Category: Uncategorized

Replied to End of year review 2019 by Calum Ryan (Calum Ryan)

Approaching the end of 2019 I look back on a year filled with some happy distractions away from the unending misery in UK politics and the climate crisis.

Happy New Year Calum!  That’s a good review.  Focusing on friends, family and health is a good antidote to the B-word for now.

Excited to hear there’s a IWC London in the works!

Read Autonomous by Annalee Newitz ( )
I finished the book Autonomous by Annalee Newitz a couple of weeks back.

It was pretty good. Fun and easy to read and keeps you turning the pages. Interesting themes of free culture, here focused on open sourcing / reverse engineering pharmaceuticals. And the lengths to which those in control of intellectual property rights will go to enforce them.

Interesting side story of human / robot romance and gender identity.

Read Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

Replied to Office Art, or the Obligation to Re-Use (zylstra.org)

I feel we have an obligation to re-use. The best way to keep things from humanity’s pool of cultural artefacts and knowledge available is by re-using and remixing them.

It isn’t about choosing the perfect images for my walls, it’s about choosing a few good-enough ones that speak to me at this moment in time.

I think this is really true – the perfect is the enemy of the good, as they say.  I think knowing something can be ephemeral, or improved upon, removes the friction of acting.  I’m finding this with writing in my blog/wiki.

I feel we also have an obligation to re-use. The best way to keep things from humanity’s pool of cultural artefacts and knowledge available is by re-using and remixing them. What gets used keeps meaning and value, will not be forgotten.

I’m also enjoying this as a way of stimulating thoughts and writing too – by quoting and reusing parts of other people’s posts as a jumping off point.

The benefits of reuse

Listened to Revolutionary Left Radio: Reflecting on the UK Election: Corbyn, Brexit, and Neoliberal Centrism from revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com

Jon Greenaway, co-host of the Horror Vanguard, joins Breht to discuss the recent UK election, the role of the British media, class conflict, the ostensible implications for American elections, Boris Johnson, the depraved and outdated Monarchy, and much more.

This episode of Rev Left Radio sums up most of my views around the recent election pretty well: on Corbyn, the media, Brexit, limits of our electoral system, where to focus for these next five years.

https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/uk-election

Rev Left on GE2019

Replied to https://doubleloop.net/2019/12/22/december/#comment-3156 by Ton Zylstra

I’ve come to think of it as a balance, because having connections to the outside is key too. With local just being local you are cut off of the rich tapestry of ideas, people, tools etc from elsewhere that can be of such value strengthening community when expressed and applied locally.

Really true – it’s important not to become closed off.  There is a wealth of ideas and values to be gathered from around the world, and that’s the beauty of the Internet, allowing us to connect to those.  The mix is important.  Politically speaking at present in the UK, with a national government that doesn’t represent me at all, taking us out of a federation of countries that I love, the local feels like the most hopeful site of action for now – but local actions infused with ideas from around the world.

Lobal