as yesterday!

• [[Lady Burup]] needs to lose some weight, will continue noding the process in [[burup forever]] :)
  • I also want to lose 2-3kg or convert them from fat (mostly in my abdomen) to muscle, I’ll try to do this in the following 1-2 months and report back. I currently weigh 76.5kg (I’m ~190cm tall).
  • So we’ll do it together, I say! :

• I’m back!
  • In [[computer space]] (and time!)
  • Travelling was great but I’m looking forward to catching up with projects.
• [[Agora]]:
  • Discussed [[2025]] with [[Timur]] in [[Flancia Meet]], also discussed [[Betula]] progress which is very exciting!
  • Thought about [[Fediverse]] integration, [[auth]] and data providers.
  • Also about simpler and more opaque stuff like [[autopull for numbers]]: number [[n]] should pull e.g. [[prime/n]] because that’s a related node for all integers.
  • Hmm, what was by [[root node]] again…? :)

2025-03-08

• Listened: [[Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism: An Introduction]]

• God, [[snap]] is eating up a lot of space on my drive.

  • I think I’ll try to avoid using it in future.

• [[Bookmarked]]

  • The UN Is Working To Open Source Your Government: For Better Or Worse
  • A reading group for hopeful technologists — Careful Industries
  • Out of the Graveyard, into the Fire: A Review of Slow Down and Marx in the Anthropocene
  • Why has PKK leader called on group to dissolve – and why does it matter?

• Picked up my laptop after long. This has been quite an offline vacation!
• In [[Buzios]] this week, reading about:
  • [[Beppo]], [[Borges]]‘s cat.
  • [[Lord Byron]].
• Also reading a compilation of short stories by [[Greg Egan]] :)
• After a day by the beach, we went on a walk with [[AG]] to a lookout point near [[Ferradura]].

2025-02-15

• [[Bookmarked]]
  • Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead - marcan.st
  • The free software commons
  • Eight Pro-Social Platforms that Didn’t Work
  • I’ve Stopped Using Box Plots. Should You? | Nightingale
  • From Data to Art: Making “Rat Revolution” | Nightingale
  • The populistisation of green politics and the greening of populism: an examination of environmental populism in Europe

• Back noding in [[neovim]] to make sure I keep my travel setup running.
  • I could also move to running [[bull]] locally in [[guanyin]] while I travel…
• Started the day nicely with [[AG]].
• Then did [[Sadhana]], things around the house, and advanced on many threads :)
  • During the week I finished the two trivial bull PRs I wanted to get in.
  • Now I’m thinking of shifting to a different PR (which?) and to [[Betula]], [[Social.coop]] and [[Agora]] work.
  • Sending something to the [[M&Ms]] :)
    • I enjoyed the process a lot! I hope they enjoy the result, even a subset :)
• Thought about:
  • [[primes]], and again [[prime gaps]], which I now associate with the number #14 because 14 is a first notable prime gap on 113 - 127, and it easily answers ‘prime?’ for an interesting range

• I updated the [[index]] of my garden after long, I think it’s a bit improved.
• I donated 2x early today.
• I also opened a lot of backlogged correspondence, asked for a [[tax return extension]] (until 2025-09-30) and bought some gifts :)

2025-02-01

• Having an absolutely tedious time trying to figure out why the WiFi keeps on dropping out on some of the devices in our house.

2025-01-31

• [[The Word for World is Forest]]

• Lots of interesting people post interesting things on [[LinkedIn]]. If I want to read them, I have to use that platform. Accursed network effects.

• [[bull]] now supports tabs in editing mode :)
  • enjoying it a lot!
  • I am thinking of which other quality of life improvements could easily be added to [[CodeMirror]] if Stapelberg agrees.
  • [[vim mode]] is probably going too far? :)
• I realized I broke links in [[Agora graphs]] when I pushed the update to remove jquery; I know why, I just need to remember to fix it tonight after work.
  • fix it then :)

• Noding this from [[bull]] in today’s page in the Agora, meaning anagora.org/2025-01-27; I wonder if this will create a 2025-01-27.md file or somehow just a ‘bare’ 2025-01-27 file. I’ll know soon enough :)
• Had lunch with [[Stapelberg]] and it was great as usual. We discussed work and open source; bull and the agora.
• I finally bought the tickets for Argentina and Brazil! It feels nice to get that out of the way.
• Work was fine!
• After work, there was a short Social.coop [[TWG]] meeting with [[Dan Phiffer]] and it was great.
• [[Lady Burup]] is very beautiful and a great companion as always!
• Spoke to [[Jack Park]] after a while, I’m glad!
  • [[SenseCraft]] looks interesting.

• I signed up for deepseek.com to try [[deepseek r1]] and I found it quite good to begin with. Then I signed up for its API.

2025-01-26

• I’m on the [[train back to Zürich]] from Bern.
  • I went to a meeting organized by [[Welle]], an organization working in [[human rights in Iran]].
  • Then I met [[LP]] and we had dinner and a long chat, it was great!
• I will try to work on the Agora while I’m on the train, but maybe I will also just write and read and see where it goes :)
• [[Readers of the future]]
  • Unite? :)
• I read about:
  • [[Manuel Rivas]
  • [[Doomsday argument]]
  • [[Rolando Alarcón]]

2025-01-24

• Listening to [[The Word for World is Forest]]
  • From [[libro.fm]].
  • Really enjoying it. The reader is great.
  • [[Ursula K. Le Guin]] mercurial as always.
  • Though, when I say enjoying it… it’s a bit grim. This Don Donaldson character is a nasty piece of work, pure American colonialist.

• [[ideas]]:
  • [[Flancia]]
  • [[Agora]]
  • [[magnets]]

• [[magnets]]

• I went to bed a bit later than expected, at around 3am, but it was a productive night and I still managed to sleep enough so I have no regrets :)
• The [[dishwasher]] repairperson came over, fingers crossed I’ll have a dishwasher again! Not having it (after only a few years of having it) really made me appreciate it specially.
• Then I plan to [[work]] mostly on [[AI]] stuff today.
• Then we might go to [[Manor]] with [[AG]] :)

• [[work]]
• [[social coop organizing circle]]
• [[AG]]: was going to come over but stayed home, we’ll see each other tomorrow :)
• [[bull]]:
  • thanks to https://github.com/gokrazy/bull/issues/8 I’m now running this editor under https://edit.anagora.org/@flancian pull, one incremental step closer to serving editors for other users :)

• I’m writing this from [[sariputta]] projected on the wall in the guest room :)
  • While watching [[3blue1brown]], checking [[essence of calculus]]. I last studied calculus 15+ years ago :)

• Yesterday I ended up working on Sunday as planned and I enjoyed it.
  • I also took time to practice, and play, and that made a large difference.
• [[flow state]]:
  • [[flow state radio]]
• I made the move to the office around lunch, now I’m heading into a longish in-office flow session which might last five hours! Wish me luck :)
• [[bull]]:
  • I like the addition of ctrl+s to save a page a lot
  • I’m also using ctrl+e to edit — maybe it would be ideal if it started the editing session at the end of the document instead of the beginning?
  • Alternatively I think ctrl+s maybe should save but not go back to view mode; unsure.
• Researching how to publish [[snippets]] at work from the command line :)

2025-01-13

• Reading [[Not the End of the World]]
  • Hmm, just plainly stated that [[Degrowth]] is wrong.
  • There was a mention of ‘effective’ optimism. Hope that’s not aligned with effective altruism.

Daily Note 2025-01-10 / Holidays + Weekly Dump from 2024-12-21 to 2025-01-12

!!! warning "Hack Club Slack links ahead" To access them, you must be in the Slack (high schoolers 18 and below if you are not yet there)

Here’s what I been cooking behind the scenes for today, as well as the holidays dump during the break (2024-12-21 to 2025-01-05) and this school week (2025-01-06 to 2025-01-10), as well as the weekends (2025-01-11 and 2025-01-12).

I know it’s a long break from both doing the daily notes and the long-form blog content, mainly because of school and being hit by the burnout bus.

Holidays Dump 2024

Now let’s talk about what in the living hellscape happened I did during the holidays break, which involves High Seas Sticky Holidays:

• literally shipped RecapTime.dev Website before the midnight of January 1, 2025
  • last project to ship before midnight (PH Standard Time): SpinStack - Vinyl Record Manager by Oliver Potter (repo, demo)
• cooking up between HCB Explorer Discord bot and Hack Club Leeksbot behind the scenes
• probably resting between dev work and chores
• switching to NixOS with flake-based setup, alongside using home-manager

School Week 2025-01-06 to 2025-01-10

• preparing for upcoming Work Immersion schedule on February, among other things
• shipped Leeksbot and dotfiles + NixOS configurations, seperated by just a day
• done a lot of voting at the Wonderdome to bring my projects for other to vote, got the sea’s blessings for a extra 20% doubloons

The Weekends 2025-01-11 and 2025-01-12

TODO to self: go write this after [[High Seas]]

• [[doing]]:
  • Copy/pasted from somewhere:
    • [[Demo mode]]:
      • This will slowly but ~surely happen :)
      • Add a toggle
      • Add code that plays a midi
        • -> [[Lady Burup]]
      • Add code that plays an mp3
        • -> [[Heinali]]
      • Add auto-scrolling, auto opening of zippies
    • [[Add users]]
• [[worked]] and I liked it
• [[donated]]
• [[musikino]] is back!
• [[prana]] now documented lightly in the Agora :)
  • as usual you can use e.g. anagora.org/go/prana/6 to do the yoga session for ‘day 6’, whatever that means to you. I usually do one of go/flow, go/move, etc. on rotation :)
• [[Vajradhara]] and [[Vajrasattva]]

• I resigned from the [[Social.coop]] [[Community Working Group]] the day after starting the [[vote to suspend meta]] after much discussion and a quick draft done with/for the community. It felt like it was the right time to disengage after I received criticism yet again for ‘moving too fast’ despite looping in people earlier and doing what I thought was a fully reasonable pro-social action to advance discussion (start a proposal on Loomio). This after concerns were escalated by multiple community members, including to the CWG, about Social.coop feeling like less of a safe space due to our lack of visible response.
  • One of the criticisms I got amounted (paraphrasing for effect) to needing to have more pre-meetings and go slower. I am fine not having pre-meetings or anything of the sort and doing more and talking less in 2025 as far as I can (within reason), so it seemed like a good moment to finish my CWG engagement (after several years) and focus on the Tech Working Group and the Organizing Circle instead. The CWG is now well-staffed so I am not needed there anymore, which I am thankful for to the people who remain!
  • In general the negativity I had gotten used to getting from some members was a bit of an energy drain, and I realized I could use my time more constructively for the community in the other engagements I plan to keep.
• [[Bull]] is looking great! I’m now serving it (for myself only for the time being) at https://edit.anagora.org pull.

2025-01-11

• Reading [[Not the End of the World]]
  • Got it on [[libro.fm]].
    • Intrigued to see how it pans out. Purports to be a data-backed, optimistic approach to tackling [[climate change]].

• I’m writing this with my new mechanical keyboard, a [[keychron q3 max]].
  • I got this for the office because the previous one was a bit too noisy for the office environment; not that I was the only one using a mechanical keyboard, or that the switches were the noisiest you could get, but I felt like I was contributing to a less inclusive than necessary environment by typing loudly with my headphones at times. And I really like typing with my headphones on :)
  • The one that I got, with [[gateron brown switches]], is really quite silent! And I like the tactile feedback enough.
  • I am enjoying the typing experience so I’m glad!
  • The one thing I would add is maybe a palm rest. I don’t usually use one, but this keyboard is high enough that I feel like that could make it more ergonomic.
  • Sometimes it seems to double-register my space bar presses though, which is a bit disconcerting — I hope it’s a matter of adjusting my typing style to the switches and not a hardware issue! I’ll keep an eye on it.
    • Maybe [[NKRO]] is a factor here? Trying the recommendation in https://www.reddit.com/r/Keychron/comments/1ba9vxy/comment/l9bu0ys
• [[ekumen]]
  • [[eduardo mercovich]] me recomendó [[zen browser]]
• [[social.coop]]
  • lots of talk about the Meta change in policies with respect to hateful speech.
  • then more talk.
  • then [[against meta]] went through draft revisions.
  • then the [[vote to suspend meta]].

• I read about/experimented with:
  • [[openai webrtc api]]
  • [[gemini live]]
• [[pipewire]]:
  • [[easyeffects]]
  • [[wpctl]] for [[wireplumber]]

• First time starting a journal node from [[bull]] :)
  • I will be using the opportunity to take notes about the things I would change in Bull over time, as I try to use it as a default [[Agora editor]].
• [[bull bugs]]:
  • I can’t seem to be able to indent blocks :) Pressing tab while editing moves to "view site information" in Chromium, which is surprising.
  • Thankfully ctrl+] works, which is awesome and a life saver, but the default behavior could be improved probably?
  • I’m also missing [[vim keys]], which [[Silverbullet]] has, although ideally that could be solved at the browser level (e.g. by [[vimium]]); maybe it’s an option for the editor module [[bull]] uses?
  • Anyway, better update to head before I file bugs :)
• [[quotes]]:
  • "I have the solution, you just have to believe in it"
• Today I read and wrote about the [[Meta]] terms and policies changes and the [[Fediverse]].
  • It seems social.coop will have a vote on whether to suspend threads.net.
• Work was quite alright actually!

2025-01-07

• This year, I am celebrating having a 10 year old laptop.
  • My [[Lenovo Thinkpad T450s]].
  • The release date for the T450s was 2015.
  • Though I got it second-hand in 2019.

• [[work]]
• [[twg]] roadmap: [[twg 2025]]
• [[mohammed]]
• [[cognacore]]
• [[bill anderson]]

2025-01-06

• Read and finished [[Four Thousand Weeks]]
  • Thick time
  • Max Weber and Calvinism
  • I liked it in general. I’m on board with the general gist of the anti productivity sentiments.
    • Sometimes it came across a bit… wilfully contrary? Not sure.

• [[pure land buddhism]] -> [[universal gate chapter]]
• [[chilliad]]
• [[secrets]]
• love [[bitwascherei]] already
• [[gotosocial]]:
  • Brought up social.agor.ai provisionally, considering which domain to run this on — and whether to do a [[split domain deployment]].
  • Which one is better as a handle for the Agora bot and a user?
    • @agora@agor.ai?
    • @flancian@agor.ai?
    • @agora@social.agor.ai?
    • @flancian@social.agor.ai?
    • @agora@flancia.agor.ai?
    • @flancian@flancia.agor.ai?
    • @agora@anagora.org?
    • @flancian@anagora.org?
    • They mean different things, of course. All but @agora@social.agor.ai while ‘allocating’ social.agor.ai require a split domain deployment as per the current setup I’m running for Agoras. It doesn’t sound too difficult to try split domains using traefik, I could give it a try. But in that case, should I run these in @agor.ai (shorter/cooler?) or in @flancia.agor.ai (most correct as I’m planning on having this instance handle the usernames in flancia.agor.ai or anagora.org?
  • Update (after discussing with people): I think I’m going with the simplest thing that might work, meaning social.agor.ai is one instance that different people and agoras can use for social services, and handles are foo@social.agor.ai.

• [[AG]] :)
• [[worked]]
• [[Kris]]
• [[Avatamsaka sutra]]
• [[stormy weather]]

2025-01-02

• Planning to update spacemacs to latest.
  • As noted recently, usually something breaks in this process.
  • So I’ll look at ways to do this with minimal disruption.
  • I think trying to do it using multiple config directories seems a good approach.
    • That’ll be useful for if I ever want to run spacemacs and Doom side-by-side, too, for example, or my own vanilla Emacs.
  • One issue to resolve first - you need Emacs 29 for the –init-directory flag. I’m still on 28.1.
    • OK, I’ll try and tackle that first.
• [[Updating to Emacs 29 on Linux Mint]]

• [[New Years Eve]] was great, [[2025]] started great!
  • Party at [[AG]]‘s
  • Then at a friend’s
  • Then at [[Zentralwäscherei]], where I met some old and new interesting people!
  • -> [[Bitwäscherei]]
• [[Yi Jian Mei]] is stuck in my head (in the sense that it comes up spontaneously every day or so) and I don’t mind

2024-12-30

• [[Bookmarked]]
  • Charity Digital - Topics - Digital inclusion: A year in review

• Checking out [[bull]] by [[stapelberg]]!

• [[j0lms]]: [[plurality]]
• [[flancia meet]]
  • was quiet but it still felt good to be ‘back’ :)
• had coffee with my neighbours, it was great!
• cleaned the house a bit
• talked to my mum, I enjoyed it and it was great seeing her
• started a new notebook (ha), this one is a square with a pixel grid — a gift from the [[nintendo museum]] by [[mpd]]
• share photos
• run collect over notebooks and papers, this usually makes me feel better (I have a lot of context all around, putting it back in one place/pile usually helps manage it/consolidate)
• [[december 2024 adventure]]
• [[agora writing]]
• had interesting conversations in the [[fediverse]] about:
  • [[ai]]
  • [[sustainability]]
  • leading to [[ilich]], who I still haven’t read — will try to set up his book in my [[kobo]] to read it tonight/soon
• I read about [[recursively enumerable]] sets and languages — I remembered these were some of my favorite back when I studied computer science when I was 27 or 28. This led me to read again about complexity classes, hierarchies and then [[diophantine]] sets :)
• Also had a great time playing with [[Lady Burup]], and we even watched [[3blue1brown]] together! Pictures likely in the Fediverse :)

2024-12-28

• Reading [[Four Thousand Weeks]]
  • The efficiency trap - the more efficient you get, the more things you will fit into to do list, ultimately not gaining any time.
  • Productivity techniques are a way of facilitating avoidance of making hard choices.
    • By claiming you can get more efficient and fit more in, you can avoid having to decide what not to do.
  • Pay yourself first.
  • Keep three things in progress.

• [[maqna]] looks cool
• [[open letters]] is making a comeback? :)
• like [[december 2024 adventure]], late but surely and with gusto
• [[maybe]]

• Walked to [[Glattpark]] with [[AG]] going by [[Katzenbach]], it was very nice. We enjoyed the sun.
• Read further about [[prime gaps]] and [[twin primes]].
  • Also about the [[gamma function]].
  • Also about [[holomorphic]] and [[analytic]] functions. And [[Brook Taylor]].

2024-12-26

• [[My answers to Sophie’s questions about digital gardens]]

• [[smallcircles]]
• I’m back baby :)
• Travel was hard at times but also beautiful
• Listening to [[Que He Sacado Con Quererte]] by [[Violeta Parra]]
  • and then to [[Run Run Se Fue Pa’l Norte]], hermosas

• Back home!
  • After 15 days spent in the US west coast (working) and then Japan (traveling with friends).
  • I slept home in Oerlikon alone as I crashed not so long after arriving due to jet lag; [[AG]] will come with [[Lady Burup]] later today.
  • I woke up at 6am after only 7 hours of sleep due to jetlag despite only getting five hours yesterday and I decided to just get up and start doing things; I’ll try to take a nap later today as needed.
• Non-prioritized list of things I want to take a look at now that come to mind and I wanted to jot down:
  • [[Cline]] — I heard it’s a good AI plugin for [[vscode]] that is not too opinionated/walled-gardeny (is that a word? maybe it should be)
  • [[Posty]] — something cooked by [[Oliphant]] over at the Fediverse which sounds a lot like something I wanted to build/I wanted to see someone build)
  • This [[talk by Dan Dennett]] who passed away this year.
  • [[social.coop]] activity — some threads on Mastodon, some on Matrix, some on Loomio surely
• All in all this is supposed to be a free "jetlag recovery day" so I’ll just try to enjoy it and also spend time offline.
• I read [[Alan Watts]]‘s Wikipedia page (again? unsure) and I wondered again about his alcoholism and relatively early death at 58.
• I finished [[The Moon is a Harsh Mistress]] today, after starting it and reading most of it yesterday during the flights. I liked it quite a bit! In particular the relationship between the protagonist/narrator and Mike/[[Mycroft]], the AI; and how it went straight into the topic of collaborating with AI towards the revolution.

• Writing this on the flight from [[Tokyo]] to [[Copenhagen]] while on my way back to [[Zürich]].
  • I was (lightly) disappointed to see this flight did not head northwest as I expected, but rather northeast, despite what the map ‘navigation’ promised. This told me two things though:
    • "Western" planes are avoiding the whole of Russian airspace, likely because of the war. In retrospect I should have known this!
    • The navigation map available to the public in planes does not reflect in any way the course set by pilots. Instead it seems to just show the [[great circle]] to the destination from the current position. This held true through the trip. Indeed, the ‘projected path’ was roughly orthogonal to the true path at least until we reached the Bearing Strait (which is when I’m writing this).
  • I was planning on catching up on coding and writing (beyond this short entry), but I forgot to charge my laptop and there are no chargers in economy, so there goes that plan :) Well, I have plenty of reading to do so it’ll be fine.

2024-12-19

• [[Bookmarked]]
  • Starmer urged to change donation rules amid talk of Musk bankrolling Reform |…
    • [[Elon Musk]]. [[Reform UK]].
    • Oh hell.

2024-12-16

• [[Bookmarked]]
  • Supernote’s new E Ink tablet is upgradeable and repairable - The Verge

• I’m writing this on the [[Shinkansen]] from [[Hiroshima]] to [[Osaka]].
  • The [[Hiroshima Museum]], by which I mean the [[Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum]], was very interesting and very shocking — even though I thought I knew what to expect, the effect on me was strong. I could notice it also on other people who were there.
  • In Osaka I intend to:
    • Try interesting food (of course) :)
      • [[Kushikatsu]]? Hopefully there’s a meat-free version.
    • Visit new neighborhoods, like [[Shinsekai]] and [[Den Den Town]].

2024-12-14

• [[Bookmarked]]
  • New UK data centres could have a devastating impact on our environment, and o…
    • [[data centre]]
  • Library of Things Toolkit - Shareable
    • [[Library of things]].

• I’m writing this on my way to [[Japan]] ([[Fukuoka]]) from [[Honolulu]] :)
  • I just finished [[Story of your life]] and other stories by [[Ted Chiang]], I liked it a lot. I don’t know why I waited so long to read him more intensively after liking some of his short stories I read online.
  • Some related concepts/topics:
    • [[Fermat’s Principle of Least Time]]
    • [[The Castle of the Pyrenees]] by [[Magritte]]
  • He likes [[Borges]] (so do I as you might know). This came across most clearly maybe in his [[Golem]] related story, but there’s such an undercurrent in several stories and he uses the adjective [[Borgesian]] (IIRC) once.
• [[Agora development]]:
  • [[agora bot migration]]:
    • The current [[agora bot]] for Mastodon is still ceasing to work on [[2024-12-15]] as per https://muffinlabs.com/posts/2024/10/29/10-29-rip-botsin-space/ but I have failed to do anything about it… until now :)
    • To start with, I’ve now requested a post archive to save the 14k posts it has produced since it started operating two years ago.
    • I’ll also look for an alternate instance, and try to set up a migration flow (for keeping followers).

2024-12-11

• [[Bookmarked]]
  • against the dark forest
    • [[Dark forest]]. [[Cozyweb]].
  • Britain leads the world in cracking down on climate activism, study finds | E…
    • [[climate activism]].
  • New report: Exploring a transition to alternative social media platforms for …
    • [[Alternative social media]].

2024-12-09

• [[Listened]]: [[Novara Live: Assad Falls: What Next For Syria?]]

• I’m flying to [[San Francisco]] to work from [[Sunnyvale]] for a few days. As I write this I’m on a SAS A330 sitting in 51A with the seat next to me empty, the plane being about 70% full.
• I started listening to [[Right Concentration]] by [[Leigh Brasington]] (sp?) on the way to Copenhagen where I made my short connection.
• Now I’ve finally started properly reading the [[Fediversalist Papers]] (I’ve been waiting for such an occasion) and found the report immediately engrossing.
  • …and finished :) I tried taking good enough notes to then share with the Social.coop working groups and organizing Circle.
• I’m still two hours away from San Francisco. Not much more battery left in my laptop, so maybe I’ll just keep reading something else.
• I finished reading [[Thich Nhat Hanh]]‘s commentary on the [[Heart Sutra]]. I enjoyed it a lot :) Thank you Thich as usual.
  • [[Mindfulness Bell]] is a journal that I’d like to check out.

2024-12-08

• [[Read]]: [[Wasteland]]
  • In the epilogue, a bit of reflection on how we actually reduce waste.
  • Looks at [[ethical consumption]], [[zero waste]] and the [[circular economy]] with a critical eye. Them having been coopted by corporations.
  • Ultimately, his conclusion seems to be: [[degrowth]]. Consume less, produce less.
    • That doesn’t really address the problems of industrial waste though.

2024-12-07

• Blurters gonna blurt.

  • [[microblurting]].
  • Going to try popping them in daily files in a subfolder.

• Read: [[Wasteland]].

  • [[Nuclear waste]]. [[Sellafield]].
  • The book is great, well written and researched.
  • But I’m finding the subject matter ultimately quite depressing.
  • Particularly as it’s getting into [[industrial waste]]. It’s huge in scale.
  • [[Nuclear power]] and the corresponding waste is such a prime example of human hubris and folly.
  • This shit is going to be around for tens of thousands of years, yet we don’t seem to have a clue what we’re doing with it.

• [[do the right thing]]

2024-12-06

• The bookmarks from yesterday look pretty messy.

  • Maybe better to indent them all under one heading.

• [[Read]] (well, skimmed): [[Beyond Waste: Essential Skills for a Greener Tomorrow]]

• Read: [[Wasteland]]

  • [[household waste]] vs [[industrial waste]]

2024-12-05

• [[Bookmark]]: Climate Vanguard

  • "Political Education for Collective Liberation"

• [[Bookmark]]: How I Use Org-Roam to Take Notes for CS - Michael

  • Site inspiration.
  • Very pleasing looking font / text rendering.
  • I see it’s making use of Hugo.

• [[Bookmark]]: The Eco-Socialist Party — Climate Vanguard

  • [[Ecosocialism]].

• Today I was writing a newsletter. In my ongoing push to do everything in [[Emacs]], I set up org-preview-html to get a nice HTML preview pane as I was writing it in [[org-mode]]. I then copied and pasted from that into Drip’s wysiwyg editor. Worked pretty well.

• [[Bookmark]]: Levelling up through circular economy jobs » Green Alliance

  • [[Green jobs]]

• [[Bookmark]]: Beyond Waste: Essential Skills for a Greener Tomorrow report

  • [[Green jobs]]

• [[Bookmark]]: Capitalism kills: The case for ecosocialism | Green Left

• [[Bookmark]]: Reclaiming digital sovereignty

• As one might have noticed, I’m logging bookmarks in the journal stream.

• [[Read]]: some [[Wasteland]].

  • [[mining]]. [[Tailings]].

2024-12-04

• [[Read]] some [[Wasteland]].
  • [[Agbogbloshie]]
  • [[Basel Convention]]

2024-12-03

• [[Wasteland]].
  • [[Toxic colonialism]].
  • Companies incinerating products to save money.
  • Little bit if a history of [[planned obsolescence]].
  • Types of obsolescence.
  • [[Batterygate]].
  • [[Right to repair]].

• At [[work]], and back to noding using [[wiki vim]] using my ‘terminal only’ workspace.
  • [[keyboards]]: A coworker recommended the [[keychron]] [[q14 alice]] with [[jupiter brown]] switches. It looks and sounds amazing.
• [[december adventure]]

2024-12-02

• Read Where to draw the line? - by Gordon Brander

  • About [[complex systems]], modularity, compositionality, and boundaries.
  • Not a fan of [[Substack]], but always enjoy [[Gordon Brander]]‘s writing on [[systems]] and adjacent topics.
  • A shame that Gordon canned [[Subconscious]].

• Note that [[Substack]] has it’s short form posts now.

  • A decent move, a combining of elements of the garden and the stream in one service.
  • Essentially another walled garden version of what [[IndieWeb]] does.

• I love using [[spacemacs]] and [[Emacs]].

  • However, one big negative - I’m always scared to update spacemacs to latest, as well as packages from Melpa.
  • Pretty much at least one important thing breaks every time that I do, and as I need this for my work, I can’t often spare that time.
  • So I tend to put it off and lag behind.
  • I imagine there’s things I can do that would mitigate the risk and friction - I should look into those.
    • One simple idea is just to have two version running side-by-side. I might be able to do that actually, I think there’s a flag you can pass Emacs to say where to look for your conf folder.

2024-12-01

• Continuing from yesterday, yeah it seems like the touch input doesn’t work great on the native Android Emacs build, either.
  • So, Termux’s text input view is probably the best option for now.
  • orgzly is brilliant for task management, but you don’t get the whole range of Emacs’ powers.

• I’m writing this on the train to [[Bern]], after which I will make a few connections and make my way to [[Puidoux]] where I’ll join a [[party in the forest]].
  • It’s going to be quite cold tonight and the party goes on until Sunday afternoon, so I’m happy I got some [[Merino]] underpants and a long sleeved shirt yesterday :)
  • I caught up with [[Eerie Shell]] and [[Kris]] over messaging.
• I say [[We Will Defeat Moloch]].

2024-11-30

• [[Wasteland]]

  • [[Food waste]] and [[gleaning]].

• Writing prose in [[Emacs]] with [[Termux]] is a little weird.

  • It’s because you have to workaround the fact that terminal emulators don’t generally work well with touch keyboards.
  • Termux solves this cleverly with a text input view you can access by swiping left on the extra keys row.
  • It’s neat, but not optimal for longer-form writing.
  • Options:
    • Use orgzly for longer text input.
    • Try Emacs native Android build again.
    • Stick with it, it’s not that bad.

• Going all in on [[libre software]] and [[open hardware]] is a key part of [[digital ecosocialism]].

  • That said, use of proprietary alternatives may be necessary during transition.

• Provisioning the [[knowledge commons]] with info on what software is good, how to use it, how to switch to it, etc, also very important.

• [[Wasteland]]

  • [[Soil]], [[composting]], and a surprise mention of [[metabolic rift]].
  • It’s a well-written book - well paced, informative, humorous.
  • [[Biogas]].

• [[Waste]] and what you do with it is an important part of any [[system]].

  • This is part of why I’m finding [[Wasteland]] so interesting.
    • Here the system is society.
  • You can try and reuse it circulate it back into your system. Or you sink it somewhere in the environment.
    • It seems though, nothing is ever truly a sink - it always comes back one way or another…
  • Or you try and reduce how much of it there is in the first place.

2024-11-29

• Watched [[Why Spaced Repetition Doesn’t (Always) Work]]

  • Clickbaity title, but good points about [[spaced repetition]].

• [[Wasteland]]

  • [[Cholera]]. [[Sewers]].

• [[2024-11-27]] took place as well (linking it so I can then go node it :)
• Interesting conversation in [[Agora discuss]]!
  • [[Zicklag]] wrote about [[weird.one]], sounds very cool, it would be great to catch up synchronously with them and [[Erlend]].

2024-11-28

• Watched [[Agentic Product Development]]
  • Not sure I understand how the talk relates to the title.
  • But I like the concepts discussed a lot.
    • To me it felt like a description of [[IndieWeb]] without really mentioning IndieWeb.
      • Except in the talk subtitle? And one side mention of IndieAuth.

• I woke up with a headache for some reason, and it came back during the day, but otherwise I was fine.
• I worked and then attended the [[end of year dinner]] with my coworkers.
  • There was also a [[bowling]] afternoon event which I skipped as I felt I was too behind work and I wanted to use the opportunity to catch up.
  • Even as I decided to skip it I knew that, with the passage time, I would remember the bowling event but not the afternoon working. But I decided to do it anyway as I also knew my mental state would be affected by not making progress on some tasks, and I think in the end it was a reasonable choice.
  • I enjoyed dinner. I actually like my coworkers, I’m lucky in that (and many ways!).
• Then I returned home and I played with [[Lady Burup]] and played the piano.
  • I played [[Amores Hallarás]] for the first time in A (what I remembered/whistled) and in B (as per the recording by [[Inti Illimani]]).

2024-11-27

• [[Wasteland]]

  • Now discussing [[reuse]]. Waste prevention.

• Learned of [[Weird]] and [[Leaf]] from Zicklag on Agora Discuss.

  • Very interesting!
  • Weird: "prosocial network based on the cornerstone of the internet:Personal websites."
    • This is music to my ears.

• [[Watched]] [[Why Ethical Consumerism Is a Trap]]

  • It’s a trap!
  • [[B Corps]] started off decent enough, but some problematic admissions recently (Nespresso?)

2024-11-25

• [[Wasteland]].

  • [[Landfill]].
  • [[Recycling]].
  • [[Energy from waste]].

• All of the above methods of [[waste disposal]] are problematic one way or another. Reduction of production and consumption rates really is the only solution. (i.e. degrowth).

• Still recovering from disease (flu? covid? unsure) with [[AG]] — but feeling better thankfully, both of us.
• Ended up testing [[backup restores]] for [[social.coop]] finally and it felt great! It was in the todo list for long.
• Not so much progress on [[work-work]] this weekend — which I know might sound a bit weird, why is it that I sometimes plan to work on the weekends? The truth is that some of the things I need to do I find it hard to do during the week for a variety of reasons, like meeting load. So I sometimes use the weekend to catch up. But when I don’t I have to at some point ‘let go of it’, else it weights on me implicitly.
• Spoke to my mum over [[Meet]] and it was great!

2024-11-24

• [[23]] is [[Lady Burup]]‘s day :)
  • A chill day at home, with snow outside. I’m taking care of [[AG]] a bit as she’s sick.
• Todo for the day:
  • rest :)
  • fix mastodon embeds in the Agora? they are still broken after most instances updated to 4.3
    • I didn’t quite fix this yet but I found two bugs doing this and made progress :)
    • First, social.coop embed.js had not been updated in years. We need a step to update static content when updating the instance! I mentioned it in the room.
    • Second, I filed https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/33049 against Mastodon. I don’t get how their "new style" embeds are supposed to work, embed.js seems a bit weird. Let’s see what they say.
  • work: on that work document at least for one pomodoro
  • work: book meetings for the upcoming week (see paper notebook)
  • social.coop: CWG oncall
    • Some spam reports.
    • No new registrations since yesterday.
  • social.coop: TWG next steps towards alpha.social.coop
    • Hmm, what does this mean?
    • I guess I should fill that form to get a VPS from iocoop now that we have joined! That sounds simple enough/fun.
  • write
  • read

2024-11-23

• [[Wasteland]].

  • When Blue Planet had its episode on plastic waste in the oceans, the anti-plastic public reaction gave the price of recycled plastic a huge boost.
    • Interesting to think how television programmes can still have such a system changing effect.
    • See also the documentary about the [[British Post Office scandal]].
  • Apparently a plastic bag was found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

• I hope to find the time to start participating in the [[IndieWeb Carnival]].

  • I like it as a concept for nudging people to write in their blogs.
    • It is an example of the [[Ritualize Togetherness]] pattern of commoning, too.
      • Which reminds me… would be good to keep [[Node Club]] going.

• back to the office finally, after a few days sick working from home! it was nice going back.

2024-11-22

• Downloaded [[Wasteland]] from [[libro.fm]].

  • But… now I can’t find my headphones.

• Found them!

• The opening to [[Wasteland]], where he outlines the scale of waste we produce worldwide, puts me in mind of the bit in [[Doughnut Economics]] where she discusses broadening our conception of the economy to be embedded within the biosphere.

  • How the economy has sources and sinks to the wider environment.
  • Wasteland tells just how much of a sink we treat the planet as, as we dump our waste into it.

2024-11-21

• Finished rereading (listening) [[Doughnut Economics]].
  • Still relevant and useful.
  • I should write up some takeaways. (Maybe use that rubric from the OU module?)