Strypey @strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz

"Our collective objective should be, to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offence, or the disadvantage of anyone."
- Buckminster Fuller

#Introduction career activist and professional volunteer from Aotearoa (NZ). Co-founder of numerous community projects, including a community newspaper, #CoWorking space, #MicroRadio station, #SocialCentre, the Aotearoa sections of #Indymedia and #CreativeCommons, and the Aotearoa Permaculture Network. These days, I publish long-form blogs at #Disintermedia. I'd love to hear from you about common interests, my contact info and more about my project history is here:
https://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/danyl-strype

Let's imagine communities go back to punishing people for perceived wrongdoings by putting the accused in the stocks and throwing rotten produce at them. I think that's wrong. It's important that I don't find myself collecting rotten fruit to throw at those who support the wrongdoing of putting people in the stocks. Which means I need to think carefully about what more enlightened methods are available to challenge ideas and practices I disagree with, and use them.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/carla-bergman-and-nick-montgomery-the-stifling-air-of-rigid-radicalism

"To do good work you need a brain that can go anywhere. And you especially need a brain that's in the habit of going where it's not supposed to."
- #PaulGraham, 'What You Can't Say'
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

This is both a textbook description of people like #RichardStallman, and an explanation for his current status as heretic and pariah.

#GitLab has always used Goggle #reCAPTCHA, which annoys human users and requires nonfree #Javascript, as part of their attempts to prevent spam accounts and issue spam. After a lot of discussion and experimentation, they are currently testing an invisible #CAPTCHA that will hopefully replace it :
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/issues/46548

Hopefully this is a sign of the immanent decline of Goggle's unpaid mechanical turking malware, which currently festoons a huge amount of the web.

It's been a while since I saw an #OpenSource project talking explicitly about horizontal organization, consensus, a focus on avoiding and resolving conflict, and Code of Conduct violations dealt with by mediation. I'd like to see more of this. Anyone know of any other examples?

"The project tries to be as non-hierarchical as possible. Every contributor must abide by a well defined set of rules, no matter which role they take. For decisions we strive to reach near-unanimous consensus ... If possible, conflicts should be avoided or, otherwise, resolved. Even if the project is non-hierarchical, it is possible to define specific roles within it. Roles do not really give additional power but additional responsibilities."
https://libav.org/about/

#ecosia.org is a search engine - based on Germany so subject to #GDPR - who give most of their ad revenue to fund reforestation. They are structured as a #BCorp and make regularly publish transparency reports on how much they earned and which reforestation projects they've given funding to:
https://bcorporation.eu/directory/ecosia-gmbh

Sounds good. But I wonder what tech they use? It would be good to see some transparency on that too.

Thanks @switchingsoftware for rebuilding the site! If you're out there anonymous switching.social creator, you rock, and we miss you.

Everyone mourning the loss of #SwitchingSocial, it's been reborn here:
https://switching.software/

Being a #vegan, I was the ultimate #LCHF (Low Carb Healthy Fat) sceptic. But a while back I met a medical doctor who had great results with it, and a special person in my life tried it as a last ditch effort to deal with an "untreatable" chronic illness, with amazing results over the last 6 months. The more I learn, the more the science seems to back it:
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/07/16/683897/why-a-laxative-was-used-in-a-recipe-for-sausage-rolls

Turns out #VeganKeto is a thing too.

Here's a report on our third #VOICE testing session on Satuday, where we intended to test group voice chat on #Tox, but ended up having more success with #Wire:
https://write.as/yt03jv11742w2.md

Our next session is scheduled for Sunday 2 November, starting at 12:00 UTC. We currently coordinate testing at:
#voicechat:matrix.org

#Anbox allows a full #Android/Linux OS to run inside a sandboxed container on a GNU/Linux system, so that Android apps can be run on the desktop (or potentially touchscreen GNU/Linux) without the extra weight of full emulation:
https://github.com/anbox/anbox

#ShowerThoughts using a VPN in China is morally equivalent to using a #BitTorrent client back home, to watch TV shows under ARR copyright. In both cases I'm technically breaking the law of the land, but as an act of civil disobedience against laws I ses as unjust and oppressive. Why should I accept being denied access to the full public internet, or to audio-visual entertainment that used to be broadcast free-to-air, and costs nobody anything if I download a copy instead?

Just discovered there's a web client for #Mumble:
https://github.com/Johni0702/mumble-web

Major data privacy and decentralization improvements in the 4.0 releases of #Synapse and #Riot:
https://matrix.org/blog/2019/09/27/privacy-improvements-in-synapse-1-4-and-riot-1-4

#Matrix

I literally cried at hearing someone else say this out loud. My deepest fear is that I've wasted decades of my life, promoting tools that make the world worse, while trying to help make it better. But imagine the kind of unmitigated hellscape the state-corporate system could have built with digital technology, if there hadn't been thousands (millions?) of us pushing back against that, and towards our visions of it's best possible outcomes.

"But looking back, I'm thinking the answer wouldn't have been to talk less about the power and potential of the net, but more. These technologies would have arisen with or without those of who saw in them the chance to connect humanity, and unleash our species' true potentials."
- #DouglasRushkoff, #TeamHuman
https://teamhuman.fm/episodes/ep-139-tiffany-shlain-unplugging-one-day-a-week-tribute-to-paul-krassner/
(2/2)

"Were those of us who extolled the virtues of digital technology wrong? Did we doom civilization by promoting something we simply weren't ready for? I'm willing to admit some responsibility, I guess, for underestimating capitalism's ability to redirect the net towards these anti-human, anti-social agendas, and maybe overestimating our society's moral, social, and mental health ..."
- #DouglasRushkoff, #TeamHuman
https://teamhuman.fm/episodes/ep-139-tiffany-shlain-unplugging-one-day-a-week-tribute-to-paul-krassner/
(1/2)

Chris and I have occasionally had our differences over the years when it comes to organizational strategy, but few people in #Aotearoa understand the #cannabis law reform issue better than he does. It's great to see these new initiatives he's promoting here, and I look forward to reading more about the nuts and bolts details. The referendum next year is our once in a generation chance to #MakeItLegal. As Ali G would say, let's make it happen!