2024-04-19

• [[Replacing Google Fonts usage with locally-served font]]
  • [[What’s wrong with using Google Fonts?]]

• Flying to the [[US]]!
  • Not staying super long, but I’m attending a wedding and visiting a few museums I’ve never visited before.
  • I slept badly tonight, and the day before, due to different reasons — the first night it was due to trip prep, the second it was due to a (surprise, as usual) allergy attack that kept me up/very uncomfortable until late. Happy to have made it to the flight only looking slightly like a cat (because of how my eyes swell, I get a bit of a feline look for hours-days after an attack).
  • Listening to [[Lex Fridman]] with [[Jimbo Wales]] on topics like the history of wikipedia. Very interesting as most Lex conversations I’ve heard as of late!
• [[Agora]]:
  • I’m back in the Agora, finally :) I took a more prolonged break from journaling as I moved with [[Lady Burup]] temporarily to [[AG]]‘s place (she is very kind!) and I adapted my routine to that space; also I’ve been busy at work and with other projects.
  • Thank you [[neil]] for keeping the journaling section of the Agora alive and interesting!
  • I reworked a bit the Agora’s [[README.md]], which is what is rendered at the Agora root URL — e.g. https://anagora.org pull. Hopefully it’s more cogent and informative without being overwhelming. But you tell me :)
  • [[Agora Development]]:
    • Fix local dev environment which is now sending https to itself even though it’s http only due to bug in agora.py:56 :).
• [[Flancia]]:
  • I thought back a bit about the history of Flancia while I was rewriting the above. It’s been running for a number of years at this stage!
  • Maybe I should write a belated update in https://flancia.org pull proper.
    • Include a reference to the [[flancia meet]] landing page.
    • Include a TLDR on what the Agora now is/how it developed through the years/where do we want to go next.
    • Maybe take the opportunity to have some extra fun and write something more clearly fictional again :)

2024-04-18

• I [[listened]] to [[Degrowth vs Eco-Modernism]].
  • It’s a good episode.
  • I like [[Kai Heron]], and I’ve found the debate between various strands of [[ecosocialist]] thought very interesting.
  • But I also lament the time spent disagreeing amongst ourselves on the left.
  • Is it ultimately useful? What if all this intellectual effort could be spent on bringing about a transition away from capitalism, and towards ecosocialism?
  • I don’t know - perhaps the debate is contributing to that transition, in part, in a roundabout. And I suppose that if we don’t know what we stand for, we can’t meaningfully work towards it.
  • But still. It has vibes of [[The People’s Front of Judea]] vs the Judean People’s Front.
  • Not got to the end yet, so perhaps this will be covered…

2024-04-17

• [[Listened]] to [[Degrowth vs Eco-Modernism]]

• [[Listened]] to [[Is the Middle East on the brink?]]

2024-04-16

• [[Shells]].

  • Bash vs Fish vs Zsh vs Nushell? | Lobsters

• Listened to [[Israel’s AI Kill List: “Once you go automatic, target generation goes crazy.”]]

  • About Israel’s AI targeting system, "[[Lavender]]".

• Read: [[Emacs: Dead and Loving It]]

  • "What is dead cannot die"
  • [[Emacs]]

• Working on some improvements to the look and feel of my writing mode that I use when in org-roam.for Emacs.

  • [[Improving my Emacs writing mode]]

2024-04-15

• Not sure if this has happened just recently, or I’ve been living with it for a long time, but: case sensitive node search in [[org-roam]] was starting to bug me.
  • Turns out that it’s [[Helm]] that is doing it, when set to the ‘smart’ completion algorithm.
  • I just need to (setq helm-case-fold-search t) and all is good - much smoother completion experience.
  • See: https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/v2-case-insensitive-completion-and-backlinks-not-working-as-expected/1701/17
  • In Doom, something different.
  • I’ll pop it in a separate note: [[Turning on case-insensitive search in org-roam]]

2024-04-14

• Listened to [[New Economics Podcast: Should we be going for growth?]]

  • Good discussion.
  • Growth. GDP . Degrowth. Green growth. Decoupling. Doughnut economics. Policies for alternatives to growth. Growthism. Growth is structurally baked in - how to change that?

• [[Listened]] to [[Ghosts in the Machines: Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, & Capitalism]]

  • LLMs. AGI. Political economy of AI. Neo-Luddism. [[Left spirituality]]. Fun wide ranging discussion.

• [[Habitat loss]].

  • One of the most significant threats to [[biodiversity]].

• [[Film theory]] looks at films and the effect they have on society.

  • I find this really interesting so learning a little on it via Kinnu.

2024-04-13

2024-04-12

• Did a bit more on [[Setting up a literate publish.el with org-babel]].

• The AI [[hackathon]] I’ve been working on went well \o/

2024-04-11

• Learning about [[biodiversity]] via the Kinna app.

  • Variety of species. At various levels.
  • Essential to the health of the planet.
  • Genetic diversity, species diversity, ecosystem diversity.

• Listened to [[Post Capitalism w/ Alnoor Ladha]]

  • Fascinating discussion. Post Capitalism. Post here not meaning ‘after’ but ‘in relation to’. Pluralistic. Past and present examples: Zapatistas. Rojava. Indigenous worldviews. Relational ontologies and OntoShift.

2024-04-10

• Migrating my publish.el to a [[Literate publish.el]].
  • To make it a bit more understandable to others, and also as a push for me to tidy it up.

2024-04-09

• Made good progress on [[adding planted and last tended dates to pages in my digital garden]].
  • [[Testing my org-export customisations with ERT]] was incredibly helpful, would have been a bit of a nightmare otherwise.

2024-04-08

• [[Listened]] to [[Should the UK stop arming Israel?]]

  • Drone strike killed seven aid workers. (Some of whom British).
  • While Israel says it was a mistake, suggestion is that this is in line with Israel’s current rules of engagement.
  • UK sells a small amount of arms to the UK. Sunak threatening to stop this unless more aid allowed.

• [[Nonprofits should (almost) never write their own software]]

  • From the [[Aspiration Manifesto]].
  • Being the tech lead for a non-profit that develops our own software - I fully agree. We are currently going through a process of trying to divest as much bespoke code as possible to pre-existing (FLOSS) software.
  • One alternative I see, where no other software exists for the desired purpose, is for non-profits to perhaps be incubators for the software, but always with an intention to [[exit to community]] / exit the software to cooperative.

2024-04-07

• My publish.el file would be a good candidate for a literate config approach. Would make it more useful for other people to make use of then I think. Also would make me tidy it up.

• Listened again to [[Nathan Schneider on Building Democratic Governance on the Internet]]

  • [[Parallel Polis]], Vaclav Havel.
  • Touches on similar stuff as recent [[Vincent Bevins]] podcasts re: failed revolutions of the 2010s.
    • Technology helped spread viral messaging for movements, did little to help collective decision making and long-term organisation.
  • Mentions [[Loomio]], [[Action Network]].

• When I get a moment I’ll make a page of gardening tasks for myself.

  • Just simple things like reviewing nodes that haven’t been edited for a long time; reviewing empty nodes to either prune or flesh out; etc.

• [[Ecology]].

  • interaction between organisms and their environment.
  • communities, ecosystems, biomes.
  • producers, consumers, decomposers.
  • food chains, food webs.
  • energy flows, trophic levels.
  • nutrient cycles.

2024-04-06

• If you share your [[commonplace book]] to the knowledge commons, is it then a [[commonsplace book]]?

• [[work]]
• [[flancia]]
• [[cleaning]]
• [[danger]] codes

2024-04-05

• [[Listened]] to [[Nathan Schneider on Building Democratic Governance on the Internet]]
  • Love this interview of [[Nathan Schneider]] by [[David Bollier]]. New book out, [[Governable Spaces]]. Sounds like a synthesis of a bunch of recent papers (e.g. [[Governable Stacks]]).
  • Main thesis is about the need for inclusion of democracy in our everyday online tools. To avoid ‘[[Implicit feudalism]]‘.
  • [[Decidim]] referenced favourably.
• And [[listened]] to [[Building human economies using technology]]
  • Bit of a sprawling rambling discussion, but still interesting talking points. Technology, communism. [[Telekommunisten]]. Struggles of leftist tech to get a real foothold. [[Theory of value]].

2024-04-04

• I’m getting more into the groove with [[fish]] on desktop the more that I use it.

  • Still a slamdunk win on Termux.

• I would just like to take a moment to lament the fact that I have received an email inviting me to become a Certified Generative AI Specialist.

• Idle thought: maybe the world would be a better place if the de facto ‘learn to code’ tutorial was not a todo list (individual productivity) but a simple group poll (collective decision-making).

2024-04-03

• A bit more on [[Testing my org-export customisations with ERT]].

2024-04-02

• Had a quick read about [[Passkeys]].

• Listened to [[Platforms for Public Good w/ Mathew Lawrence & Thomas Hanna]]

• [[deutsch]]

2024-04-01

• [[Listened]] to [[Hotel Bar Sessions: Whose Anthropocene?]]

  • Good discussion - is [[Anthropocene]] a useful term? Maybe [[Capitalocene]] works better? Maybe both have their uses. Good overview of the pros and cons of both.
  • There’s a geological definition of Anthropocene (descriptive), which is interesting and all, but perhaps of more genuine use is it as a definition that motivates us to act to mitigate climate catastrophe (prescriptive).

• Also [[listened]] to [[Envisioning Platform Socialism w/ James Muldoon]]

  • Great discussion. Loads of good stuff in there, listened while doing chores so not much in the way of notes, warrants a relisten.
  • [[Platform Socialism]]. [[Guild socialism]]. [[Subsidiarity]]. Some things best as worker coops, some local municipality, some national. Some global. Global digital services. Take Google into global public ownership?
  • [[DECODE]].

2024-03-31

• Went for a walk and [[listened]] to [[The Silicon Empire in Eastern Europe (ft. Erin McElroy)]]
  • [[Silicon Valley Imperialism]].

• Following a stumble through the garden related to [[technology and political economy]], re-reading [[The Telekommunist Manifesto]].

  • [[political economy of network topologies]]
  • [[political economy of free software]]

• Also plan to re-read [[The British Digital Cooperative: A New Model Public Sector Institution]].

2024-03-30

• [[Adding planted and last tended dates to pages in my digital garden]] not as straight forward as it could be.
  • Using it as an opportunity to get familiar with ERT. [[Testing my org-export customisations with ERT]].
  • Should be simpler to write against small tests rather than having to go through the whole publish pipeline.

2024-03-29

• Late night [[listened]] to [[What’s the Value of Data? (ft. Salomé Viljoen)]]

  • [[Social data]].
  • Has [[predictive value]].
  • Three ways to extract [[surplus value]] with it:
    • 1. Just sell it on, e.g. data broker
    • 2. Use it to exploit people based on knowledge from the data
    • 3. Use it to exert power (e.g. Uber’s [[Greyball]] program)

• Also listened to [[The Supermarket into Prison Pipeline]]

• Pretty much always find [[This Machine Kills]] interesting, whatever the topic.

• Thinking about how I would go about [[adding planted and last tended dates to pages in my digital garden]].

• [[AG]] :)
• [[Lady Burup]] :)
• [[friends]]
• [[work]]
• [[party]] prep
• [[colleen]]

2024-03-28

• I’ve been picking up the [[guitar]] again regularly recently, for the first time in a long time. And I’m really enjoying it. Drop D tuning and finger picking. Still got the muscle memory for basic chords and picking patterns. Relistening to some [[John Fahey]] too.

2024-03-27

• Re: [[using org-mode for timeblocking]] and [[trying out calfw-blocks]], noticed that someone (haji-ali) has forked and updated both [[calfw]] and [[calfw-blocks]].
  • https://github.com/haji-ali/emacs-calfw
  • https://github.com/haji-ali/calfw-blocks/
  • Might be worth making use of these. Have a read through the fork changelogs.

• [[work]]
• [[social coop]]:
  • [[social coop organizing circle]]

2024-03-26

• Further to [[trying out org-timeblock]], I’m now [[trying out calfw-blocks]].
  • As part of a general attempt to be able to do timeblocking in org-mode. ([[Using org-mode for timeblocking]]).
  • I wouldn’t say it’s going swimmingly… but I’m learning plenty about spacemacs layers, doom config, and use-package. So that’s something.

2024-03-25

• Although in general it feels the same (possibly slower? because I didn’t compile it myself?), one thing that is much faster in Emacs 28 is the parsing of my huge Tasks.org file for work. Thumbs up.

  • [[What’s new in Emacs 28?]]

• I’d like to tweak my garden a bit such that I have ‘planted’ and ‘last tended’ dates on each page.

  • I already have ‘This page last updated: …’ at the bottom of every page.
  • But I’d prefer it right at the top. Not too prominent/distracting, but I have some pretty old pages knocking around now and I’d like people to be aware that they might be outdated.

• [[org-timeblock]] looks pretty good and like it’d fill my desire for a timeblocking tool for org-mode.

  • I used to use [[Goalist]] on Android and it was great, but I got annoyed that I couldn’t sync it and make use of it anywhere else.
  • So… [[trying out org-timeblock]]. However, hitting a bunch of issues from the beginning.

2024-03-24

• We [[watched]] [[Soul]] again.

  • Such a lovely film. Heartwarming message, great music, great visuals, funny for the whole family.

• I [[listened]] to [[What Social Media Meant for the Mass Protest Decade w/ Vincent Bevins]]

  • [[Vincent Bevins]] again on his book [[If We Burn]].
  • Really interesting stuff.
  • I like the very loose analogy between what happened to the internet and what happened to [[the movement of the squares]].
  • Basically a form of [[The Tyranny of Structurelessness]] in both.

• Also listened to [[Why Tech Makes Us More Insecure w/ Astra Taylor]]

  • [[Insecurity]] and [[security]] - in more of social and psychological meanings of the word than the technical sense.
  • Claim: [[Capitalism requires insecurity]].
  • Claim: [[Social insurance is a bulwark against insecurity]].
  • Also by Astra: [[The Dads of Tech]] and [[The People’s Platform]].

• We have [[national insurance]] in the UK.

  • Wonder when it was introduced?

• Never really thought much about insurance before.

  • Superficially it seems a boring topic. But this and Jathan Sadowski podcast discussion ([[How the World Became Uninsurable]]) recently making me realise it’s kind of fundamental and sadly mostly privatised.

• Returning a little to [[IndieWeb]] for following activity streams. I had been using the Fediverse for a while, but I find it a bit too fast paced, a bit too attention grabbing. For me. IndieWeb is kind of slow social media and that suits me fine.

• hyperorg could be useful for me.

  • Either for publishing wiki to web, or could be a useful internal parser for the Agora? Python based.

2024-03-23

• Listened: [[Yanis Varoufakis, "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism"]]

  • Great interview with [[Yanis Varoufakis]].
  • [[Techno-feudalism]].
  • Ultimate goal: socialisation of cloud capital (i.e. [[Big tech]])
  • Only America and China have cloud capital.
  • Glad they mention [[McKenzie Wark]] - Varoufakis says he agrees with all of it.

• [[Listened]]: [[Democracy for sale, Europe’s first black leader + tea with Obama]]

  • [[Political donations]].
  • New first minister of Wales is first black leader of a country in Europe.
  • [[Rwanda bill]].

• [[Listened]]: [[Black Box: Episode 6 – Shut it down?]]

  • [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]] with AI doonerism.
  • Alternate positive view from Alex Hern.
  • One disappointment with the series as a whole is there’s no mention of environmental impact or questioning of who owns AI technology.

2024-03-22

• [[Listened]]: [[The silencing of climate protesters in English and Welsh courts]]

  • Latest in a long line of crackdowns on defences that climate protesters can use in the courts.
  • One of which made it an offence to use the words ‘climate change’ in court.

• [[Listened]]: [[Vulture Capitalism - Exposing the toxic system and how to outgrow it with Grace Blakeley]]

  • Interesting interview and book sounds worth a read.
  • A lot sounds like analysis of problems, but they talk about some potential solutions and examples too. ([[Cooperation Jackson]], [[Blaenau Ffestiniog]], [[The Lucas Plan]])

• Read: [[‘It’s Not Rocket Science – It’s Just Community’: Radical Ffestiniog]]

  • My great grandad was from [[Blaenau Ffestiniog]]. Nice to have this little connection.

• [[work]]
• followed by [[fellowship of the link]]
• followed by [[fediversalist papers]]
• followed by [[feierabend]] :)

2024-03-20

• [[Listened]]: [[Black Box: Episode four – Bing and I]]

• [[Listened]]: [[Black Box: Episode 5 – The white mask]]

• [[Listened]]: [[Hotel Bar Sessions: Immediacy (with Anna Kornbluh)]]

• [[Listened]]: [[Novara FM: Not Westminster’s Whipping Boys w/ Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram]]