2026-05-15

• Doing a fresh Linux install.

  • Permanently low on space on my 256Gb drive for some reason, getting a bit sick of it.
    • I blame Snap, Flatpak, node_modules, and keeping a Windows 10 partition around for support purposes.
  • Also on an old version of Mint, solely needed a distro upgrade anyway.
  • But I’m in fact giving Zorin a go. Mainly to get a sense of whether it’s something worth recommending in the Repair Cafe.
  • I will likely install Debian later for myself.
  • So - let’s see how quick to install and get back to a state where I can do work again. Time to dig out the [[Setting up a new box]] notes…

• [[Notes on Zorin 18.1]].

  • Issues with Wayland and Guake. (have to set sysyem keybindimg to guake-toggle, and hud doesn’t follow mouse)

• Some notes for amendments to my new box notes…

  • I need to add fish install to new box instructions.
  • Use git ssh rather than https for git clone of private repos.
  • spacemacs install is by far most time consuming step.
    • bit annoying that you can’t leave it unattended - asks to install sqlite and vterm
      • maybe you can?
  • why is my org repo so big?

2026-05-14

• [[Bookmarked]]:
  • The Explicit Manifesto of Digital Fascism: Palantir and the Alliance of Monopoly Capital with the Far Right
    • "The [[Palantir manifesto]] is not merely a document from a tech company announcing its positions. It is a loud alarm bell that progressive forces must hear clearly: the battle over the future of technology is no longer lurking backstage. It has stepped into the open, announcing itself without shame. Those who delay in grasping this shift delay their entry into the most decisive arena of struggle in this century."
    • [[Digital fascism]].
  • The Capitalist Vision of Artificial Intelligence: Profit, Power, and Control
    • "The current development of [[artificial intelligence]] cannot be understood merely as technical progress, it is part of a system of class domination through which major corporations and capitalist states seek to increase profits, concentrate wealth, and reproduce existing relations of production"
  • The Leftist Alternative to Artificial Intelligence
    • "This vision aims to liberate [[AI]] from the constraints of the capitalist market and redirect it toward serving all humanity, transforming it into a means to improve quality of life, free people from burdensome routine labor, and enhance human creativity in all areas."
  • Reform faces questions over tech investor’s role in cost-cutting drive - BBC News
  • Algorithmic politics: How Reform UK is leveraging TikTok in the next election
  • How digital strategy helped shape Reform’s breakthrough | Millbank - Leading digital for global leaders
  • AI-and-the-productivity-revolution.pdf
  • Revealed: Reform UK Crypto Partner’s Ties to Pro-Trump Big Tech and Kemi Badenoch – Byline Times
  • Reform UK, Big Tech, and the Future of Online Safety in Britain
  • A modern machine write-up - A-modern-machine-write-up.pdf
  • Farage trying to avoid scrutiny over £5m gift from crypto billionaire, Labour…
  • What’s behind surge in support for Reform and Greens across England? Five key…
  • How to survive the information crisis: ‘We once talked about fake news – now …
  • Go Away Microsoft! The Netherlands is Quietly Building Its Own GitHub Replace…
  • ‘Nigel is mad to accept his money’: who is Christopher Harborne, the mystery …
  • Main Page — ibis.wiki
  • AI as a Fascist Artifact
  • Acting ethically in an imperfect world
  • European Alternatives - Discover European & Open Source Software

2026-05-13

• [[Bookmarked]]:
  • The AI Denial Industry: The Left’s MAHA - by Alexei Gannon
  • Artificial Intelligence, Universal Machines, and Killing Bourgeois Dreams
  • Artificial Intelligence

• [[Simon]] told me about many interesting things!
  • [[sgmk wiki]]

2026-05-12

• [[Listened]]:

  • [[Today in Focus: The secretive billionaire bankrolling Nigel Farage]]
    • Rich crypto guy has given tens of millions of pounds to Brexit Party and Reform over the years.
    • Tether.
    • Suspected motive: wants to be the ‘king of crypto’.
    • Donates to parties that he feels most likely to be favourable to crypto.
    • No link between his massive donations and any pro-crypto positions, of course.

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • The Left Must Plan for AI - by Alexei Gannon

2026-05-11

• It’s a shame that the end of Windows 10 is being capitalised on by Google to capture people to Chrome OS Flex.
  • It’s a perfect opportunity for a little bit of technological liberation and a move to Linux.
  • Rather than a jump from one Big Tech ecosystem to another.

2026-05-10

• Wrote:

  • [[We need a digital shock doctrine for the left]]

• [[Read]]:

  • [[Bridging the Digital Divide Between the Left and Capitalism, an Urgent Mission for Left Movements]]

• [[Zettled]]:

  • [[In times of crisis, capitalism reinvents and restructures itself using advanced scientific and technological tools]]

2026-05-09

• Reflecting upon the use cases of current AI, they feel mostly boil down to doing something you could feasibly have done before, but now you can do it faster, and yourself rather than needing help from others.
  • I suppose that’s pretty much a description of all technology.
  • So the question is do you really need to do it that fast? How come? At what cost? (As with all technology).
  • If a technology can be used to increase emancipation, reduce toil, for all, without exploiting labour or nature, then good. If not, scrutiny is required.
  • AI can reduce toil, the others seem uncertain.

2026-05-08

• Jammed:

  • [[Autechre - Piezo]]
  • daniel.mp3 - green to blue
    • Via: E
  • Hania Rani - Alberto
    • Emotive piano.

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • Palantir’s manifesto: Technofascism in plain sight
  • Met investigates hundreds of officers after using Palantir AI tool
  • Resisting Big Tech Empires - Global Justice Now

• [[Read]]:

  • [[Gen Z 212 and Youth Protests in Morocco: From the Digital Sphere to the Street]]
  • [[The left is missing out on AI]]
    • Only skim read, but argument seems to be that left critique of AI is overly focused on the fact that LLMs don’t represent AGI.
    • I don’t know if that’s true. I do agree that purely critiquing AI on it not being actually intelligent seems flawed.
    • To describe LLMs as just a kind of fancy autocomplete seems a bit disingenous.
    • To me, LLMs/GenAI seems like a quite remarkable technology but currently with remarkably [[authoritarian technics]].
    • The question of whether they could ever have democratic/libertarian technics seems like a good debate to have.

• As I create more main notes, a graph view of constellations would become increasingly handy.

2026-05-07

• [[Listened]]:

  • [[Today in Focus: Why has the world lost sight of the suffering of Palestinians? – The Latest]]
  • [[Future Histories International: Rodrigo Nunes on Ecologies of Organization and Democratic Transformation]]
  • [[Today in Focus: Big oil making $30m an hour from Iran war - The Latest]]
  • [[Today in Focus: George Monbiot on our fragile food system]]
  • [[The Louis Theroux Podcast: S7 EP4: Stewart Lee on "Netflix comedians”, disastrous gigs, and Elon Musk"]]
  • [[Today in Focus: Meta‘s AI glasses and the dawn of wearable tech]]

• I didn’t listen to all of those today, I’ve copied them out of my recent listen history from [[AntennaPod]].

  • Unfortunately it doesn’t tell you which day you listened to it.

2026-05-06

• [[Zettled]]:

  • [[GNU/Linux is the libre alternative to Windows]]
  • [[Libre software is not automatically liberatory software]].

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • State of the Fossil-Free Internet Report

• A benefit of ‘writing in public’, via a digital garden / zettelkasten, is that, if you cared, it would be fairly easy to audit that the writing has been constructed by a human.

  • You could trace the journey of bookmarks -> reference notes -> main notes -> structure notes -> posts.
  • Especially if there’s some kind of version control (via wiki software or a git repo).

2026-05-04

• [[Zettled]]:
  • [[Microsoft Windows is a capitalist technology]].
  • [[We must build alternatives to capitalist technologies]].
  • [[We need a pattern language of political organisation]].

2026-05-03

• [[Read]]:

  • [[The shock doctrine of the left - Uneven Earth]]

• [[Zettled]]:

  • [[Change brought through parliamentary politics tends to be slow, incremental, and easily reversible]].
  • [[The second Iraq War was exploited by the neoliberal shock doctrine]].
  • [[The financial crisis of 2008 was exploited by the neoliberal shock doctrine]].
  • [[Climate disasters are exploited by the neoliberal shock doctrine]].
  • [[We must intervene informed by a map of how things are and how our intervention can shape them productively]]
  • [[Systems thinking is helpful for political transition]]

2026-05-02

• [[Zettled]]:
  • [[The global memory shortage crisis is a digital shock]].
  • [[Windows 10 end-of-life is a digital shock]].
  • [[The boom of AI is a digital shock]].

2026-05-01

• [[Zettled]]:

  • [[We haven’t reached the end of history]].
  • [[The left needs a programme of building and promoting alternative institutional forms]].
  • [[Big Tech controls the digital commanding heights of the economy]].

• Wrote:

  • [[A digital shock doctrine for the left]]

• Noding from work? Is such a thing even possible?
  • Yeah.
• I haven’t been writing as much in the Agora as of late, and I think one of the factors (not the only one) is that I actually broke my web editing when I made web editing possible for hosted Agora users :) (as my garden is not really hosted in that sense).

2026-04-30

• Published:

  • [[Emacs Carnival: Starter Kits]]

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • Get ready for Orgy in 15 minutes — Bastien Guerry
    • "Orgy is a static website generator for [[Org]] files."

• Zettled:

  • [[The shock doctrine for the left contains elements of smashing, building, healing and taming]].
  • [[The direction our world takes in moments of chaos is defined by the ideas and institutions that are already available]].
  • [[The left should take disruptive actions to create chaos as points of leverage for system change]].

2026-04-28

• [[Listened]]:

  • [[Looks Like New: What is the future of digital capitalism?]]
    • Interview with [[Nick Srnicek]] mostly around [[Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI]].
    • Starts with a handy little summary (for me) of AI since 2012.
      • Deep learning, transformer model, then basically just scaling up of that.
    • Mentions [[Collective Intelligence Project]] as something exploring leftist potentials for AI.

• [[Zettled]]:

  • [[A shock doctrine is a political strategy for navigating crises]].

• It’s time to start latest Emacs Carnival post, cutting it fine 2 days before end of month as usual :D

• Wrote:

  • [[Emacs Carnival: Starter Kits]]

2026-04-26

• [[Zettled]]:

  • [[Digital dependency is the opposite of digital sovereignty]].
  • [[The US uses digital dependency as a weapon in trade negotiations]].
  • [[The US constitutes most of Big Tech]].
  • [[The public sector should be the first arena we push for sovereign tech alternatives]].

• I’m finding doing Zettelkasten-y things, particulary as outlined in [[A System for Writing]], very useful.

  • And, most importantly, resulting in me publishing more writing (see [[my blog posts]]).
  • I do have a slight concern at the back of my mind that it’s making my digital garden less interesting to navigate around for an external party. I think there’s something to be said for dishevelled narrative over tidy structure.
  • The idea though is that the narrative moves to the blog posts, so, as long as they are discoverable, hopefully it’s a net gain.
  • Will keep it in mind.

• We woke up in at Kirsty’s place and had a lovely morning, then walked through Zürich and came visit Lady Burup :)
• [[KM]] told me about [[León Blum]].

2026-04-25

• Wrote:

  • [[A digital shock doctrine for the left]]
  • [[Some thoughts on digital capitalism]]

• [[Zettled]]:

  • [[We must understand digital capitalism in order to transition away from it]].
  • [[In digital capitalism, the accumulation of capital and power is mediated by digital technologies]]
  • [[Digital capitalism has economic, political, and cultural dimensions]].

• [[Read:]]

  • [[Critical Theory Foundations of Digital Capitalism: A Critical Political Economy Perspective]]

• I set up [[Anagora]] as a bang provider in [[WebLibre]].

  • I like using Anagora for searching topics.
  • It surfaces any notes I might have made about the past on something.
  • I also see anything my friends and comrades might have written about the topic.
  • Then I can fall back to Wikipedia and web search if I want more.

• [[Listened]]:

  • [[Macrodose: Digital Sovereignty vs Big Tech w/ Cecilia Rikap & Paolo Gerbaudo]]
    • Digital dependency is the opposite of digital sovereignty.
    • The US uses digital dependency on its Big Tech as a lever in trade negotiations.
    • The US constitutes most of Big Tech.
    • Public sector should be the first realm to adopt sovereign tech alternatives.

2026-04-24

• [[Zettled]]:

  • [[Capitalism is prone to crisis]].
  • [[Rapid societal transformations are common]].

• [[Read]]:

  • [[]]
    • Skimming through, the notion of digital disruptions and leverage is good, right on point for me right now.
    • The analysis of where leverage might best be applied also looks useful.
    • The proposed tactics seem quite tame and reformist however.

2026-04-23

• [[Read]]:

  • [[Technodiversity, permacomputing and anticapitalism]]

• [[Listened]]:

  • [[Macrodose: Digital Sovereignty vs Big Tech w/ Cecilia Rikap & Paolo Gerbaudo]]

• #push [[CWG]]
  • [[Social.coop concerns]] meeting
  • Yikes!

2026-04-22

• Jammed:

  • The Sight Below - Dour
  • Gescom - Key Nell 3

• [[Read]]:

  • [[Technodiversity, permacomputing and anticapitalism]]
    • Defines [[technocapitalism]].
    • Evolution of industrial capitalism to beyond just the material to incorporate knowledge.
    • Similarish analysis to [[platform capitalism]], [[Vectoralism]], [[technofeudalism]], etc.

• I worked, I felt tired through the day again (maybe a sequel of the virus I got ~10d back) but made it through and then I saw [[KM]] :)
• I went to [[Bitwäscherei]] at the end of the night and the commons was lively and inspiring as usual!
• I continued doing [[Agora development]], which after all is my passion, and drank tea and typed away until about midnight.

2026-04-21

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • BrowserGate
    • "[[Microsoft]] is running one of the largest corporate espionage operations in modern history. Every time any of LinkedIn’s one billion users visits linkedin.com, hidden code searches their computer for installed software, collects the results, and transmits them to [[LinkedIn]]’s servers and to third-party companies including an American-Israeli cybersecurity firm."
    • Ugo

• [[Read]]:

  • [[Barbells]]
    • I used to really enjoy reading Gordon Brander. I still do, to be fair. Very knowledgeable and engaging.
    • But you could not find a more depressing pivot - the trajectory from building tools for collective knowledge commoning to bunkering down into an awful AI-fuelled individualism is a sad tale of our times, I think.
    • It’s The Road for the LLM era.

• Thatcherism, 2026: There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and their families of agents.

2026-04-20

• [[Bookmarked]]:

  • Global PC Shipments Grow 3.2% YoY in Q1 2026 on Pre-emptive Buying Before Memory-led Price Increases
    • "The growth was fueled by two key drivers – pre-emptive buying before memory-led price increases hit the retail level, and the necessary hardware refreshes caused by the termination of Windows 10 support."
    • [[global memory shortage crisis]] / [[Windows 10 end-of-life]]
  • France is ditching Windows for digital sovereignty - and its new Linux stack is taking shape
    • "France’s government is switching from Windows to a Linux desktop. The desktop will be based on the police Linux distro, [[GendBuntu]]. The distro includes France’s own suite of open-source desktop programs."

• I’m trying to recognise digital shocks, to see how are playing out in relation to resilience and transition. To learn from that for future shocks.

  • The global memory shortage crisis is a digital shock.
  • Windows 10 end-of-life is a digital shock.
  • The onset of AI is a digital shock.

• I went to [[ZW]] near midnight and I met old and new friends!
  • Old: [[Koch]] [[Marlon]] [[Tyson]] [[Aaron]]
  • New: [[Uwe]] [[Jara]]
• [[2026-04-18]] was also great!
• [[Remember]]

2026-04-19

• Structured:

  • [[Digital shocks, resilience and transition]]

• [[Zettled]]:

  • [[Resilience is the capacity of a system to survive crises, disruptions, shocks, and attacks]].
  • [[Resilience is not necessarily a good thing]].
  • [[Capitalism is a very resilient system]].