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"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

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.

https://localdigital.gov.uk/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.