layout: post title: FOSDEM attendees and European hacker culture created: 1141163565 categories:

• Europe
• FOSDEM 2006
• FOSDEM
• Brussels
• Open Source

A little more personal pointer to the people at FOSDEM. It was nice to see O’Reilly as the major sponsor. The bookstore was hot, with people agonizing over just how many dozens of books they should buy. In many ways (as indicated by the full name — Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting), the attendees are the core audience for O’Reily’s books. OSCON, on the other hand, tends to be priced out of reach of the mainly grassroots, non-commercial hacker culture in Europe (aside from being accepted as a speaker).

Some of the usual European suspects were there — Ralph and Edwin (wow — Edwin did some Englsh blog posts Day 0/1, Day 2), and I did see Gerv off in the distance although I didn’t end up talking to him directly. I also met Christ, who came with Ralph and Edwin (and yes, that name will be funny to native English speakers).

Geo Dan came along to experience the uniquely European hacker experience that is FOSDEM, along with the infamous Ivan with whom I had many great talks about architecture and culture as well as a fantastic dining experience. Andy brought an Amsterdam crew (Gijs, Marco, Nadya) and talked about Flock and I stole the wonderful Nadya’s scarf.

Back to culture. The stat I hear floating around is that 80% of open source developers are based in Europe (with India and other parts of South East Asia gaining fast, I’m sure). And many of these are the passionate anarchists who believe in free information, are against software patents, and generally are part of the fuel that make open source work. But the disconnect is that there are very few in between people that can explain the concepts of open source to middle management and big business. So, talented developers who stay in Europe do what they can to integrate open source into their day jobs or academic research.

I’m hoping that the EuroOSCON in September in Brussels will include a venue for open source projects. Right now I have to signup for an O’Reilly account before I can even subscribe to the EuroOSCON newsletter — the only interactive way to receive notices. Please — cross post newsletter items to a blog for easier interaction!

Some point form FOSDEM feedback:

• network access needs work: geeks were collapsing in the hallway and tearing out their hair with the lack of network access at FOSDEM. It was worse than last year. Please, ask for help — there are several low cost, documented ways to blanket an area with WiFi. Maybe get both a team of network volunteers as well as a network sponsor to make sure this is in place.
• power needs work: see last point. The Jabber crew brought a spool of network cable and a bunch of power bars, and pretty much supplied their whole area of FOSDEM with power and connectivity. Get power bar sponsors and keep them from year to year.
• Be clear in the schedule and to your presenters/tutorials on what to present: One presentation I saw was basically reading out manual pages — even developers need high level introductions on why they should care before getting into the nitty gritty. On the other hand, Alex Russell’s bait-and-switch with Dojo and then describing in heavy detail how good of a language JavaScript actually is was excellent (slides here).
• fantastically fertile culture: everyone was there to learn, discuss, mingle, hack. Being able to buy beer for 1EU and 2EU for a sandwich meant everyone hung out for 6 or 7 hours in a row…only to move on to bars and cafes.
• developer rooms vs. main talks: some of the best presentations and interactivity happened in the developer rooms. Put the developer rooms directly into the schedule. Keep the big presentations (if only to use the auditorium space for highly popular topics), and perhaps even promote them more directly to a wider audience — I bet there would have been hundreds of enterprise folks who would have been highly interested in the Xen presentation — "Enterprise Grade Open Source Virtualization). FOSDEM Interview with the Xen presenter, Ian Pratt
• work the university angle: FOSDEM organizers should contact every University in Europe and encourage researchers, academics, etc. to come into the mix

Organizing a free conference is a lot of work. Congrats to the organizers for the attendance, I’m looking forward to next year.

A Different Way of Thinking About Cancel Culture§

Metadata§

• Author: [[Ezra Klein]]
• Full Title: A Different Way of Thinking About Cancel Culture
• Category: #articles
• URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/18/opinion/cancel-culture-social-media.html

Highlights§

• Cancellations — defined here as actually losing your job or your livelihood — occur when an employee’s speech infraction generates public attention that threatens an employer’s profits, influence or reputation.
• Fox isn’t anti-cancel culture; it just wants to be the one controlling that culture.
• So here’s a guideline that I think would make online discourse better. Unless something that is said is truly dangerous and you actually want to see that person fired from their current job and potentially unable to find a new one — a high bar, but one that is sometimes met — you shouldn’t use social media to join an ongoing pile-on against a normal person.

A leverage points analysis of a qualitative system dynamics model for climate change adaptation in agriculture§

URL : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X21000056

[[Qualitative system dynamics modeling]]. [[Leverage points analysis]]. [[Climate change]]. [[Agriculture]].

In this paper, we developed a method to analyze model behavior by identifying LPs within a QSDM.

We applied a novel approach that is based on the classification of LPs into twelve levels of intervention following Meadows (1999) in order to address the first objective of our study, i. e. identification and analysis of potential LPs within the QSDM.

Key parameters within the QSDM are identified according to the problem formulation. Subsequently, feedback loops are explored and associated with typical system archetypes (Senge, 1990). ‘Deeper’ levels of intervention that are related to the design and intent of the model are selected by incorporating informal knowledge identified in the interviews. LPs are identified and classified based on the QSDM analysis.

The visualization in form of a clock plot helps to evaluate the potential of an LP at a glance: The ‘shallow’ levels of intervention that are easy to change but have limited effect on system behavior usually indicate parameters and feedbacks.

In contrast, the ‘deep’ levels of intervention with high potential for transformational change mainly reflect changes in the design and intent of the QSDM. We introduced a weighting system that provides a quantitative measure for the potential of an LP to become an effective adaptation measure.

To achieve the second objective of our study, the LPs were translated into specific climate adaptation measures. We assessed the potential of stakeholders to implement adaptation measures corresponding to the respective LP on different time scales in a qualitative way.

Kind of seems like:

• do a [[causal loop diagram]]
• find interesting feedback loops within the diagram. Use [[system archetypes]] to help with this.
• situate each of those on the clock model of leverage points

Agriculture§

The advent of agriculture opened up the possibility of producing a surplus of food items, which could be stored for future need. Rather than the precariousness of hand-to-mouth living, the safety of that surplus on hand meant that communities could settle and grow, and some members of the group could specialize in the production of non-food items

– [[A People’s Guide to Capitalism]]

• [[flancian]] https://social.coop/@flancian/108028512494049374 pull

• [[flancian]] https://twitter.com/flancian/status/1508058608004702214 pull

counterculture§

Finance as culture§

Metadata§

• Author: [[John Luttig]]
• Full Title: Finance as culture
• Category: #articles
• URL: https://luttig.substack.com/p/finance-as-culture

Highlights§

• We’ve always had lottery culture, in which people trade assets hoping to make money without understanding or conviction of their fundamental value. In the summer of 1929, for example, Joe Kennedy’s shoe shine boy gave him stock tips, signaling the market peak.
• Speculation now dominates culture.
• In the tech context, it’s becoming more common to see founders selling shares before the company reaches escape velocity, and employees rotating between hot companies before they have a chance to own projects end-to-end. Too much capital makes it more compelling to chase easy financial gains than build new tunnels.

Free culture§

I want to support either free culture or independent creators. So trying to do it in a way that means easy access to culture for those that can’t afford it, but also in a way that artists and creators get fairly compensated for their work. Cutting out the big corporations that skim off the hard work of others.

I have a [[Music listening strategy]].

In part as a response to the increasingly aggressive assertion of copyright by the cultural industries suing customers for performing everyday acts online, and in part drawing inspiration from the [[free software]] movement, the free culture (or open content) movement began to take shape (Boyle, 1997; Lessig, 2001).

– [[dulongderosnay2020: Digital commons]]

The largest free culture project is [[Wikipedia]], an encyclopedia that is cooperatively written and financed by donations from the readers who are part of the community (Dobusch & Kapeller, 2018).

– [[dulongderosnay2020: Digital commons]]

• [[youronlyone@vivaldi.net]] https://social.vivaldi.net/@youronlyone/109449363745103787 pull

gift culture§

Houses of Culture§

A new type of leisure facility built by the Soviet government, Houses of Culture (or ‘clubs’) were based on the already existing system of People’s Houses established in Imperial Russia to distract workers from drinking. Installed into the structure of the city, Houses of Culture allowed every district to have its own ‘cultural leisure’ place to meet — in the absence of drinking facilities, such as pubs in the UK

– [[Tribune Winter 2022]]

Indigenous culture§

Indigenous cultures, for example in North America, are [[non-binary]] and [[gender-fluid]], and this is precisely what has enabled them, over millennia, to think (dream) outside the box, and surmount immense challenges to environmental change.

– [[‘Imperialism runs deep’: Interview with Robert Biel on British Maoism and its afterlives]]

Learning from indigenous culture§

Just an interesting linkage that I’ve noticed in a couple of places recently. I’ve seen [[Chris]] mention a few times the mnemonic systems used by indigenous peoples. And there was a chapter in [[Future Histories]] on lessons to be learned from [[indigenous communities on ownership and governance]].

Chris recommends the book The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?.

• [[2022-10-16 18:55:38+00:00]] @[[ChrisAldrich]]: https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/status/1581720541131513856 pull

participatory culture§

Understanding participatory culture as just a numbers game can be part of the problem. Participation is not only about quantity but, perhaps more importantly, about how it materializes—who speaks and in what way—and technology can hide understanding of these processes.

– [[Building an open infrastructure for civic participation]]

Creating a participatory culture requires thinking beyond technology and participation numbers. It entails building an infrastructure that continuously supports citizens in participating. Cities can look to open source and its decades of experience in creating this type of infrastructure to find valuable lessons.

– [[Building an open infrastructure for civic participation]]

Open sourcing a city requires helping citizens participate in the best possible conditions and paying attention to their own contexts and requirements. This is important since the modern understanding of "citizens" is articulated around the idea that they renounce their own power in exchange for security. This is called the [[social contract]], and it is a foundational concept in constructing the contemporary idea of "nation." It is a weak form of democracy, relying on regular yet infrequent participation (and sometimes even discouraging active participation).

– [[Building an open infrastructure for civic participation]]

• Author:: [[Lance Hayden]]
• Full Title:: People-Centric Security: Transforming Your Enterprise Security Culture
• Category:: [[articles]]
• URL:: https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/people-centric-security-transforming/9780071846790/

• Highlights first synced by [[Readwise]] [[September 19th, 2020]]§

  • culture eats strategy for breakfast.
    • Note: 2020-02-02Chapter 2 Strategy for Breakfast: The Hidden Power of Security Culturehttps://learning.oreilly.com/a/people-centric-security-transforming/37564845/
  • when compliance replaces security as the goal, cultural transformation backfires
    • Note: 2020-02-02Chapter 1 Information Security: Adventures in Culture Hackinghttps://learning.oreilly.com/a/people-centric-security-transforming/37564801/
  • People-centric security implies that without people there is no security, nor any need for it.
    • Note: 2020-02-02Chapter 1 Information Security: Adventures in Culture Hackinghttps://learning.oreilly.com/a/people-centric-security-transforming/37564775/
  • if you want to really change how security works, you have to change the culture operating beneath it.
    • Note: 2020-02-02Chapter 1 Information Security: Adventures in Culture Hackinghttps://learning.oreilly.com/a/people-centric-security-transforming/37564764/
  • “We don’t want to just change the mechanics,” they explained, “or to switch out one set of controls or one best practices framework for another. We want to change what security means to the company, and we want to change it for every single person who works here regardless of rank or role.”
    • Note: 2020-02-01Chapter 1 Information Security: Adventures in Culture Hackinghttps://learning.oreilly.com/a/people-centric-security-transforming/37496513/
  • ISO 27001
    • Note: 2020-02-01Chapter 1 Information Security: Adventures in Culture Hackinghttps://learning.oreilly.com/a/people-centric-security-transforming/37496498/
  • Technology hackers don’t let others tell them what the system can or cannot do, but instead figure it out for themselves by exploring the system. If you want to hack culture, you have to learn how the culture really works, not just what everyone thinks or expects of it
    • Note: 2020-02-01Chapter 1 Information Security: Adventures in Culture Hackinghttps://learning.oreilly.com/a/people-centric-security-transforming/37496444/
  • Security is a people challenge, a social and organizational challenge. It’s a cultural challenge.
    • Note: 2020-02-01Chapter 1 Information Security: Adventures in Culture Hackinghttps://learning.oreilly.com/a/people-centric-security-transforming/37496313/
  • Security is not a technology challenge
    • Note: 2020-02-01Chapter 1 Information Security: Adventures in Culture Hackinghttps://learning.oreilly.com/a/people-centric-security-transforming/37496310/
  • people, process, and technology
    • Note: 2020-01-19Introductionhttps://learning.oreilly.com/a/people-centric-security-transforming/36363765/

Permaculture§

• [[go]] [[wikipedia]]
  • "Permaculture is a set of [[design principles]] centered on [[whole systems thinking]], simulating, or directly utilizing the patterns and resilient features observed in natural ecosystems. It uses these principles in a growing number of fields such as [[regenerative agriculture]], [[rewilding]], and [[community resilience]]."

Permaculture§

Core idea§

Links§

• [[permanent agriculture]]
• [[go]] https://www.transitionmonty.org/uploads/6/5/4/9/6549206/essence_of_pc_ebook_1.pdf

Permaculture§

Permaculture, originally ‘Permanent Agriculture’, is often viewed as a set of gardening techniques, but it has in fact developed into a whole design philosophy, and for some people a philosophy for life.

– What is permaculture? | Permaculture magazine

^ That’s interesting, I’ll admit I did kind of think it was mostly about growing and agriculture.

By thinking carefully about the way we use our resources - food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs - it is possible to get much more out of life by using less. We can be more productive for less effort, reaping benefits for our environment and ourselves, for now and for generations to come.

– What is permaculture? | Permaculture magazine

Principles§

They seem alright. Kind of a [[Systems thinking]] feel.

• Observe and interact: Take time to engage with nature to design solutions that suit a particular situation.
• Catch and store energy: Develop systems that collect resources at peak abundance for use in times of need.
• Obtain a yield: Emphasize projects that generate meaningful rewards.
• Apply self-regulation and accept feedback: Discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems function well.
• Use and value renewable resources and services: Make the best use of nature’s abundance: reduce consumption and dependence on non-renewable resources.
• Produce no waste: Value and employ all available resources: waste nothing.
• Design from patterns to details: Observe patterns in nature and society and use them to inform designs, later adding details.
• Integrate rather than segregate: Proper designs allow relationships to develop between design elements, allowing them to work together to support each other.
• Use small and slow solutions: Small and slow systems are easier to maintain, make better use of local resources and produce more sustainable outcomes.
• Use and value diversity: Diversity reduces system-level vulnerability to threats and fully exploits its environment.
• Use edges and value the marginal: The border between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the system’s most valuable, diverse and productive elements.
• Creatively use and respond to change: A positive impact on inevitable change comes from careful observation, followed by well-timed intervention.

– Permaculture - Wikipedia

Local growing§

• https://www.capitalgrowth.org/

Criticism§

Its colonized itek but if people will actually do it, then its in improvement.

– SQU∄▲KY P▲Nᐊ▲K∄S: "@neil@social.coop Its colonized itek but if peopl…" - Sunb…

• [[schmidt_fu@mstdn.social]] https://mstdn.social/@schmidt_fu/109972340894183405 pull
• [[Angle@anticapitalist.party]] https://anticapitalist.party/@Angle/110404012482746674 pull
• [[Angle@anticapitalist.party]] https://anticapitalist.party/@Angle/110404032213095027 pull
• [[Angle@anticapitalist.party]] https://anticapitalist.party/@Angle/110404049856952080 pull
• [[Angle@anticapitalist.party]] https://anticapitalist.party/@Angle/110404059312021271 pull
• [[Angle@anticapitalist.party]] https://anticapitalist.party/@Angle/110404068046456670 pull

• [[Angle@anticapitalist.party]] https://anticapitalist.party/@Angle/110337022762590779 pull
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• [[Angle@anticapitalist.party]] https://anticapitalist.party/@Angle/110399698914215516 pull
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• [[Angle@anticapitalist.party]] https://anticapitalist.party/@Angle/110399745474602708 pull
• [[Angle@anticapitalist.party]] https://anticapitalist.party/@Angle/110399792392090478 pull
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• [[Angle@anticapitalist.party]] https://anticapitalist.party/@Angle/110399943723496799 pull
• [[Angle@anticapitalist.party]] https://anticapitalist.party/@Angle/110399956799446833 pull
• [[Angle@anticapitalist.party]] https://anticapitalist.party/@Angle/110399964636745155 pull

• [[2026-09-01 16:52:36+00:00]] [[idopi@mapstodon.space]] https://mapstodon.space/@idopi/117196820111980318 pull

• [[evan_just_evan]] https://twitter.com/evan_just_evan/status/1486717629213536269 pull

Learned about it from [[bolobolo]]

• Utopianism versus Revolutionary Heroism in Bolshevik Policy: The Proletarian Culture Debate

  • https://www.jstor.org/stable/2497162

• Bukharin and the Origins of the ‘Proletarian Culture’ Debate

  • https://www.jstor.org/stable/151133

• KRUPSKAYA, PROLETKUL’T AND THE ORIGINS OF SOVIET CULTURAL POLICY

  • https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10286630601020306
  • couldn’t find a free way to access

Other names:

• [[proletarian chemistry]]

• [[prolertarian culture]]

• [[prolekult]]

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletkult pull

• [[utopianism]]

[[paris commune]]

• controlled the capital for 2 months by [[dictatorship of the proletariat]]
• so many [[communist]] revolutions are so bloody. I wonder if we can solve that in the modern era.

sustainable agriculture§

The Culture§

Is The Culture socialist? I think so. Francis Spufford in Red Plenty describes it as a [[Marxian idyll]].

In [[Look to Windward]] they refer back to the ‘barbarism’ of the past a lot. Presumably a reference to [[Socialism or Barbarism]].

• [[flancian]] https://twitter.com/flancian/status/1502662551494135811 pull

The Vegan Book of Permaculture§

Key claims I’m thinking with§

A lot of permaculture inordinately focuses on animal husbandry. I know I can’t change everyone’s mind but its actually easier to do permaculture and homesteading without animals. More people should try it.

Concepts it feeds§

• [[bengo@mastodon.social]] https://mastodon.social/@bengo/109425623731731870 pull

We cannot depend upon structures to do the work of culture§

Essentially, you can set up a system or organisation, but you still need to do the daily work for it to operate positively.

We cannot depend upon structures to do the work of culture.

– [[Free, Fair and Alive]]

For example, [[coops can turn in to bad actors if there is no culture of commoning]].

Aaron Benanav talked about this in relationship to [[multi-criterial economy]] ([[Beyond Capitalism]]). Everyday politics still required whatever institutional forms you create.

I’d suggest that libre software and liberatory software is another example. [[Libre software must be embedded in ecosocialist political practice for it to be liberatory]].

What Moneyball-for-Everything Has Done to American Culture§

Metadata§

• Author: [[Derek Thompson]]
• Full Title: What Moneyball-for-Everything Has Done to American Culture
• Category: #articles
• URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/10/sabermetrics-analytics-ruined-baseball-sports-music-film/671924/

Highlights§

• The religion scholar James P. Carse wrote that there are two kinds of games in life: finite and infinite. A finite game is played to win; there are clear victors and losers. An infinite game is played to keep playing; the goal is to maximize winning across all participants. Debate is a finite game. Marriage is an infinite game. The midterm elections are finite games. American democracy is an infinite game. A great deal of unnecessary suffering in the world comes from not knowing the difference. A bad fight can destroy a marriage. A challenged election can destabilize a democracy. In baseball, winning the World Series is a finite game, while growing the popularity of Major League Baseball is an infinite game. What happened, I think, is that baseball’s finite game was solved so completely in such a way that the infinite game was lost.
  • Tags: [[finite games]] [[infinite games]]
• As I’ve written before, the quantitative revolution in culture is a living creature that consumes data and spits out homogeneity.
• The Nobel laureate particle physicist Frank Wilczek once said that beauty exists as a dance between opposite forces. First, he said, beauty benefits from symmetry, which he defined as “change without change.” If you rotate a circle, it remains a circle, just as reversing the sides of an equation still reveals a truth (2+2=4, and 4=2+2). But beauty also draws from what Wilczek calls “exuberance,” or emergent complexity. Looking up at the interior of a mosque or a cathedral, or gazing at a classic Picasso or Pollock painting, you are seeing neither utter chaos nor a simple symmetry, but rather a kind of synthesis; an artistic dizziness bounded within a sense of order, which gives the whole work an appealing comprehensibility.
  • Tags: [[beauty]]