We have choices about the digital future that we want.
Month: March 2019
Public ownership is a better term than nationalisation.
One reason being that we should think of public ownership at the local level, as well as the national.
neweconomics.org/2019/02/weekly-economics-podcast-public-ownership-2.0
“She Never Cries” by Proem
Always a fan of the heavenly synths/hellish beats combo. Proem is definitely one of my fave electronic artistes.
I made a little embed handler for WordPress so you can just paste a link to videos on invidio.us and have the embed pulled in automatically to your post. You could easily just add the iframe in manually each time you post a video, too. Either way – no youtube links.
https://gist.github.com/ngm/868e7ae1617fd41a185eddc4599681f0
“When Death Come Creeping in Your Room (Run, Sinner, Run)” by Mance Lipscomb
Really nice account of someone feeling a lot better, in the face of universal credit and housing issues, after coming to a Restart Party (community repair events that we run), getting something fixed, and feeling involved in the community.
Proud to be part of Restart.
Really interesting to learn that the NHS was part inspired by the Tredegar Medical Aid Society (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tredegar_Medical_Aid_Society).
It was a mutual society providing health care free at the point of use in South Wales. Nye Bevan, who spearheaded the foundation of the NHS, was from Tredegar.
h/t NEF podcast on public ownership (neweconomics.org/2019/02/weekly-economics-podcast-public-ownership-2.0)
Building a green economy will cost money. Where do we start?
When I ditched the big social media networks I intended to use email as a way to keep up with friends and family. But my email right now is a dumpster fire of pointless mailshots and administrata. I can definitely tidy it up but also thinking email genuinely isn’t good for maintaining social ties? Was it ever?
David ShanskeMicropub Version 2.0.9 was released. It includes support for media endpoint queries q=last, which retrieves the last image uploaded, as well as q=source, which is not fully fleshed out as a return option.
It also adds a key to the uploaded media from the Micropub endpoint so you can query items uplo…
Our latest report portrays four alternate futures of work. What clues do current trends give us for the future that awaits us?
I like speculative future scenario planning, as a way of outlining possible alternatives and encouraging agency towards which one we actual want. Peter Frase’s Four Futures is a great book on this, from a general socio-economic view. So I like the idea of doing this from a technological perspective. Cooperatives and mutuals appear in the “Exodus Economy” future, in response to an economic slowdown. (I wouldn’t want the assumption to be that this is the only way they will appear, but I guess that’s not the intention of the authors.)
Algorithms, accountability, and our digital selves
Cool! It was super simple to add a bookmark-of post type to the micropub layer in spacemacs.
Our latest report portrays four alternate futures of work. What clues do current trends give us for the future that awaits us?
Most economists suffer from misplaced optimism about the oncoming Fourth Industrial Revolution. Some reskilling here and there would suffice to spread its benefits to all workers. They ignore how capitalism invents and employs technology for profits, not people.
It was a big ol’ march. The first protest I went to was the Stop the War march in 2003 and it was similarly large. That one, all the ones in between, and probably this one, have been pretty much completely ignored. I think it is true that only direct action brings meaningful change. But movement building is helpful. (Also.. my preference would be to revoke article 50.)
James Butler is joined by James Meadway, former advisor to John McDonnell, to discuss the economics of Corbynism: the roots and aftermath of the 2008 crash, the new policy horizons of the Labour left, and a socialist economics for the 21st century.
Good discussion about some ideas for a socialist economics for the 21st century. Lots of stuff in there, including some positive mentions of decentralised manufacturing and energy, and cooperatives.
Company admits to mistake and says it has no evidence of abuse – but the risk was huge
Makes the argument that big companies have better security a bit less tenable.
This report examines how digital technologies could help councils save money, foster local economic growth and deliver better outcomes for local residents and communities.
David ShanskeThe 3.3 branch of IndieAuth for WordPress is now available. PKCE Support is now present in Indieauth for WordPress. PKCE protects against intercepted authorization codes by ensuring a token endpoint can confirm that the client attempting to redeem an authorization code is the same client that reques…
Posting to your indieweb site from spacemacs via micropub
At yesterday’s HWC London, I thought I’d have a start at getting things set up such that I can publish to my website from within spacemacs (AKA Emacs with lots of customisations).
Greg McVerryUsing emacs in termux on Android. Because… actually I forgot why. But fun anyway!
Testing posting from spacemacs as a micropub client…
On a train, in a branch, adding tests to legacy code and refactoring. Aw yeah. Love it when a test goes green.
Forget this debate about whether it is overall more productive or not – for me personally, I just don’t enjoy coding if I’m not driving it with tests.