doubleloop

WordPress wasn’t resizing images at upload. Turns out it was because PHP GD module wasn’t installed on the server. WP just silently ignored that and didn’t resize the images.

Jerry-rigged a stand for my tablet out of some cardboard. 👍

I’ll never get tired of github embeds showing me big faces of random developers.

Setting up DavDroid and Etar on my tablet, for accessing my calendar. I use NextCloud for my calendar and contacts. Feels maybe slightly overkill for just that.. but I want something with a web interface for the calendar, which Nextcloud has, and Radicale doesn’t I don’t think.

I think installing the Nextcloud app first made it slightly easier to set it all up than when I did it on my phone a while back, but that said I don’t remember it being too tricky doing it manually.

Brilliant episode of Rev Left Radio. Pretty theory-heavy, I have little background knowledge of the topics (post-structuralism, postmodernism and post-postmodernism(!?)) but they hit some great talking points – horizontal vs vertical organising, is the personal political, are meta-narratives useful, and the need for more sincerity and less irony on the left.

https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/post-structuralism-postmodernism-and-metamodernism

TIL that ActivityPub has a client-to-server part to it, but that Mastodon doesn’t implement it. Mastodon has its own API which clients use.

Some discussion on it here: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/1557

Micropub is a client-to-server protocol used mostly in #indieweb.

scaling out vs scaling up

the municipality is becoming a strategically crucial site for the organization of transformative social change.

Translocal Solidarity and the New Municipalism

Kicking off in London today. Extinction Rebellion shut down the bridges with non-violent civil disobedience. I caught some of it on Westminster Bridge. Then around the corner to Whitehall where the anti-racism/anti-fascism march finished. There was a handful of fascists there who were shouted down and escorted away by the police. To round it off I saw Peterloo in Kilburn. The state brutally suppressing a peaceful protest in Manchester asking for suffrage at a time when only 3% had the vote.

Set up a monthly $4.20 donation to SomaFM. Awesome independent internet radio.

I pretty much have their cliqhop station (http://somafm.com/cliqhop/) on constantly when I’m at my desk right now.

"We have no VCs or investors, corporate sponsors or advertisers. We rely on our listeners to keep SomaFM alive and independent and playing great music."

"the Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and human inability to find any due to actual lack of any meaning or value.

Albert Camus stated that individuals should embrace the absurd condition of human existence while also defiantly continuing to explore and search for meaning.

I’m OK with this.

Really want to see Peterloo. Important piece of political history from the area where I grew up. It’s Mike Leigh, it’s got great reviews.

But: it’s produced by Amazon Studios. Fuck’s sake.

Just caught a screening of What is Democracy?.

Highly recommended. Lots of good interviews and really nicely put together. I found the interviews with a young black woman in America, and a young Syrian refugee in Greece, discussing how the outcomes of current democratic systems really didn’t match the popular ideal of democracy for them, really powerful.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jun/11/what-is-democracy-review-astra-taylor-documentary

Wondering what kind of technology is being used in Rojava? How do they organise, communicate, do logistics, energy, infrastructure. Is it no different from elsewhere, or is the democratic confederalism being built there also being built on new modes of technology. Any info on this?

#rojava

Really very good interview with George Monbiot. Talks about the need for radical direct action in the face of climate change. The need for an alternative narrative. The power of participatory democracy and participatory economics. The commons as a viable economic alternative to private ownership.

Extinction Rebellion? George Monbiot on the Politics of Climate Change

Someone in my block of flats has a delivery from Amazon Pantry.

Why does Amazon feel the need to do absolutely everything? Like what is the actual point.

Sick of these fuckers trying to rule the world.

There was a good discussion on the pressing need to move away from thinking about people as consumers, rather than citizens.

I don’t know if that’s so much of a problem in the UK. But made me think of Century of the Self and old Edwards Bernays and his involvement in the move from thinking of citizens to thinking of consumers.

Some good point that citizen is a loaded term too – not everyone in a community might actually be a citizen (in the formal sense.)

The 5 principles of the Local Digital Declaration are pretty decent:

1. redesign services around the people actually using them
2. use modular building blocks and open standards
3. prioritise data safety and security
4. digital leadership (dunno what they mean by this)
5. working in the open

Missing something about personal data ownership of the citizen I think, more about making sure the authority looks after what it holds. But a decent start.

Local Digital Declaration

At the municipal level in the UK at the moment, the focus is on ‘fixing the plumbing’, e.g. sorting out some of the basics in terms of data storage and interoperability.

Pretty sensible and practical approach from what I gathered.

I went to TICTeC Local last week, which was about the use of civic tech at the municipal level.

It was pretty cool, some good talks and nice peeps.

I learned that the UK has a nascent Local Digital Strategy. https://localdigital.gov.uk/

There was a lot of griping about GDPR, but as a public legislative recognition that every individual should be in control of their own data, and should be able to do what they want with it, and that they should be in control of who has access to it, it’s a great step (along a long path).

#gdpr